[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com]

On Aug 9, 2011, at 12:51 AM, "Yaroslav M. Blanter" <putevod at mccme.ru> wrote:

>> Nor does off-wiki collaboration require that a formal entity be in
>> existence.  Off-wiki activities -- whether social meetups or more formal
>> outreach efforts to GLAM institutions and elsewhere -- are no less
>> effective
>> for being organized by loose groups of interested participants.  So long
> as
>> there is no need to handle substantial funds -- and how much of
> Wikimedia
>> contributors' typical work requires such? -- the lack of a legally
>> constituted organization matters little.
>> 
>> But to take this one step further, let us assume -- for the sake of
>> argument
>> -- that the activities of the contributor community _do_ require the
>> existence of a dedicated legal entity in a particular jurisdiction.  One
>> could, potentially, construct a scenario where this is the case; for
>> example, someone wishes to donate a set of copyrighted works, and
> prefers
>> that an organization subject to local laws be responsible for handling
> the
>> process.  Even in this case, however, there is no requirement that the
>> legal
>> entity be a "chapter" of the Wikimedia Foundation -- or, to be more
>> precise,
>> that the entity have in place a particular sort of trademark usage
>> agreement
>> with the WMF.  I can think of no conceivable need that could be filled
> by a
>> local entity holding rights to (non-commercial!) use of Wikimedia
>> trademarks
>> but could not be filled just as well by a local entity identical in
> every
>> way save for the lack of such access to said trademarks.
>> 
> And just to add to the argument, the projects are divided by language, and
> not by jurisdiction. Whereas in many cases it may be unimportant (for
> instance, we can safely assume that most of the activbities of the Swedish
> chapter are more related to Swedish-language projects, and if there is any
> chapter which "caters" to Swedisg-language projects it is the Swedish
> chapter), this is not correct for most of the major languages (English,
> French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian ...) 
> 
> 

You are quite right about the limitations of chapters. However, I don't see how these limiting factors are addressed by instead dealing with WMF directly.  I think this is an example of "perfect being the enemy of good enough".

BirgitteSB