QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Sat 6th December 2008, 9:59am)
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Sat 6th December 2008, 10:06am)
The SF police are bound to follow the CEO and board, as to who legally physically accesses the server building. And the programmers are hired and fired by the foundation, and they damn-well do what the board says.
As far as I know, the servers are still in Florida and there are no plans to move them.
Doesn't matter. There are apparently 5 different IT managers distributed geographically all over. The headquarters where orders are given, is in SF. The 400 servers are mostly in a server farm in Tampa (you're right), but they sound like they're rented. Fine. They do what the IT people (run by Brion Vibber) tell them, and the IT people answer to WFM, which is run by the CEO, which answers to the board.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/articl...54&pageNumber=1QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Sat 6th December 2008, 9:59am)
Jimbo has never understood that he doesn't own Wikimedia. He believes that it's his personal property to use and control; the WMF thing is just a legalistic dodge that doesn't alter his moral right of control. The concept of "fiduciary duty" is completely lost on him, as is the concept of "charitable organization". It's pretty clear that the only thing preserving his control over Wikipedia is the fact that most of the Wikipedia community is teenaged boys who have an innate need for defined hierarchy and clear leaders. Jimbo fills that need for them; he pretends to be their leader and they support him in that role. As long as Wikipedia continues to primarily recruit from that demographic, I don't see this changing.
No doubt. But the question is: how do you keep it from changing? It only takes a one-time collusion of a majority of the WMF board to change everything, forever. For as long as they want. I suppose Brion and Co. could declare loyalty to Jimbo and sabotage the software or in some way stage a passive-aggressive "strike." But strikes can be broken, and it only takes one IT person to defect, also. This whole thing is massively unstable, due to the fact that it's not owned by Jimbo, and is therefore entirely driven by the willing-suspension of disbelief, by the board-audience in their chosen "actor." But an audience is a treacherous thing, as any actor (or speaker) can tell you. Lose your audience, and you're dead, dead, dead.