Jimmy Wales of Wikimedia/Wikipedia announced on June 12, the appointment of an interim Executive Director for the foundation:

Following a long discussion, both publicly and privately, the board of the foundation voted recently to hire an interim Executive Director and legal counsel. We offered the position to Brad Patrick, and he accepted. We have discussed at length the parameters of the position, including job responsibilities, and so on. (This has been posted and discussed publicly as well.)

Who is Brad? Brad has been our pro-bono legal counsel for the past several months, has become very active in foundation matters and in the projects. He is of course a huge fan of free software, Larry Lessig, and Wikipedia, and lives and breathes this stuff. Rather than doing “merely” legal work (nothing mere about it, of course) for us, he has gotten involved in helping the board think about policy, in helping Danny deal with various “customer support” issues, etc.

This appointment has been generally well received by folks who are involved with discussions within the Wikimedia Foundation, though some have raised questions about the process of this interim appointment and the length, given the tenure of two Wikimedia Board Members who were “temporary” two years ago, but still remain today.

Some more information about Brad Patrick can be found from the Berkman Center.