[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?

Mon Jun 26 03:42:11 UTC 2006

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 01:07:40PM +0200, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> 
> To continue the ongoing board development conversation....
> 
> The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the
> core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of
> what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we
> might want to approach.
> 
> Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
> 
> Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF, and
> extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits
> Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our
> community model)
> 
> Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
> 
> Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
> 
> Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!

Just to throw in my two cents -  I'd go for Larry Lessig over the others.
I've seen several of his talks and he seems to 'get' the point behind 
fair use in conjunction w/copyright law in both ideological and practical 
perspectives.

He also is better known than most of the others on your list, with the exception
of Richard Stallman, who tends to IMO be divisive and pedantic in a way that Larry 
is not. He also brings a lot of pragmatic legal expertise to the table. He would 
also be an engaging proponent for Wikipedia in general.

Again, just my IMO,

Ed