[WikiEN-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia

[Geoffrey Plourde]

I can think of several reasons why the Foundation remains a non profit. If we switched to a Corporation, this would;

1) Remove tax deductible status (Think taxation, big time)
2) Undermine crediblity as a free compendium of knowledge
3) Create a big legal mess. WF would have to define stockholders which would disenfranchise several million users. In addition, these new stockholders would have a tax mess on their hands.
4) Open us up to SEC scrutiny


----- Original Message ----
From: Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 5:48:50 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia

On 11/03/2008, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ads detract from the objectivity. Also, it could lead to a pain with the IRS.

If you don't read the ad (we're talking about google-style ads here, I
imagine) it cannot have any effect on objectivity.

I don't know about the tax situation, but there's no reason in
principle why Wikimedia (or a successor organisation) should remain
subject to not-for-profit rules.  Google is a corporation but the IRS
doesn't seem to have killed it yet.  Transition to commercial status
might be a bit weird, but it's doable because the content is all under
the GFDL.

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