Take this Wikipedia and shove it
Elevation Partners — you know, the hedge fund with added Bono — threw a party for Wikipedia at the Third Street Grill. The big news was that Wikipedia has updated its license to be compatible with Larry Lessig's Creative Commons, which should make it even easier for schoolkids to copy entries wholesale into their term papers. Or something. I was on my fourth Cape Codder by the time they started announcing things, so I wasn't really paying attention.
It was an odd venue for a tech party — a greasy diner by day, the Grill sits on a corner near the ballpark, neighborhing Border's, McDonald's, and dozens of men in Giants windbreakers asking passerbys if they need a ticket. They say open source is about software that's free as in "free speech," not "free beer," but the open bar featured plenty of the latter.
Elevation's Marc Bodnick greeted me by saying I wasn't drunk enough, and he was rarely without a can of Coors Light the entire night. The user-contributed entertainment was karaoke, backed by a talented, and very patient, live band. The clip above, captured by Irene McGee's cell phone, is a video of Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Creative Commons creator Lawrence Lessig announcing their collaboration and singing the Sonny and Cher classic "I Got You Babe." Seriously.
And apparently, no one's putting in long hours over at Yahoo; there was a large contingent from the troubled portal there. Shouldn't they have been back in the office, saving the company? Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail, our latest Silicon Valley tool, and Yahoo VP Bradley Horowitz took the mike, breaking out "Don't You Want Me," a fitting anthem. (The answer: No.)
Later on, I succumbed to the call of the spotlight, bleating out the Johnny Paycheck classic "Take This Job and Shove It," which given the events of last week seemed so appropriate. (Video by Irene McGee)