Wikimedia Enterprise/Principles
In order to clearly define what Wikimedia Enterprise (and the associated Enterprise API) will and will not do, and by extension what its customers must abide by, we have devised the following set of operating principles.
- Consistency with mission, vision, and values. All activities must be conducted in a manner that is consistent with the Wikimedia Foundation’s overall mission, vision, and values. They must not create unnecessary legal exposure for the projects, or otherwise unduly interfere with our ability to achieve our mission.
- Good faith reuse. Users of the Enterprise API service must abide by the spirit of the free licensing used on our content in good faith. As applicable, this includes things such as appropriate attribution, indicating if subsequent changes have been made, and not implying Wikimedia’s endorsement of the user or their use.
- No restriction on free use. The existence of paid access services offered by Wikimedia Enterprise will not restrict or diminish the accessibility and usefulness of free access or services to anyone. This is equally applicable to the Enterprise API as a project as it is for its customers.
- Honesty and transparency. Responses to feedback and enquiries will be timely, direct, and clear. Wherever possible, the technical, legal, and financial activities of the Wikimedia Enterprise project will be built or reported upon publicly. This includes: The publication of overall revenue and expenses, differentiated from those of the Wikimedia Foundation in general, at least annually; consistent with how the Wikimedia Foundation treats large donations, the Wikimedia Foundation board will notify the Board in advance of all agreements expected to generate revenue in excess of $250,000 USD annually, allowing the Board to raise concerns; and the contractual relationship of the project to the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Freely-licensed, open source. All software built for and by Wikimedia Enterprise will be F/LOSS. All content provided through its services, by virtue of it being Wikimedia project content, is freely-licensed or public domain.
- No exclusive contracts. No individual or organization will be given monopoly access to Wikimedia Enterprise features or services. Equally, they may not restrict the access of others.
- No exclusive content. Any new datasets or services derived from Wikimedia data that Wikimedia Enterprise builds, and are considered production ready, will be made available for movement and community purposes.
- No editorial influence. The contents and editorial control of Wikimedia projects are community controlled and are not influenced by a contract to access the Enterprise API service.
- No non-public personally identifiable data. The information provided through the Enterprise API service is the same which is available publicly on Wikimedia projects.
- Financial independence. The operation of Wikimedia Enterprise activities will be self-funding. All the money received from customers will be spent on the Wikimedia mission. Unrelated business income from Wikimedia Enterprise and other sources will not exceed 30% of the Wikimedia Foundation's total revenue.
- Cloud agnostic. While the services and features of the Enterprise API may be operated on third-party hosting platforms, they will never be technically, contractually, or financially dependent on any specific provider.
| Wikimedia Enterprise | |
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 Building new opportunities for both revenue generation and free knowledge dissemination through partnerships and earned income. | |
| enterprise.wikimedia.com | |
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| Technical | |
This list of principles should be understood to be updatable and improvable in response to community needs and in order to embody the organizational best practices approved by the Wikimedia Foundation board. If you have suggestions for improvement/clarification, please share them.
See also: October 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board Statement on Wikimedia Enterprise revenue principles.Governance documents (including annual financial reports, operating and license agreements, and LLC registration) can be found at Foundation:Wikimedia Enterprise.