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@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@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@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.
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
There's a fifth reason: our employment of fair use material depends to a certain extent on our non-profit status: of the 4 factors determining the permissibility of fair use in US copyright, one of them is the profit/non-profit status of the use.
On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 9:09 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.com wrote:
I can think of several reasons why the Foundation remains a non profit. If we switched to a Corporation, this would;
- Remove tax deductible status (Think taxation, big time)
- Undermine crediblity as a free compendium of knowledge
- 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.
- Open us up to SEC scrutiny
----- Original Message ---- From: Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@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@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.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
____________________________________________________________________________________Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 11/03/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
There's a fifth reason: our employment of fair use material depends to a certain extent on our non-profit status.
It's ridiculous to say "Wikipedia can only ever be run by a non-profit because we need to rip off other people's work."
We're a free encyclopedia. We have little need of non-free content, and with a proper revenue stream we could actually afford to pay royalties on some very high quality versions of images that we do need.
On 11/03/2008, Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.com wrote:
I can think of several reasons why the Foundation remains a non profit. If we switched to a Corporation, this would;
- Remove tax deductible status (Think taxation, big time)
- Undermine crediblity as a free compendium of knowledge
- 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.
- Open us up to SEC scrutiny
The GFDL means it's perfectly possible to dissolve the foundation and sell off the servers. Not going for a proper revenue stream because you would actually have to pay tax on the profits sounds a bit of an odd suggestion.
So the non-profit status of Google "undermines credibility as a free compendium of knowledge"? How does that work? If I look something up on Google Scholar or Google Books, how does this undermining happen, how will I notice that it's happening?
Could you explain about the SEC?