[Search-l] ISC (was re: transparency)

[Paul Vixie]

somebody pointed me to this list, and to seth's message, which said:

> 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.

without trying to put words in jimbo's mouth, this is idiotic on the face of
it.  please don't take it personally, seth.  ISC loves donations, we build
infrastructure for freely available works, we're 501(c)(3), all donations are
tax deductible, and we'd love to meet more BigMoneyMen (hey, you dotcommers
out there!  call me!).  we've got to buy a couple of Liebert A/C units for the
computer room where wikia's search engine backend is sitting, some time before
summer.

but there are an infinite number of public benefit tax deductible causes out
there competing to offer tax deductions.  no BigMoneyMan i know would choose
a tax deduction related to Wikia, vs. an investment in Wikia.  certainly the
current investors in Wikia would prefer nondilutive financial instruments
like "donate" vs. dilutive financial instruments like "invest" for newcomers.
but that's just not relevant to your argument.

> 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.

let me pierce the veil here and  just announce that ISC doesn't have money for
this kind of thing.  the reasons we use existing grants to support the Wikia
Search effort are (1) i was assured by jer and jimbo that the parts we're
hosting aren't where the monety is supposed to take place, and the bits we're
helping them export are freely usable and freely redistributable; and (2) the
power, cooling, real estate, and network we're growing in order to support
Wikia will also support freebsd, netbsd, kernel.org, ntp, inn, ISC's own works 
like BIND and ISC DHCP, and too many other players to name them all, plus
others we havn't been introduced to yet, and still others which don't exist
yet.

this is, in other words, what we do.  as spider man used to say back when he
was still funny, "don't applaud, just throw money."  or not -- just by using
our infrastructure or exchanging bits with people who do, you help us fulfill
our mission.  i'm not ruling out the possibility that some BigMoneyMan who
wants to help Wikia Search will choose to do so indirectly, by sponsoring
ISC's infrastructure.  in fact i'd love to see that happen.  but it would
make absolutely no sense, and it's not what happened in this case.

(jimbo, please note, i've met seth, and he is not an idiot, but also note,
any of us can, and many of us do, put forth idiotic ideas on an irregular
basis, without re-characterizing ourselves as idiots.  you probably owe an
apologia to seth for not putting a smiley on your reply to him on this forum.)

paul