Fundraising 2007/Why Give blog/Inventor Asks for Your Contribution

We buy a computer and we expect it to change the way we live. Sometimes we know exactly how that change will happen. But more often we make the purchase with only a vague notion that life will be better with the new machine. We expect something good and the machine delivers.

The computer industry exists because computers, the network, and the people who use them have delivered on a promise that we only vaguely understood as we paid the bills. Did we know there would be a Wikipedia? Probably not. Still, there it is. Enjoy.

Enjoy, but understand that we are not done paying. I ask you to give to Wikimedia because this investment is necessary and will be even more positively leveraged than your hardware purchase. Your machine sits before you ready to transform your contribution into good in ways that neither you nor I can fully predict. I say this with all the confidence I had when I chose to devote my life to computing. I remain excited by our possibilities. I hope you are too.

Ward Cunningham invented the Wiki style of collaboration in 1995. He has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board since its founding. This post is a personal opinion, and does not represent an official statement from the Wikimedia Foundation.