Directory:Akahele/Conflicted boards

Today, the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, elected to <a title="NY Times on Eric Schmidt" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/technology/companies/04apple.html" target="_blank">step down</a> from his post on the Apple board of directors. As Google was moving more and more into Apple's core lines of business, it became clear that Schmidt's interests and obligations to each company were becoming blurred.

As Apple chief Steve Jobs explained how it would have gone otherwise, "Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest."

It seems fairly obvious that one man cannot and should not try to both serve the fiduciary interests and protect the corporate missions of two different companies that compete against each other in the same marketplace. Akahele notes, however, that the founder of privately-held Wikia, Inc. also maintains a purportedly permanent seat on the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation board, even though Wikia and the Foundation share almost identically competitive missions.

Wikia: <a title="About Wikia" href="http://www.wikia.com/index.php?title=Wikia:About&oldid=279891" target="_blank">a community destination</a> supporting the creation and development of wiki communities on any topic people are passionate about. Wikia supports many thousands of wiki communities in dozens of languages.

Wikimedia Foundation: <a title="WMF mission" href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Frequently_Asked_Questions&oldid=38192#What_is_the_mission_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.3F" target="_blank">an organizational framework</a> for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects<a title="Our projects" href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects"></a>.

Jimmy Wales, will you do the right thing and step down from one or the other of these corporations?