Mailing List Archive

2009/4/23 Kul Takanao Wadhwa <kwadhwa@wikimedia.org>:

> I am spreading the news around (I just posted to the internal list)
> about a new announcement going out in a couple hours. For the past few
> months I have been working on a deal with Orange (France Telecom) on a
> new kind of multi-platform (web, mobile, IPTV) partnership for the
> Wikimedia Foundation.  This partnership will extend co-branding
> opportunities and have Wikipedia's knowledge brought to some new
> audiences. It will also allow for us to experiment with new technologies
> to improve the functionality and delivery of our content. Furthermore,
> this is an additional revenue stream to build on our most important
> revenue stream - our successful fundraising campaigns.


In the Slashdot firehose, please vote up:

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=4259249


- d.

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2009/4/23 Kul Takanao Wadhwa <kwadhwa@wikimedia.org>:
> Feel free to contact me or the list if you have any questions.
>
>
> --Kul

Will there be at least a rough guide to where this deal will result in
the logo turning up legitimately?

Will any of the orange products support wikipedia's video format and
by what mechanism?


--
geni

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Kul Takanao Wadhwa wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am spreading the news around (I just posted to the internal list)
> about a new announcement going out in a couple hours. For the past few
> months I have been working on a deal with Orange (France Telecom) on a
> new kind of multi-platform (web, mobile, IPTV) partnership for the
> Wikimedia Foundation. This partnership will extend co-branding
> opportunities and have Wikipedia's knowledge brought to some new
> audiences. It will also allow for us to experiment with new technologies
> to improve the functionality and delivery of our content. Furthermore,
> this is an additional revenue stream to build on our most important
> revenue stream - our successful fundraising campaigns.

My congratulations to Kul, and thanks for his hard work over the last
few months to mould this deal into a form which is both lucrative for
Wikimedia and likely to be acceptable to the community.

-- Tim Starling


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2009/4/23 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:

> Will any of the orange products support wikipedia's video format and
> by what mechanism?


(hypothesising here) I expect that would require a converter from Ogg
Theora to 3GP and Ogg Vorbis to MP3 in the first instance.

Gently pressuring phone manufacturers to support Ogg formats may be
quite feasible, however.


- d.

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>
> Will there be at least a rough guide to where this deal will result in
> the logo turning up legitimately?

Yes. We have a list of portals/sites where they plan to profile the
content and the logo. We went through the list but we will review the
use every quarter and reassess as needed.
>
> Will any of the orange products support wikipedia's video format and
> by what mechanism?
>

We're not sure yet since we are just at the first stage of this but we
will give them as much advice as we possible can. We want to influence
them to move in the "right" direction but our tech team will actually
have some input (although not the final word) on their decisions b/c in
the end, it is their sites. But in this position we can have more
influence on the corporate world then we otherwise would have if we
weren't directly involved with them in regards to our video format, Ogg,
etc.

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Does the Board get involved in deciding whether to pursue new business
oppurtunities like this, or is that something that is solely handled
by the Foundation Staff?

This question isn't intended as a criticism in any way, I'm just
curious what the relationship is like surrounding big new projects
like this.

-Robert Rohde


On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Kul Takanao Wadhwa
<kwadhwa@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am spreading the news around (I just posted to the internal list)
> about a new announcement going out in a couple hours. For the past few
> months I have been working on a deal with Orange (France Telecom) on a
> new kind of multi-platform (web, mobile, IPTV) partnership for the
> Wikimedia Foundation.  This partnership will extend co-branding
> opportunities and have Wikipedia's knowledge brought to some new
> audiences. It will also allow for us to experiment with new technologies
> to improve the functionality and delivery of our content. Furthermore,
> this is an additional revenue stream to build on our most important
> revenue stream - our successful fundraising campaigns.
>
> This partnership will start in four European territories: France, UK,
> Poland and Spain. I already notified the chapter reps in Poland, UK, and
> France (3 of the 4 territories where we have chapters).  They've had a
> couple days to process the info and prepare for any media questions they
> may come their way.
>
> Here is the announcement that will go out soon:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Orange_and_Wikimedia_announce_partnership_April_2009
>
> Also, here is the Q&A that should address some of the basic questions
> about this partnership.
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Orange_and_Wikimedia_announce_partnership_April_2009Q
>
> Feel free to contact me or the list if you have any questions.
>
>
> --Kul
>
> Head of Business Development
>
> _______________________________________________
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>

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> This partnership will start in four European territories: France, UK,
> Poland and Spain. I already notified the chapter reps in Poland, UK, and
> France (3 of the 4 territories where we have chapters). They've had a
> couple days to process the info and prepare for any media questions they
> may come their way.

I have two questions coming from Poland. Poland is a very important
market for the FT Group, due to the majority stake that FT owns in
the Polish incumbent telecom operator, Telekomunikacja Polska.

1) Does the deal include only Orange mobile platform or will it
include also the new Orange Internet brand to be launched soon (at
least in Poland)? The difference is huge: while the Orange currently
is just one of the four mobile operators competing in the market,
the DSL market is based on the incumbent position in the landline
connectivity and accounts for 80% of the broadband access in the
country.

2) Does the deal potentialy include some arrangements regarding
abuse handling with the Orange users? Since most broadband users
in .pl come from the FT subsidiary network and are hidden behind
the dynamic IP addresses. This leads to numerous issues, like
blocking of the whole DSL range in region of Łódź in 2007
(ca. 1 million inhabitants):

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blokada_Neostrady_w_%C5%81odzi
(Polish-only)

The telecom responded only after this issue has been prominent in
the media, there is a big potential for improvement, for example:

- better cooperation with the abuse team, possibly including
- assignement of static, public IP addresses to the troublesome
customers so that they can be filtered out.

--
<< Marcin Cieslak // saper@system.pl >>


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Dear Kul,

Congratulations for this arrangement; Orange is a really big player on
the market in some European and non European countries, that makes it
so impressive. (People in other countries may not realise that.)
What I still don't understand - forgive me, I am not very familiar
with mobile phones and techno stuff - what exactly is the deal between
Orange and the Foundation. Why is it so important to Orange that they
have the right to use our logos? What technical benefit comes from the
deal? Maybe you can describe it from the view of the end consumer? And
is it possible to reveal something about the amount that the
Foundation gets, at least roughly? :-)

Kind regards
Ziko


2009/4/23 Marcin Cieslak <saper@system.pl>:
>> This partnership will start in four European territories: France, UK,
>> Poland and Spain. I already notified the chapter reps in Poland, UK, and
>> France (3 of the 4 territories where we have chapters).  They've had a
>> couple days to process the info and prepare for any media questions they
>> may come their way.
>
> I have two questions coming from Poland. Poland is a very important
> market for the FT Group, due to the majority stake that FT owns in
> the Polish incumbent telecom operator, Telekomunikacja Polska.
>
> 1) Does the deal include only Orange mobile platform or will it
> include also the new Orange Internet brand to be launched soon (at
> least in Poland)?  The difference is huge: while the Orange currently
> is just one of the four mobile operators competing in the market,
> the DSL market is based on the incumbent position in the landline
> connectivity and accounts for 80% of the broadband access in the
> country.
>
> 2) Does the deal potentialy include some arrangements regarding
> abuse handling with the Orange users? Since most broadband users
> in .pl come from the FT subsidiary network and are hidden behind
> the dynamic IP addresses. This leads to numerous issues, like
> blocking of the whole DSL range in region of £ód¼ in 2007
> (ca.  1 million inhabitants):
>
> http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blokada_Neostrady_w_%C5%81odzi
> (Polish-only)
>
> The telecom responded only after this issue has been prominent in
> the media, there is a big potential for improvement, for example:
>
> - better cooperation with the abuse team, possibly including
> - assignement of static, public IP addresses to the troublesome
> customers so that they can be filtered out.
>
> --
>              << Marcin Cieslak // saper@system.pl >>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



--
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde

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Robert Rohde wrote:
> Does the Board get involved in deciding whether to pursue new business
> oppurtunities like this, or is that something that is solely handled
> by the Foundation Staff?
>
> This question isn't intended as a criticism in any way, I'm just
> curious what the relationship is like surrounding big new projects
> like this.
>
The answer may depend on what stage of the process you mean. In the
sense of deciding whether to pursue opportunities, as Kul regularly
points out we get all kinds of inquiries and business proposals, most of
which make no sense for us and are politely turned down. It's
necessarily up to the staff to decide what to explore further, negotiate
over issues, and work toward a deal if appropriate. The board is not
really involved.

However, before finalizing an agreement of this scope, the staff do
inform the board, and board members have asked questions and requested
information in the course of evaluating the proposal. At this point
there's something more immediate and concrete for us to consider.
There's no requirement that the board formally sign off on a deal, but
if we thought there were serious problems with it, there is ample
opportunity to make that clear before it is completed.

--Michael Snow

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