Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation, has touched off a tempest with her suggestion in a talk at the Lift07 conference that Wikipedia has funding for only another quarter and “might disappear” if donations don’t pick up.
According to this post by media producer Philippe Mottaz, Devouard told the audience: “At this point, Wikipedia has the financial resources 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.”
Here is a copy of the official Wikimedia budget for the last quarter of the 2005 calendar year. Keep in mind that although this copy dates from 2005, the costs of running Wikipedia have rised in time.
