Encyclopedia Sales, Man. Options

[mbz1]

I'd like to ask, if Wikipedia could be sold, and if so, who'd get the money.

[Kelly Martin]

Most of Wikipedia's monetizable value is in its name, specifically the trademarked name Wikipedia and the wikipedia.org domain name. WMF may have rights to some of MediaWiki (because significant development has been done by WMF employees in the course of their duties, making their contributions works-for-hire owned by WMF) but the GPL licensure makes it difficult for them to monetize MediaWiki, and in any case MediaWiki sucks ass. The content is also not owned by WMF, but that also doesn't matter.

The WMF is free to sell off any or all of its assets for any purpose whatsoever; however, any funds it obtains in return must be used for a charitable purpose, either by WMF or by another charity. Proceeds must not inure to the benefit of any individual.

[mbz1]

Thank you for responding my question. I would like to ask how much wikimedia foundation costs, and how this amount corresponds to the amount of yearly donations.

[mbz1]

I've just found this articlethat states that the "a fair price for Wikipedia, the sixth most read site in the world, would be $ 1.2 billion...Other assessments stick to four billion."
It is very interesting, the site that during its life time made at most 200, 000 millions dollars in donations costs billions.

[GlassBeadGame]

I've just found this articlethat states that the "a fair price for Wikipedia, the sixth most read site in the world, would be $ 1.2 billion...Other assessments stick to four billion."
It is very interesting, the site that during its life time made at most 200, 000 millions dollars in donations costs billions.

Selfish narcissistic people always have a hard time understanding that when you give something away you no longer own it.

But the encyclopedia “is not for sale and not for money,” said Wales.

It is no longer for him to say. I don't think any sale is going to happen. But if the WMF B/D did I think it would be just splendid. If WMF would sell the site any give to money to the Gates Foundation to buy mosquito nets I would applaud. The 1.2 billion is probably the value of advertising based on site traffic. It is a pretty shaky figure and too high. But the value of any other site with as much traffic would be at least the order of a whole magnitude larger. Mr. Wales did figure out how to waste most of the value of a top 10 website.