[Foundation-l] Relocation announcement

[Florence Devouard]

Anthony wrote:
> On 9/22/07, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>> On 22/09/2007, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Yeah. Financially speaking, moving outside the US would be a big hit
>>>> (now and in the near future) simply due to exchange rates, if nothing
>>>> else.
>>> I don't see why exchange rates would make much difference. The WMF
>>> recieves donations in all kinds of currencies - just spend the pounds
>>> in the UK and the dollars in the US. Exchange rates only matter if you
>>> are exchanging currency.
>> That's not quite how it works.  The donations that are coming in aren't
>> going to be changing, so WMF will still be getting most donations in
>> USD.  Except, because of the poor exchange rate, it is much more
>> expensive to do just about everything in the UK, including renting
>> flats, renting office space, buying food, buying bandwidth, etc.  The
>> donations wouldn't go nearly as far.
> 
> Bottom line is that the cost of living in London, in US dollars, is
> expensive.  Of course, the cost of living in San Francisco, in US
> dollars, is also expensive.  It's not really an exchange rate thing so
> much as a cost of living thing.  A weaker dollar will lead to higher
> rent in San Francisco too, although maybe it'll take a few months to
> kick in.  Anyone have the cost per square foot for office space in San
> Francisco vs. London?
> 
> Wikia is in the San Francisco area.  Any chance they'd be willing to
> donate some office space to Wikipedia?

Even if they had, we should not accept it (and I doubt they would 
propose). We have gone through great efforts to fully separate from them 
and we now have no more financial/legal/technical relationships. Only 
love relationships, which is just fine.

Ant