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General report

Letter from the Board

to be written

Overview

Board meetings

A complete list of notes from Board meetings may be seen at meetings.

Latest meetings

Template:Latest meetings

Budget meeting
See also this recent list of open questions to the board.

Collaboration

Summary on collaboration

We worked out a number of collaborations with other organisations in the past six months, and are discussing many more.

We are in discussions with two organisations about the possibility of offering on-demand book printing from Wikipedia. One of these organisations printed a Wikireader on Frankfurt during Wikimania for a test. Our current concern is that by doing so, we are potentially stepping beyond the protections of the DMCA and running an unacceptably high level of copyright risk. So, we are currently moving at slow speed on the matter.

A fabulous strip from JD Frazer [1]

Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation will form a new partnership beginning of year 2006. 1-Click Answers, Wikipedia Edition software will be linked from the English Wikipedia Tools page. Please see the press release by Answers.com and discussion for more information. The announcement raised some very critical comments, from editors and in the press (see [2]]. Explanation in French : [3].
We also previously reached an agreement in last spring to provide a live feed of our public data to Answers.com, live feed which is still currently under work for full operability (Brion Vibber is currently working with them to make this happen).

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+<!--Image:Wikimania05-Happybirthdaytojimbo.jpg-->
-[[Image:Wikimania conference1.jpg|left|200px|Jimbo, Angela, Anthere, Tim...]]
-==The road ahead==
+==General report==
+<center><font face="Palatino,Verdana,Arial" size=4>'''Letter from the Board'''</font></center>
+[[Image:Wikimania conference1.jpg|left|300px|Jimbo, Angela, Anthere, Tim...]]
+''to be written''
+</div>
+===Overview===
 <!--
+<small>''By [[user:Anthere|Anthere]]''</small>
-==The Board==
-The Wikimedia [[Board of Trustees]] manages the nonprofit and supervise the disposition and solicitation of nonprofit donations. The Board of Trustees are the ultimate corporate authority in the Wikimedia Foundation Inc., and has the power to direct the activities of the foundation. The Board consists of five directors.
+[[Image:Fljhfdshrukeurrewfd.jpg|150px|left|Credit cards]]
+To start with, here is a brief summary of our financial state at the end of 2004:
+In 2004, our global revenues were US$150,000, while expenses reached about US$123,000 dollars. The [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bank_history/2004 full bank history] for 2004 is available on the Foundation Website.  The most striking financial trend for 2004 was the amazing growth of our needs. In just one year, our server farm grew from 3 servers to 50! Naturally, this meant increasing costs throughout the year, to purchase new equipment and to support bandwidth requirements.
+A [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005 budget meeting] was held in early 2005, to estimate our growing needs. Following this estimate, a successful fundraising drive was held in February, yielding over US$90,000 dollars.<br>
+To date, most of our income has come from individual donations,  ranging from US$5.00 to US$20.00 dollars. These donations have come from editors and readers who appreciate what we are doing. The success of our fundraising suggests that our growth can still essentially be supported by individual donations.
+Other revenues included grants and sponsorship.  Our most recent grant was from the '''[http://rlounsbery.org/default.asp Lounsbery Foundation]'''.  An important issue with regard to grants and donations is that the Wikimedia Foundation has finally been classified as a public charity, and granted tax exempt status by the IRS.  This will certainly offer new incentives to potential grantors. During the first months of 2005, an IRC meeting was held on grant issues, and we considered looking for a Grants Manager for the Foundation.  Later in the quarter, Wikimania, the first international meeting organised by and for wikipedians (taking place in August), was granted its first sponsorship, from '''Gurunet.'''
+With our existing funds, we purchased some [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware technical equipment] in [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_ordered_January_2005 January].  Numerous hosting proposals this quarter allowed us to purchase less hardware than expected.  The donor of the first set of French [[w:squid (server)|squids]] donated three more, soon to be hosted by '''Lost Oasis''' for free; other propositions are currently being studied (see [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_partners_and_hosts Wikimedia partners and hosts]). In particular, discussions are ongoing with Google, but no agreement has been reached. The general trend is to multiply our partners, insuring independence; while making agreements that are technically relevant.
+A new expense is ''salary''. Since early 2005, the Foundation has been employing two part-time developers, '''Chad Perrin''' and '''Brion Vibber'''. The board has also decided to hire a person full time to do secretary work, such as physical paper work, sending out packages, purchase of tech parts, phone calls. The position will be local to Florida. Discussions are ongoing about hiring other people but no decision has been taken at that point.
+The [[Privacy policy]] on all Wikimedia projects was approved at the last Board meeting. It will be translated in all languages and made visible to users and visitors over the next few weeks.
+Finally, the legal organisation of the Foundation has been strengthened in the past few weeks, with the creation of a [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal page] to coordinate discussions of legal issues.
+-->
+'''Board meetings'''
 A complete list of notes from Board meetings may be seen at [[meetings]].
@@ Line 11: / Line 44: @@
 {{Latest meetings}}
+*[[Budget/2005|Budget meeting]]
+*See also this recent list of [[:m:Board_agenda/Open_questions|open questions to the board]].
+===Collaboration===
+====Summary on collaboration====
+We worked out a number of collaborations with other organisations in the past six months, and are discussing many more.
+<!--
+*''Kennisnet''
+*''Yahoo''
+*''DirectMedia''
+*''Mandriva''
 -->
+We are in discussions with two organisations about the possibility of offering '''on-demand book printing''' from Wikipedia.  One of these organisations printed a Wikireader on Frankfurt during Wikimania for a test. Our current concern is that by doing so, we are potentially stepping beyond the protections of the DMCA and running an unacceptably high level of copyright risk. So, we are currently moving at slow speed on the matter.
+<center>[[Image:Uf008502.gif]]</center><br>
+<center>''A fabulous strip from JD Frazer [http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051102]''</center>
+Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation will form a new partnership beginning of year 2006. 1-Click Answers, Wikipedia Edition'' software will be linked from the [[w:en:Wikipedia:Tools|English Wikipedia Tools]] page. Please see the [http://www.answers.com/main/ir/press10202005.jsp press release] by Answers.com and [[w:en:Wikipedia talk:Tools/1-Click Answers|discussion]] for more information. The announcement raised some very critical comments, from editors and in the press (see [http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/trouble_in_wiki.php]]. Explanation in French : [//lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediafr-l/2005-October/001046.html].<br>
+We also previously reached an agreement in last spring to provide a live feed of our public data to '''Answers.com''', live feed which is still currently under work for full  operability (Brion Vibber is currently working with them to make this happen).
+<!--
+Kennisnet is collaborating with Wikimedia in many ways; both by sponsoring software research and development, and by offering local hosting and the use of their servers.  (For more information on Kennisnet collaborations, see ''Kennisnet'', pg 7.)
+Another dozen hosting offers, both large and small, are under discussion.  Some are tentative, some want "co-marketing opportunities," etc.  Right now, we are telling most of them that we are interested but that we will not be technically ready for a few months; so we should talk now to plan ahead but are unlikely to announce anything soon.  We must first organise the deals recently concluded, and take time to think and organise, rather than proceeding in haste.
+-->
+<!--
+====Top rank sales for Directmedia DVD of German Wikipedia====
+[[Image:Wikipedia 2005 Label DVD small.PNG|left|110px|German DVD cover]]
+After the succesful distribution of the [[w:de:|German Wikipedia]] on CD, the German publishing company [[w:Directmedia|Directmedia]] has released a DVD edition.  The DVD is based on a snapshot of the wiki from March 3, which was quickly reviewed to remove potential copyright violations, vandalism and templates which are only useful in the online version of Wikipedia.  Structured bibliographic information about key people, a new feature added for the CD distribution, was also added for more people.
+The DVD contains 203,000 articles and thousands of images. It includes software for browsing the content with a fast full text search and features for annotations, bookmarks and so on. The DVD is shipped with software for running on Windows, MacOS and Linux; although the latter is still new and under heavy development.
+The DVD was the best-selling software product at [http://amazon.de Amazon Germany] the day after it was announced. Two days later, the 10,000 copies made for the release had sold out and a new set were ordered from the factory. These will be delivered within the next few weeks.
+The DVD also contains data packages for [[w:Tomeraider|Tomeraider]] and [[w:Mobipocket|Mobipocket]], allowing it to be installed on PDAs, as well as a "bonus CD-ROM."  This CD is a bootable LAMPPIX-CD containing an Apache server, a MySQL database and Mediawiki.  This runs a Mediawiki installation directly from the CD-ROM, which you can boot from in order to have access to over 200,000 articles from your web browser.
+The DVD's ISBN is 3-89853-020-5; it can be ordered for 9.90 Euros from every book shop in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.  For each DVD sold, one euro is donated to Wikimedia Deutschland.  Both the DVD and the CD-ROM are available for free as ISO images, via P2P networks and on several FTP servers, encouraging sharing and broader distribution.
+-->
+===Public Relations===
+<!--
+An increasing part of the Board's activity is related to public relations.  Jimmy Wales is travelling or offline more frequently, due to invitations to talks all over the world. A quick view of his [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User%3AJimbo_Wales schedule]
+is probably the best summary of this.  Other presentations have taken Angela and Anthere offline for days at a time (most recently at [[m:PixelAche|PixelAche]] for Anthere and [http://www.decadeofwebdesign.org/ A Decade of Web Design] for Angela).
+For more on these conferences, interviews and press reports, see Press (pg. 6) and International (pg. 7).
+Effort has recently been put into improving the public collection of presentation materials. Anthere crafted a leaflet in French with [[m:User:Notafish|Notafish]] for the [[m:TIC21|TIC21]] meeting in January 2005. Elian later released a collection of leaflets to be translated for the Fosdem meeting.
+[[Image:Jimmywales.jpg|thumb|right|150px|Jimmy Wales and Howard Rheingold [http://www.rheingold.com/howard/] at Stanford University [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales_lecture_at_Stanford_University_on_2_9_2005].<br><small>Screenshot of a video[http://cooperation.smartmobs.com/cs/node/248] by [[:en:User:Alterego|Alterego]].</small>]]
+The full collection of current material may be found in three collections, for [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations presentations], [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Promotion promotion], and [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Leaflet leaflets].  Most of this information may now be found in English, German, French and Dutch. Please add to these in other languages.
+-->
+===Organisation===
+''To be written''
+==The road ahead==
+''WSIS''
 ==Archives==
-*[[/2005]]
+*[[/April 2005]]
-*[[/2004]]
+*[[/January 2005]]
+*[[/September 2004]]
+[[Category:English|{{PAGENAME}}]]