> Regarding, "not enough", I'm currently losing money on Legible News, so if I increased the amount, I'd lose even more money. For now I consider a 10% donation generous given the current unit economics. I may raise prices to offset these loses, but I'll grandfather in people who subscribe today.
This feels in very bad taste to me. As another user pointed out, these articles are being authored and maintained by volunteers, who are donating their time and effort to make information accessible to people. Instead of joining them in that pro-bono effort, you're trying to leverage their work to your own profits. Yes, it requires some up-front work from you to format the articles, but it's a one time cost while the authors are continuously working. And sure, you have to pay for hosting costs, but then you could still run it as a non-profit that only recoups costs and donates the rest to Wikipedia.
If you want to make a business out of this, I'd suggest investing in having people author some original articles. But taking someone else's volunteer work for your own gain is not something I will support. Not wanting to invest your own time and money to make your project work long-term doesn't justify using other people's time and efforts to make your project work long term.
If there's any part of your data pipeline that I misunderstand and rectifies the situation, I'd be happy to have my understanding fixed.
I don't understand why you would feel that way. Under Wikipedia's license:
> You are free to:
> Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
> Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
This seems like exactly the kind of behaviour they want to encourage. It's not taking anything away from the project, just adding another way to consume the information for those who choose to.
> Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
> ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
> No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Proper attribution is not optional. While OP's license link might put him in the clear legally (although IANAL, it might not) it is can still be questionable ethically and I agree with the other commenters here thinking it is.
I was only addressing the comment that OP is "trying to leverage their work to your own profits". I agree that the attribution could be more explicit on OP's webpage, but I don't see that for/not-for profit really has anything to do with it (legally or morally).
I occasionally make edits to the structure of the original content, but given my limited resources, which is a fraction of my personal time, that's all I can do. In the future if this brings in more revenue I will consider donating more to Wikimedia, hiring editorial staff to contribute back to CurrentEvents, or purchasing a Wikimedia Enterprise subscription.
I do want to acknowledge and be upfront that I won't be able to satisfy everybody's level of fairness, taste, etc, but this is currently what is sustainable for me given the amount of time and resources I have available to put into this project. Some will think this is done in very bad taste, like yourself, and others won't. That's fine! I accept constructive or thoughtful critiques and will reflect on them in the future as things change.
The ease at which you gloss over the fact that your site is simply accepting money for the time and effort of volunter Wikipedia editors is truly innovative, good job.
For those that believe Brad's take on Wikipedia's content isn't adding a fair amount of value...
Presumably, if Legiblenews takes off and doesn't add value, Wikimedia is free to compete with it. Wikimedia could form a for-profit company that donates more of user revenue to the foundation and feature that company on Wikipedia. Therefore, for the foreseeable future, Wikimedia effectively retains the option to copy & crush Brad's side-project. And if Legiblenews takes off Wikimedia does nothing at all...they will still almost certainly receive more $$$ than the current state of the world.
In that way, Wikimedia is outsourcing innovation to Brad, who Wikimedia is well-positioned to copy/compete with in the future, and being paid to do so. While Brad loses money.
I'm not 100% sure who is on which side of "fair," but ultimately if it complies with Wikimedia's license I'm good with it. And if you don't like it, why not start something better?
OP sounds like they're honoring the terms of Wikipedia's content license and donating money on top. Why is that a problem?
They're presumably also benefitting from the work volunteers put into Linux, nginx, and whatever else is in their stack, but nobody suggests that websites using open source technologies should be forfeiting all profits.
I generally agree with this and would add another take:
Delivering good news is expensive! The big players are not doing that for the most part, instead doing "newstainment" and I almost never pay attention.
Indie journalists are challenged right now, but are doing News. Most can barely make it.
Your platform could help! Having them author and get some revenue would be something I would pay for. And I do that now via Patreon, Substack, others. It is all too coarse though.
All that said, maybe plenty of people will pay. You are likely to find out. And like I said in my other comment:
Speed is nice, but compelling rules!
Maybe invite those getting views to author original material. Helps you, them, the reader / viewer.
This feels in very bad taste to me. As another user pointed out, these articles are being authored and maintained by volunteers, who are donating their time and effort to make information accessible to people. Instead of joining them in that pro-bono effort, you're trying to leverage their work to your own profits. Yes, it requires some up-front work from you to format the articles, but it's a one time cost while the authors are continuously working. And sure, you have to pay for hosting costs, but then you could still run it as a non-profit that only recoups costs and donates the rest to Wikipedia.
If you want to make a business out of this, I'd suggest investing in having people author some original articles. But taking someone else's volunteer work for your own gain is not something I will support. Not wanting to invest your own time and money to make your project work long-term doesn't justify using other people's time and efforts to make your project work long term.
If there's any part of your data pipeline that I misunderstand and rectifies the situation, I'd be happy to have my understanding fixed.