Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
For a long long time it has been the operative
assumption that the
Wikimedia Foundation carries the legal liability, and if things go
really really badly wrong, the foundation would sacrifice itself, so
the community, and the content itself could continue elsewhere.
What?
Firstly there is the building of increasingly robust
defensive
bulwarks against litigation and other forms that the foundation could
be seriously harmed.
The behavior of the community is the whole reason this risks even exist.
How about the
community take some ownership for its own actions. i.e. "Do folks own
any of this risk
based on their own actions?"
The other facet of the question is the speed at which
the organs of
the foundation develop into integral parts of how our whole greater
endeavour operates. Note I am not saying indispensible in the sense
that those particular organs are locked into place (we are a long way
from that yet), but integral in the sense that should the highly
unlikely eventuality of having to start again occur (as the GFDL
allows), _something_ would have fill their functions in the operation
of the restarted endeavour.
The problem (or non-problem, as the facts may obtain) here lies on
what philosophy do we adopt toward this earlier operative assumption
of sacrificability?
Man, this is what I meant when I said "gaping disconnects from real
world realities".
Do we find on reflection, that we have already crossed
the Rubicon,
that although theoretically the work could be restarted elsewhere, the
disruption would be high enough, that it is wisest to abandon all
worry about the possibility of sacrificing the Foundation, and
concentrate on making the Foundation functional without regard to what
things it might lock us into, and speed up construction of legal and
other defensive bulwarks into a kind of Fortress Wikimedia Foundation?
Or should we seriously consider examining every new thing the
Foundation takes onto its plate, making doubly sure that it is
something that would compromise our ability to just chuck the
Foundation away like the tail of a lizard, and trust we will have the
resources to grow a new tail, there being no vital organs in it.
"Right to leave, Right to fork". Cimon, you are running for the board?
What on earth are you
talking about?
Jeff