On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:19 PM, Ed Summers <ehs@pobox.com> wrote:
> The Foundation will help out as it's able, I'm sure; but it has never taken
> legal responsibility for funding/organizing/etc. the previous Wikimania
> conferences, and is quite unlikely to do so now, for a variety of legal and
> financial reasons.
Ok, I didn't know that the Wikimedia Foundation hasn't assumed legal
responsibility for previous Wikimania conferences. It seems odd to me,
given that Wikimania is the premier event for the foundation. But if
that is really the case, it makes perfect sense why there was this
rush to incorporate as a non-profit.
To be fair, the WMF probably wouldn't be effective at running a non-US Wikimania even if it wanted to, as its 501(c)(3) status is meaningless elsewhere in the world.
Kirill