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.

[GlassBeadGame]

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.

Of course the cost would be determined by a buyer and seller. The second part is interesting. It might be possible to determine the value of a charity as some multiple of annual donations like you could do with for-profit revenues but I have never heard of this. Often an important asset of a non-profit is a donor list. With WMF this is less important because they seem to just throw up ads and people respond. It is not clear that if people would respond at the same level if a new management made the solicitation. Also this asset would be zeroed-out if a for-profit owned Wikipedia.

In general there is not the kind of active market for non-profits as in the for-profit sector.