- I fully support the creation of subsidiary foundations, to
whatever extent is desirable, with additional representation there for 'locals' to that nation's foundation. I do not support any move of that type unless we do it carefully so as to completely eliminate any possibility of a "split" or "break" 20 years in the future.
Jimmy, you will never be able to fully avoid this - all Wikipedia texts are GNU FDL. Worst case scenario: There might be quarrels in the future between the contributors from different countries, the majority of contributors of one country decides to set up it's own server. If they want to do so, this just will happen, and the foundation will not be asked. The only thing you are and should be able to avoid in such a situation is that such a spit-off-Wikipedia/media uses the name Wikipedia/Wikimedia.
But even if you can avoid that, if a community parting away from Wikipedia would be large enough (a big majority, for whatever reasons), that language Wikipedia could close, because the "new" Wiki-whatevernameenzyklopaedia would be the one attracting all the contributors from that particular country.
Again, we are not wanting, planning, or considering such a split. That is exactly WHY we want to use the name Wikimedia. If we don't use it, THEN the first step towards such a split would be done, because then you have two organizations with different names doing the same thing (supporting projects like Wikipedia) - that's already a symbolic split, even if one is sending money to the other. The conequence will be, that it will be harder to send money, if there is no band between the organizations, at least by the name. That will be a psychological issue for the members, and also probably a technical issue concerning the tax exemption status. That's the next step. And so on.
Actually, this is far more dangerous for the future than what we are trying to bring into life right now: An organization named Wikimedia also, having "supporting free content in general and the US Wikimedia Foundation in particular" as goal in it's bylaws, being run by Wikipedians, but legally independent from the foundation for a number of good reasons.
We should find out if there is a way to use a *licensed* Wikimedia name as name of an association. Probably that's not possible. But also I don't think it's necessary. In your worst case scenario, sueing the foundation from France is unlikely to happen, because the foundation is using the Wikimedia name longer. To further reduce the possibility of that situation, probably a paper can be signed by the country organizations stating that they are aware that they might use the Wikimedia name only as long as "approved" by the Wikimedia foundation. Then, in the worst case of a split-off, you have good changes to make the split-off organization change it's name. As stated above, there is no way to hinder such a split-off in general.
I doubt there is any legal way to have a foundation subsidiary here in Germany that is under german law (important for tax exemption and so on), open for german members but still completely controlled by the foundation. The highest board of every german e.V (and also of a german foundation) are democratic institutions, so everything is controlled by the members. If you want to open the organization for other members than the foundation (and you need at least 7 members for an e.V), you *must* give up control. I think that will hold true for every EU country, not just for Germany.
If you want to keep control, the only thing you could do is to found something which is *not* open for german (or any other country) Wikipedians to join (having a closed foundation under german law). That's not what we intend, and for the reasons already mentioned, I doubt that you will find people willing to run such a foundation). We want to have an open community which acts bottom-up and not top-down. If that's not what you want, please say it, because then we know we must go ahead, choose another name and take the first step towards that split we all don't want.
Uli