Toolserver:Toolserver Working Group/Jurisdiction

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AT has proposed that we engage a firm of international lawyers to advise us where the ideal jurisdiction should be.

Candidates include:

• Florida - as it is the jurisdiction of the WMF
• California - as it is the location of the WMF's office
• Germany - location of current owner, WMDE
• Netherlands - location of current servers
• Switzerland - common location for global HQs
• New Hampshire - common location for global companies and benefits from having broadly the same libel/copyright laws as the Wikimedia projects
• England - widely used, low cost and very convenient system of incorporation
• any other jurisdiction recommended by our lawyers

Criteria include:

• General legal issues and bureaucracy:
  • time to incorporate
  • cost of constitution
  • bureaucratic burden
  • running costs
  • taxes to be paid by the entity
  • taxes to be paid by the chapters (e.g. VAT-like taxes)
  • possible forms of legal entities (charity ?)
• Specific legal issues related to our goals
  • compatibility between local law and our goals for the TA.
  • vulnerability to libel laws, given the interactions with Wikipedia
  • copyright laws
• Constraints linked to the existing setup
  • closeness to NL (where toolserver is physically located) and DE (where governance is currently)
  • May be useful to have a TSA member in the jurisdiction to help set it up
• flexibility
• any other things the lawyers think may be particularly relevant