[Wikimedia-l] Resignation announcement, and a parting remark to everyone

[Nathan]

Florence - my comments followed Erlend's in the thread, where he
suggested sending resources around the world without regard to which
chapters were the most developed. Outside of the paragraph where I
referred to WMKH specifically, my comments were not directed at it.

In any case, it's fictional from a legal perspective that the funds
belong to the movement and not the WMF. Whoever they feel obligated to
serve, the trustees of the WMF retain all of the duties and
obligations to disburse the money in the way most congruent with the
articles of the WMF and the laws of Florida, California and the United
States. I'm sure you know this as well or better than most.

Finally, you're of course right that the WMF in its early days was lax
in many respects - mostly predictable ways for a new organization
without a good model. On the other hand, it was lax with money it
raised itself. As a result, its duties were to the law and to itself,
not to another large organization with its own duties.

To repeat my earlier point, any chapter has the full capacity to raise
its own funds. A self-funded chapter is a good analog to the WMF; it
can grow at its own pace, and only has to assure the movement that it
is not misusing the trademarks or acting in a way to bring the
movement into disrepute. The obsessive focus with greater and greater
funding of chapters is misplaced; between a smaller overall budget for
the entire movement, and a global effort to hire wildly decentralized
administrative staff, I would choose the former.