[Foundation-l] Re: Formal request: Wikinews project

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

Michael Snow wrote:
> What I'm trying to illustrate is that in a civil action for damages, by 
> the time a substantial judgment is issued, Wikimedia as a legal entity 
> would be effectively dead anyway. Thanks to the copyleft licensing, the 
> content would already have moved to the fork that would undoubtedly 
> start, and many of the contributors would follow.

And I would be more than happy to lead the way on this.

Legal conservatism is a very good thing.  But it's important to
remember that the community is us, and the community is invincible and
unstoppable in the face of a mere lawsuit.  If some kind of bizarre
worst case scenario did occur, we can just shed the legal clothes we
were wearing, and move into another set and keep on about our
business.  So while legal conservatism is a good thing, we need not
let it stretch into legal paranoia.

All I'm saying is that in such a situation, we need not be concerned
about the death of the community itself -- this is impossible.  The
community *could* under great stress split into two in some kind of
great schism.  But I would work very hard to avoid that, and I'm
pretty confident that the vast majority of the community would very
much prefer to avoid that as well.

--Jimbo