[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales in the news

[Michael Snow]

Nathan wrote:
> Uh... If Wikipedia were a for-profit, but with a designated mission (the
> same as the non-profit, in similarity to the Mozilla for-profit co) my guess
> is that it would be worth more than Facebook, to start (~15 billion). Unless
> there was a rebellion ongoing that forced Jimmy to make it a non-profit,
> then he was free to not do so and keep on as things were going. You could
> pretty conservatively monetize Wikipedia through ads and other means, and I
> think ~15 billion is a low-end estimate.
>   
Not that I think it important what Wikipedia would be worth as a 
for-profit, but it's pretty meaningless to base the analysis on a value 
that hasn't been demonstrated in public trading or through an outright 
sale. It's extrapolating from extrapolations, as it were, and the margin 
for error is like pointing your telescope to see a distant galaxy, but 
being off by a few inches on the ground.

--Michael Snow