[Foundation-l] what do we do in the event the Foundation fails? - Re: Pol...

[Kelly Martin]

On 4/18/07, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/19/07, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > The assets are not the content. They are the servers, the logos, the
> > trademarks, and the name. That would be lost. That is what people  recognize.
>
> Allow me to strongly disagree. The financial assets are the trademarks
> and the name. Technical assets are the servers. But all of these are
> worth nothing if there is no content, and more important, no
> volunteers to continue carrying out the work.
>
> Not to mention that in the evenutality we're talking about, ie. the
> Foundation is sued, those assets you are mentionning would be... moot.

You can disagree all you want; you will still be wrong.

The Foundation's most valuable asset is the domain name wikipedia.org.
 That domain name alone is worth millions, possibly billions, of
dollars.  All other assets owned by the Wikimedia Foundation pale in
comparison.  Honestly, if you handed me the domain "wikipedia.org"
tonight, I could make myself $100 million by the end of the year by
turning it into an adfarm with no content at all.  The domain would be
worthless at the end of that time, but in the meantime I would make a
ton of money.

If the Foundation is sued, even sued into oblivion, that domain name
will continue to be valuable.  Its value will decline with time once
the content is stripped, but it'll still be worth a great deal of
money.  It makes sense to take steps to protect it.

The content hosted by the Foundation is legally worthless.

Kelly