Who owns Wikipedia?, I am not a lawyer Options

[Peter Damian]

I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible? Who actually owns it? What is it they actually own? Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from ? What would they be getting their hands on?

[thekohser]

I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible? Who actually owns it? What is it they actually own? Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from ? What would they be getting their hands on?

Not to be snide, but why is any of this important?

I would summarize the answers as such:

Is that possible? In business and law, anything is possible.

Who actually owns it? The Wikimedia Foundation owns the trademark to the name, while the authors of the content own the content, but they have irrevocably released the content under the terms of a free license.

What is it they actually own? The Foundation owns the trademark name "Wikipedia". The content authors own the right to forever demand that anyone who ever uses or modifies their content should do so with proper attribution and releasing the content again, in kind, under the same licensing terms. In other words, not much.

Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from ? Depends on your definition of "ton". I think an entity like Google could have the size and influence to take the content of Wikipedia, enhance it (think, Google Maps, Google Translate, etc.), polish it, and make it less vulnerable to nonsense. But that will only make significant money for Google if they were to simultaneously deprecate "Wikipedia.org" results in their search engine algorithms.

What would they be getting their hands on? Depends on whether you're talking about a Wikipedia takeover or a Wikimedia Foundation takeover. It's possible to disband a non-profit, but generally, the assets have to go to another non-profit.

Which reminds me... remember how the Omidyar Network has that squirrelly dual status of being both a for-profit and a non-profit venture capital firm? And remember who won a seat on the WMF board simultaneous to a $2 million "donation" to the Foundation?