There's been an on going discussion about who founded Wikipedia? Was it Jimmy Wales, or him and Larry Sanger. Light on facts, and heavy on opinion, I'd like to weigh in on that.
What was Wikipedia before Wikimedia? Accountants want it to be one of two things: Either a for profit business or a non-profit corporation. I can't say that there are any other choices. Certainly there are not any in the eyes of the IRS.
The key question is, where was the money? Sanger was getting paid by Bomis and/or Wales. (Hereafter referred to as Wales.) Where were the assets? It seems Wales held the servers, and the domain names, as he seems to have donated them to Wikimedia. These amounts though arguably small, can put a frame around what an entity is or was?
Wikipedia, financially did not exist without Wales. Much of what it was and still is, is intangible. The value of its articles and their ease of access, is not something accountants have been tracking. So while the tangible financial part was arguably relatively small compared to the intangible, it is all we have. It's all the IRS had to go on. It's probably all the lawyers had to go in. If Wikipedia had gotten sued before Wikimedia took over, who really would've gotten sued? Wales? That would be my guess.
Wikipedia before Wikimedia was a for profit business. Yes I assume things were said to the volunteers, that that wasn't the long term goal, that a non-profit status was in the works. For profit businesses have owners. Wales and/or Bomis was that owner.
Sanger has two strikes against him being a founder: I've found nothing written about his ownership interests and that he looked a lot like someone's employee.
Do you have to be an owner to found something? If the discussion is about non-profits, I'd tend to say no. Non-profits generally don't have traditional owners. But Sanger left before Wikimedia was recognized by the State of Florida as a non-profit corporation. I can only conclude he worked for a for profit business, with Wales as the employer.
Relations between employees and employers aren't always neatly defined, but usually it's the employer that has to do things like assume liability, risk their money, and be responsible for the bookkeeping.
So can an employee found a for profit business? It seems obvious that they can't. Maybe if Sanger had been promised an equity share, but I don't think he was. I realize Wikipedia before Wikimedia had a whole lot of intangible value, but at its basic level, at the level that the IRS and accountants deal with, it was a for profit business.
The legal part of this may be another issue. I understand the basics of corporations, but don't know the first thing about how Wikimedia's works are free to all? Still it seems that the value of something that is free to all, is hard to pin down. Maybe Wikimedia's value is in the way they make available this free information, and of course, the important, key valuable resource is their volunteers. Still, it's almost impossible for an accountant to put a dollar value on these things, and accountants, governments, and I'm guessing lawyers like numbers. Wikimedia's filings with the IRS do not show these intangible values, and I think that is correct.
That's what we have to work with, that and ownership. Who was responsible? Again, accountants, governments, and I'm guessing lawyers like ownership.
I understand there are lots of people that place more weight on things beyond numbers and ownership, and that Wikimedia has even changed the definition of ownership in some areas. My argument here hopefully has a good foundation because I've tried to stick to these two things that I know about.
That said, I'd welcome corrections of fact. My primary sources were, the Bomis, Larry Sanger, and Wikimedia articles on Wikipedia.
