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(a)gmail.com> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)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(a)yahoo.com> wrote: 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(a)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(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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