11 ms·

As a 501(c)(3), it would be illegal for the Wikimedia Foundation to be purchased by any of the tech-giants -- or any other for-profit company, for that matter.

As a 501(c)(3), it would be illegal for the Wikimedia Foundation to be purchased by any of the tech-giants -- or any other for-profit company, for that matter. In addition, all the content is under freely available licenses. The most realistic but still bleak scenario I can think of is Wikipedia becoming infested with ads. Anything more extreme, we'd see a fork become popular.

rileymat2 7y ago
In a financial crunch, they would not sell the organization, but the assets to pay debt? Wouldn’t that be legal?
- qtplatypus 7y ago
  What assets does it have?
  - emerongi 7y ago
    16B monthly pageviews
    - jaredklewis 7y ago
      I think the word asset is being used in a particular sense here. Page views are not liquid or transferable.
      - lwf 7y ago
        Technically, they could sell the domain & the new owner could maintain the site as-is, but I really don't think that'd happen. The WMF is mission-driven. A large swath of their funds are spent as grants to other organisations, and they could par that back without affecting their ability to operate. [disc: Wikipedian since 2004, many friends who are WMF employees]
        zentiggr 7y ago
        > they could par that back without affecting their ability to operate Sure, but can they? Seems like an ever expanding cash sink, according to those financials...
      - emerongi 7y ago
        Page views are most definitely transferable. Why do you think Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1B? I guess more concretely, the wikipedia.org domain is a very valuable asset.
  - novok 7y ago
    The ability to ask for money more insistently and for a longer period of time.
  - bencollier49 7y ago
    Wikipedia itself. The WMF could continue as an empty shell and sell its core assets. In fact, it would be forced to by law, I believe, if it was badly in debt. To clarify, Wikipedia comprises not just the stuff which is free of copyright, but primarily the userbase, community, support staff, management structures, and (configured) servers it's hosted on. There's plenty to sell there.
  - mcv 7y ago
    The domain name. Everything else is easily copied or duplicated, and indeed had been. The only thing you can't copy is the domain name. That's the thing that's worth millions of visitors.
hdhgzwhegh 7y ago
And what would sustain the fork? Every time there's talk about the potential to fork a popular web product like Facebook or other social media all that happens is the hobbyists and activists move to it while the mainstream userbase carries on.
- adventured 7y ago
  Besides, nobody can find the fork anyway. Google banishes such clones to SEO purgatory immediately, from which you are basically guaranteed to never return (especially as a pure clone). That has been true for a decade now, since the days of Stack Exchange complaining about the clones riding their CC licensed content to easy Google ranking. You can put up a perfect clone of Wikipedia, you'll get nearly zero traffic despite having millions of pages of high quality content.
  - marcthe12 7y ago
    Yep. Even the RuneScape wiki owner forked their own wiki after Wikia became malicious in terms of ads. It even supported by RuneScape devs themselves. And even then, the original Wikia wiki is still competing on Google SEO after a full year. And this was a real niche. Imagine a big website.
  - onei 7y ago
    It's true that if you create a perfect fork that search engines will punish you and not even display the results, but that's not to say you can't change that. If the edit-base of a wiki moves with the fork (and this is essential), you can continue to create new content that search engines will index. If you also go back and make tweaks to existing pages, you won't get penalised. It's not a quick process, nor is it simple, but it's possible for a fork can survive, grow and even move above the original.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      If Google et all detect too much cloned content on a domain, its essentially rank banned forever, for any pages whatsoever. Having a few different pages isn't going to help.
yspeak 7y ago
"A for-profit cannot own a nonprofit because a nonprofit has no owners. However, a for-profit can set up a structure in which it effectively has control over the nonprofit, subject to applicable laws, including those regarding private inurement, private benefit, and corporate self-dealing. Such control structures are perhaps best known between big for-profit companies and their corporate foundations and also between big financial services companies and their donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsoring organizations." http://www.nonprofitlawblog.com/can-a-nonprofit-own-a-for-profit-can-a-for-profit-own-a-nonprofit/ http://www.nonprofitlawblog.com/can-a-nonprofit-own-a-for-pr...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Iv 7y ago
Selling the .org registry by that criterion was illegal as well. Laws that are not enforced are just words written on paper.
- dlkf 7y ago
  "Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all."
cm2187 7y ago
Ads and tracking. What you read on wikipedia reveals a lot more about your centres of interest, political opinion and concerns than any commercial website.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>As a 501(c)(3), it would be illegal for the Wikimedia Foundation to be purchased by any of the tech-giants Query google "can a non profit go for profit" Result 1: How to Convert Nonprofit to Profit >Notify the IRS by writing a "statement of nonprofit conversion" Query google "statement of nonprofit conversion" Result 1: PDF titled "Voluntarily Relinquishing of Tax Exempt Status" - PDF WARNING https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopick85.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopick85.pdf So I'm doubting it is illegal, worst case they convert to a for-profit and sell in this scenario.
elect_engineer 7y ago
Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer". See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... The WMF has no plans to sell out to a commercial outfit like Google or Facebook , but is it actually illegal for them to do so? See https://money.cnn.com/2008/01/15/smbusiness/non_profit_sale.fsb/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2008/01/15/smbusiness/non_profit_sale.... While it can be difficult to sell a nonprofit like Wikipedia to someone like Google or Facebook, it isn't impossible. There are two ways that the commercial entity could get a court to agree with the sale and both of them start with the WMF screwing up so badly that they run out of money and need to either sell of shut down. We are nowhere near that, but it could happen in the future. I have talked this over with people who appear to know the law on this, but I am an engineer, not a lawyer. If a real lawyer replies, please ignore me and listen to them. There are a couple of things the commercial entity could do to make it more likely to get approval from a court. They could simply say that they are abandoning all of the federal and state tax exemptions that a nonprofit enjoys. The easy way to do this would be for the wikipedia.org domain to announce the end of wikipedia and tell everyone that they have accounts with the same usernames and passwords on the new wikipedia.google.com site which runs the exact same software and has the exact same content as the now-frozen wikipedia.com version. Add the usual "we don't plan on changing anything; we just want to save the now-failed wikipedia" language. Or they could create a new, independent nonprofit with the same rules as the WMF has now but with funding by a generous donation from Google and fork the content as above. As above, the key to making this work is the existing Wikipedia running out of money and shutting down. So, while it isn't going to happen any time soon, it isn't actually illegal.
- ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
  What can an every-person do to help keep Wikipedia free and open? Thank you for the essay btw.
  - wikipedian2 7y ago
    Donate time, not money. Contribute as a volunteer.
slightwinder 7y ago
Just create a dummy-non-profit-company which operates under command of the profit-company. Buy WMF and sellout relevant parts to the profit-company or transform WMF into a profit-orientated organization for the sake of surviving. The could sell ads, but also edit-permission to articles or cleaning of content, usage of licensed content, user-data, or a gazillion other things which are for the average user harmless in the beginning. Heck, I could see stupid influencers paying $100 for getting their own wikipedia-entry.
VvR-Ox 7y ago
When did wealthy people care for this? Wealth means you can buy nearly anything and that includes people who found a non-profit so one can use them to get to entities like WMF. The scariest scenario in my opinion is their growing influence on the power of definition. Like news organizations led by wealthy entities the WMF could just be slightly tuned to spread their alternative truth. I think this power of defining truth is one of the major battlefields of the 21st century. Look at the annexation of Crimea for example. Was it an annexation or not? For us (people of the West) it seems quite clear but ask people from Russia and a lot of them will tell you another story.
- zjavkss 7y ago
  “ The scariest scenario in my opinion is their growing influence on the power of definition.” Yup. This is the best definition of Orwellian.
- ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
  "I think this power of defining truth is one of the major battlefields of the 21st century." - That's a really interesting idea. Isn't truth truth by its definition?
  - Spellman 7y ago
    Well, depends on how you define "truth." For example, here's an easy one, pi=3.14159 (if rounded to 5 decimal places). Great! I think we all agree this is true. The trouble is without context, this is trivia. Here is a harder one as we move up the complexity scale. Is Human-driven climate change both 1) real and 2) something we can reasonably combat? Well, the scientists who study it seem to think it's real and there are ways humankind can reasonably push back against it. But there are many, many who believe differently. Which stance is "true"? Even harder. Is there a God? I mean, from a philosophical view. Sure by scientific definitions we have to assume there is no measurable supernatural. But does that preclude it's existence? For a significant number of people, G-d of some sort exists. And which is the "truth"???? I'm not soliciting hard answers, just trying to show that as you move to more complex, and in many respects more important, topics of today the notion that there is one singular truth in existence gets fuzzier.

rileymat2 7y ago

In a financial crunch, they would not sell the organization, but the assets to pay debt? Wouldn’t that be legal?

qtplatypus 7y ago
What assets does it have?
- emerongi 7y ago
  16B monthly pageviews
  - jaredklewis 7y ago
    I think the word asset is being used in a particular sense here. Page views are not liquid or transferable.
    - lwf 7y ago
      Technically, they could sell the domain & the new owner could maintain the site as-is, but I really don't think that'd happen. The WMF is mission-driven. A large swath of their funds are spent as grants to other organisations, and they could par that back without affecting their ability to operate. [disc: Wikipedian since 2004, many friends who are WMF employees]
      - zentiggr 7y ago
        > they could par that back without affecting their ability to operate Sure, but can they? Seems like an ever expanding cash sink, according to those financials...
    - emerongi 7y ago
      Page views are most definitely transferable. Why do you think Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1B? I guess more concretely, the wikipedia.org domain is a very valuable asset.
- novok 7y ago
  The ability to ask for money more insistently and for a longer period of time.
- bencollier49 7y ago
  Wikipedia itself. The WMF could continue as an empty shell and sell its core assets. In fact, it would be forced to by law, I believe, if it was badly in debt. To clarify, Wikipedia comprises not just the stuff which is free of copyright, but primarily the userbase, community, support staff, management structures, and (configured) servers it's hosted on. There's plenty to sell there.
- mcv 7y ago
  The domain name. Everything else is easily copied or duplicated, and indeed had been. The only thing you can't copy is the domain name. That's the thing that's worth millions of visitors.

hdhgzwhegh 7y ago

And what would sustain the fork? Every time there's talk about the potential to fork a popular web product like Facebook or other social media all that happens is the hobbyists and activists move to it while the mainstream userbase carries on.

adventured 7y ago
Besides, nobody can find the fork anyway. Google banishes such clones to SEO purgatory immediately, from which you are basically guaranteed to never return (especially as a pure clone). That has been true for a decade now, since the days of Stack Exchange complaining about the clones riding their CC licensed content to easy Google ranking. You can put up a perfect clone of Wikipedia, you'll get nearly zero traffic despite having millions of pages of high quality content.
- marcthe12 7y ago
  Yep. Even the RuneScape wiki owner forked their own wiki after Wikia became malicious in terms of ads. It even supported by RuneScape devs themselves. And even then, the original Wikia wiki is still competing on Google SEO after a full year. And this was a real niche. Imagine a big website.
- onei 7y ago
  It's true that if you create a perfect fork that search engines will punish you and not even display the results, but that's not to say you can't change that. If the edit-base of a wiki moves with the fork (and this is essential), you can continue to create new content that search engines will index. If you also go back and make tweaks to existing pages, you won't get penalised. It's not a quick process, nor is it simple, but it's possible for a fork can survive, grow and even move above the original.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    If Google et all detect too much cloned content on a domain, its essentially rank banned forever, for any pages whatsoever. Having a few different pages isn't going to help.

yspeak 7y ago

"A for-profit cannot own a nonprofit because a nonprofit has no owners. However, a for-profit can set up a structure in which it effectively has control over the nonprofit, subject to applicable laws, including those regarding private inurement, private benefit, and corporate self-dealing. Such control structures are perhaps best known between big for-profit companies and their corporate foundations and also between big financial services companies and their donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsoring organizations." http://www.nonprofitlawblog.com/can-a-nonprofit-own-a-for-profit-can-a-for-profit-own-a-nonprofit/ http://www.nonprofitlawblog.com/can-a-nonprofit-own-a-for-pr...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Iv 7y ago

Selling the .org registry by that criterion was illegal as well. Laws that are not enforced are just words written on paper.

dlkf 7y ago
"Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all."

cm2187 7y ago

Ads and tracking. What you read on wikipedia reveals a lot more about your centres of interest, political opinion and concerns than any commercial website.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>As a 501(c)(3), it would be illegal for the Wikimedia Foundation to be purchased by any of the tech-giants Query google "can a non profit go for profit" Result 1: How to Convert Nonprofit to Profit >Notify the IRS by writing a "statement of nonprofit conversion" Query google "statement of nonprofit conversion" Result 1: PDF titled "Voluntarily Relinquishing of Tax Exempt Status" - PDF WARNING https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopick85.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopick85.pdf So I'm doubting it is illegal, worst case they convert to a for-profit and sell in this scenario.

elect_engineer 7y ago

Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer". See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... The WMF has no plans to sell out to a commercial outfit like Google or Facebook , but is it actually illegal for them to do so? See https://money.cnn.com/2008/01/15/smbusiness/non_profit_sale.fsb/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2008/01/15/smbusiness/non_profit_sale.... While it can be difficult to sell a nonprofit like Wikipedia to someone like Google or Facebook, it isn't impossible. There are two ways that the commercial entity could get a court to agree with the sale and both of them start with the WMF screwing up so badly that they run out of money and need to either sell of shut down. We are nowhere near that, but it could happen in the future. I have talked this over with people who appear to know the law on this, but I am an engineer, not a lawyer. If a real lawyer replies, please ignore me and listen to them. There are a couple of things the commercial entity could do to make it more likely to get approval from a court. They could simply say that they are abandoning all of the federal and state tax exemptions that a nonprofit enjoys. The easy way to do this would be for the wikipedia.org domain to announce the end of wikipedia and tell everyone that they have accounts with the same usernames and passwords on the new wikipedia.google.com site which runs the exact same software and has the exact same content as the now-frozen wikipedia.com version. Add the usual "we don't plan on changing anything; we just want to save the now-failed wikipedia" language. Or they could create a new, independent nonprofit with the same rules as the WMF has now but with funding by a generous donation from Google and fork the content as above. As above, the key to making this work is the existing Wikipedia running out of money and shutting down. So, while it isn't going to happen any time soon, it isn't actually illegal.

ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
What can an every-person do to help keep Wikipedia free and open? Thank you for the essay btw.
- wikipedian2 7y ago
  Donate time, not money. Contribute as a volunteer.

slightwinder 7y ago

Just create a dummy-non-profit-company which operates under command of the profit-company. Buy WMF and sellout relevant parts to the profit-company or transform WMF into a profit-orientated organization for the sake of surviving. The could sell ads, but also edit-permission to articles or cleaning of content, usage of licensed content, user-data, or a gazillion other things which are for the average user harmless in the beginning. Heck, I could see stupid influencers paying $100 for getting their own wikipedia-entry.

VvR-Ox 7y ago

When did wealthy people care for this? Wealth means you can buy nearly anything and that includes people who found a non-profit so one can use them to get to entities like WMF. The scariest scenario in my opinion is their growing influence on the power of definition. Like news organizations led by wealthy entities the WMF could just be slightly tuned to spread their alternative truth. I think this power of defining truth is one of the major battlefields of the 21st century. Look at the annexation of Crimea for example. Was it an annexation or not? For us (people of the West) it seems quite clear but ask people from Russia and a lot of them will tell you another story.

zjavkss 7y ago
“ The scariest scenario in my opinion is their growing influence on the power of definition.” Yup. This is the best definition of Orwellian.
ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
"I think this power of defining truth is one of the major battlefields of the 21st century." - That's a really interesting idea. Isn't truth truth by its definition?
- Spellman 7y ago
  Well, depends on how you define "truth." For example, here's an easy one, pi=3.14159 (if rounded to 5 decimal places). Great! I think we all agree this is true. The trouble is without context, this is trivia. Here is a harder one as we move up the complexity scale. Is Human-driven climate change both 1) real and 2) something we can reasonably combat? Well, the scientists who study it seem to think it's real and there are ways humankind can reasonably push back against it. But there are many, many who believe differently. Which stance is "true"? Even harder. Is there a God? I mean, from a philosophical view. Sure by scientific definitions we have to assume there is no measurable supernatural. But does that preclude it's existence? For a significant number of people, G-d of some sort exists. And which is the "truth"???? I'm not soliciting hard answers, just trying to show that as you move to more complex, and in many respects more important, topics of today the notion that there is one singular truth in existence gets fuzzier.