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

[Kelly Martin]

On 4/18/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The user database is something that should be freed if possible. Not
> the passwords to WMF - but the fact that it's what credits
> contributions to their creator. Proprietising this and using it as
> leverage in blessing a chosen successor fork in case of disaster
> strikes me as a bad thing - can people only prove they wrote something
> if they choose the right fork to work with?

Preserving the ability of the projects to move forward in the event
the WMF stops hosting them is important, but is fundamentally a
community issue, not a Foundation issue.  The Foundation needs to deal
with preserving its own ability to function and operate as a hosting
service.

I think the communities should demand that the Foundation place the
domain names and trademarks into a perpetual trust, precisely to
ensure that the WMF's failure as a going concern will not destroy
those communities by the loss of access to their domain names.  Losing
the domain name is far worse than losing the user databases (we can
move past that, everyone just creates a new user identity) or even the
content databases (there are scads of redundant copies out there).
The domain name is unique and irretrievable.

Kelly