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

[Anthony]

On 4/19/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 4/19/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > Instead of that being a risk, I think it could be a successful
> > strategy. Lose it, drop it. Shake off all this hype that currently
> > surrounds Wikipedia. We could get away from discussing money and
> > lawyers and instead we could focus on how to write a better
> > encyclopedia.
>
> Not a terrible idea - let's put Wikipedia's brand & domain on eBay and
> use the money for some serious innovation. ;-) Unfortunately, the hype
> about doing such a ridiculous thing would be so great that we'd be
> faced with the same growing pains a few months down the line ...
>
At which point you have a new brand and domain name to sell :).

But that leads me to the realization of just how ridiculous this is.
If the WMF's assets are worth "hundreds of millions or billions" of
dollars, it's not going be liquidated over a single lawsuit.  So that
worst case scenario becomes that the domain name and trademarks get
sold, the lawsuit gets paid, and the WMF has hundreds of millions or
billions of dollars minus a few million to create its own successor
organization.

Not to mention that the case would be appealed so many times that the
transition could be begun months or years before the domain name was
sold.

I'm not convinced that playing legal games setting up trusts is at all
necessary or appropriate.

Anthony