[Wikipedia-l] Re: foundation of a German registered association

[Ulrich Fuchs]

> 2.  I fully support the creation of subsidiary foundations, to
> whatever extent is desirable, with additional representation there for
> 'locals' to that nation's foundation.  I do not support any move of
> that type unless we do it carefully so as to completely eliminate any
> possibility of a "split" or "break" 20 years in the future.

Jimmy, you will never be able to fully avoid this - all Wikipedia texts are 
GNU FDL. Worst case scenario: There might be quarrels in the future 
between the contributors from different countries, the majority of 
contributors of one country decides to set up it's own server. If they want 
to do so, this just will happen, and the foundation will not be asked. The 
only thing you are and should be able to avoid in such a situation is that 
such a spit-off-Wikipedia/media uses the name Wikipedia/Wikimedia. 

But even if you can avoid that, if a community parting away from Wikipedia 
would be large enough (a big majority, for whatever reasons), that language 
Wikipedia could close, because the "new" Wiki-whatevernameenzyklopaedia would 
be the one attracting all the contributors from that particular country. 

Again, we are not wanting, planning, or considering such a split. That is 
exactly WHY we want to use the name Wikimedia. If we don't use it, THEN the 
first step towards such a split would be done, because then you have two 
organizations with different names doing the same thing (supporting projects 
like Wikipedia) - that's already a symbolic split, even if one is sending 
money to the other. The conequence will be, that it will be harder to send 
money, if there is no band between the organizations, at least by the name. 
That will be a psychological issue for the members, and also probably a 
technical issue concerning the tax exemption status. That's the next step. 
And so on.

Actually, this is far more dangerous for the future than what we are trying 
to bring into life right now: An organization named Wikimedia also, having 
"supporting free content in general and the US Wikimedia Foundation in 
particular" as goal in it's bylaws, being run by Wikipedians, but legally 
independent from the foundation for a number of good reasons. 

We should find out if there is a way to use a *licensed* Wikimedia name as 
name of an association. Probably that's not possible. But also I don't think 
it's necessary. In your worst case scenario, sueing the foundation from 
France is unlikely to happen, because the foundation is using the Wikimedia 
name longer. To further reduce the possibility of that situation, probably a 
paper can be signed by the country organizations stating that they are aware 
that they might use the Wikimedia name only as long as "approved" by the 
Wikimedia foundation. Then, in the worst case of a split-off,  you have good 
changes to make the split-off organization change it's name. As stated above, 
there is no way to hinder such a split-off in general.

I doubt there is any legal way to have a foundation subsidiary here in Germany 
that is under german law (important for tax exemption and so on), open for 
german members but still completely controlled by the foundation. The highest 
board of every german e.V (and also of a german foundation) are democratic 
institutions, so everything is controlled by the members. If you want to open 
the organization for other members than the foundation (and you need at least 
7 members for an e.V), you *must* give up control. I think that will hold true 
for every EU country, not just for Germany.

If you want to keep control, the only thing you could do is to found something 
which is *not* open for german (or any other country) Wikipedians to join 
(having a closed foundation under german law). That's not what we intend, and 
for the reasons already mentioned, I doubt that you will find people willing 
to run such a foundation). We want to have an open community which acts 
bottom-up and not top-down. If that's not what you want, please say it, 
because then we know we must go ahead, choose another name and take the first 
step towards that split we all don't want.

Uli