Regarding your first point, I personally feel that the benefits of name-brand recognition that we would gain from using "Wikimedia" far outweigh the trouble of changing our name in the unlikely event of us getting into a conflict with the WMF. For your second point, getting an official note from the WMF saying that we can use their name should be easy. Can we also get a note saying that they do not exercise any formal control over us? What do other international charities do when incorporating in Canada?
In addition to the name issue, followers of this thread may also want to weigh in on the discussion about whether to pre-emptively allow regional wings in our charter given the attempts at starting Wikimedia Quebec. That discussion is happening on the talk page of the bylaws: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Canada/Proposed_by-laws
—Jeffery Nichols (User:Arctic.gnome)
On 2010-08-05, at 9:23 , James Heilman wrote:
The chapter in the UK is incorporated as Wiki UK and operates under the name Wikimedia UK. There are a few reasons for this. One is as already mentioned, if the two organizations were to every have problems, this one would just lose its operating name and would not need to change its legal name. If we use Wikimedia we need documentation from Wikimedia saying we can us the name and this needs to be submitted to the Federal government. One more thing to slow the process of incorporation. The main reason I proposed this however is that in the documents regarding charities states a charity needs to be completely independent and retain complete control over all finances ( with a few exception of which Wikimedia is not one of them ). Being incorporated under a name without ties to another group will decrease the chance of us having problems with applying for charity status.
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.
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