[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia more popular than Britannica!

Tue Aug 5 16:19:20 UTC 2003

On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > This kind of situation does not lend itself very well to waiting until 
> > we have the cash.  Encarta has a bit of an advantage in that department. 
> > A purchase offer of $1.00 may be more appropriate if it's presented as 
> > an offer which Safra's estate can't refuse.
> > 
> > For interesting background reading see 
> > http://www.businessweek.com/1997/42/b3549124.htm and 
> > http://www.jewishsf.com/bk991210/obsafra.shtml
> > 
> > Our offer also needs to maintain Wikipedia's philosophical integrity.
> 
> It's a shame that Safra has died, because presumably his estate will
> have fiduciary responsibilities that would preclude any sort of OS
> gift to the world.  Safra might have been persuadable, from the point
> of view of charity, but his heirs, it's hard to predict.

Since I've only just heard of these people, I may be getting this wrong,
but it seems from what I've been reading that there are two different
Safras being discussed here. The chap who died in the fire was Edmond
Jacob Safra (August 6, 1931 or 1932 - December 3, 1999), while the chap
who bought the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is his nephew Jacob Safra (born
c. 1950), who as far as I can tell is still alive...

References:

The above two pages, and these ones:
* http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=367708
* http://www.adamdavidson.com/tencyc.html

Who wants to volunteer to do some more research and write biographical
articles for these people for the Wikipedia? :)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+