So at Lift07 there was an announcement that the Google-challenging behemoth (in Wikisari’s eyes anyway) known as Wikipedia has only enough cash to sustain itself for another 3-4 months. Phil over at ViaDigitalis has the details:

“At this point, Wikipedia has the financial ressources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”. The warning by Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation was certainly dire, and Lift07 was as good a venue to make an appeal. But it is another illustration of how difficult it is to find the proper business model in the digital age, and more precisely in this case in what Florence called the “gift economy”

Its funny how the quote ended with the “gift” economy, since Wikipedia has recently raised over a million dollars in as many weeks (a little more than a month) for charity.

But the issue of Wikipedia raising money or even taking ads is a contentious one. A really big one.

* Mat Ingram thinks that perhaps acquiring a patron might be the answer.

* Duncan Riley thinks that they’re ripe for a huge multinational with large pockets to buy them out.

* Robert Scoble discusses on how Techmeme isn’t linking to the original post.

I’m not sure if any of those things will pan out, mostly because of my understanding of how zealous Jimmy Pales and Wikipedian’s are to Wikipedia’s vision, and its belief in maintaining a neutral point of view. Wealthy patrons and an all-out buyout would clearly violate that.

My belief is that this statement about a lack of of cash might be true; but its ought to be qualified about how fast it previously raised cash in the form of donations. Even if you believe that advertising in and of itself compromises Wikipedia’s neutrality (and I think there’s a way to do it that doesn’t) I think there’s a way to set things up so that Wikipedia becomes the PBS of the Internet.

In other words, completely funded by its viewers.

When an organization is so large and so popular, they don’t even have to do a “good” job of marketing itself and acquiring charitable contributions. If they were to do a *lousy* job, they’d still raise buckets and buckets of cash. And quite frankly, the cynic in me almost thinks that the announcement that they only have 3-4 months is only a way to raise awareness to that fact.

Bandwidth costs money … that’s for sure. But Wikipedia’s chapter on the Internet isn’t closed by a long shot. And I suspect if nothing else, Wikipedian’s will pay to make sure that their works remain open for a long time — they’re recent fund drive was merely a hint at that, I think.

Update: Seth Finklestein does the numbers, and it looks Wikipedia is going to be in the black for quite a while.