[OWW-Discuss] Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

[Alexander Wait Zaranek]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Austin Che <austin at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
>     Freemium: main wiki is free, we charge for private wikis or
>     premium services
>
We want fewer private wikis in the world anyway, so, why not charge
for them?   Maybe the hard part is that selling the premium
services--such as private wikis--might create some kind of conflict of
interest.    For example,  Jimbo focused on Wikipedia for a long time
before he moved on to the for-profit project (Wikia).  And while not
everyone is happy that "wikia" even exists, at this point, Wikipedia
seems to be standing on its own.

Is the goal to become "grant free" for OWW?  To supplement the grants
to allow for expansion?   Is there a timeline?

>     Gift economy: rely on altruism.
>
this works for wikipedia and could/should work for OWW to some extent.
  Does OWW have a "donate" button lurking somewhere?  Have we ever had
a funding drive?  Are OWW operating budgets etc audited or available?
 As a comparison Wikipedia financials are at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report    I find looking
at these helpful for thinking about what OWW could be.

Sasha