[Search-l] transparency

[Gabriel Medina]

Seth Finkelstein

Nice Speculation!

Best Regards,
gab


On Jan 6, 2008 6:19 AM, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:

> >> Hehe I have to agree that it is very stealthy for something that
> >> claims transparency as one of the pilars.
>
> > On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 08:51:19PM -0600, jer wrote:
> > It bothers me probably more than anyone... it's really not that
> > there's any secrets (as will be soon apparent, pretty straight-
> > forward stuff), but more-so just practicality.  All of the various
> > pieces coming together has been very chaotic, just trying to get
> > things functional and preparing for any sort of volume that may come :)
> >
> > Jer
>
>        Well, it seems obvious that some sort of funding deal got
> done. My *guess* is that it involved funneling money through the
> "Internet Systems Consortium". Something like, *hypothetically*,
> BigMoneyMan was convinced to donate a million bucks or so to the
> ISC, where the ISC would then run the search project for Wikia.
> That structuring would mean the BigMoneyMan would get a tax deduction,
> while Wikia would not be saddled with more venture capital obligations.
> Then that supports buying many servers and for expert consulting.
>
>        I should clarify I'm not saying that the above *hypothetical*
> is necessarily a bad thing (though small search engines might claim
> it's favoritism in spirit even if permitted under the letter of the law).
>
>        Maybe the deal will be announced Monday, "We got X dollars from Y
> (via ISC), which allowed us to put Z servers into production and hire
> ABC".
> I should stress, before Jimmy flames me for speculation, that under
> the current "mushroom management", speculation is all I can do. And I
> assume such a sharp businessman has taken his financial experiences
> with Wikipedia (as part of a non-profit, "501(c)(3)" foundation) to heart.
>
>        There's a large amount of tension between the fact that Wikia
> is a venture capital backed start-up, and the idea of running a
> transparent open-source project. Let's remember that the price of the
> Grub crawler being $50K was not a secret _per se_, eventually being
> disclosed in SEC documents. But due to the implications, Wikia
> definitely had an incentive to keep that info hidden as long as
> possible. Businesses by nature aren't transparent - that's the whole
> history of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a nutshell.
>
> --
> Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
> Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
> Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php
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