[Wikipedia-l] Why the free encyclopedia movement needs to be more like the free software movement

Tue Sep 3 15:18:04 UTC 2002

I agree with only parts of Larry's post.

Larry Sanger wrote:
> The free software movement is organized and led by world-class
> computer scientists associated with industry and academia.

This is not really true.  Linus Torvald's was an unknown nobody when
he started.  Current major projects like KDE and Gnome are led by
young upstarts.  Most of the leading lights in free software are
leading lights because of talent and willingness to work -- most are
_not_ "world-class computer scientists".

The "world-class computer scientists" work at Microsoft -- and turn
out a mixed-quality product.  Or they work in Universities, doing
valuable and original research.  But they don't devote a lot of time
to writing and releasing free software -- and nobody misses them.

I think this is very important to understand: credentialism is a
killer for volunteer projects.  A hostility to credentials is possibly
worse, but we are in no danger of that.  But a hostility to
enthusiastic amateurs (in the postive traditional sense of that term)
is death to a volunteer project.  If that keeps the credentialed away,
then so be it.

Would it be nice if real experts came to a free encyclopedia project
in droves?  Yes, of course.  It is likely?  No more likely than it is
in the case of Linux and the free software movement, which is to say:
not likely at all.

The wikipedia model *is* significantly different from the model of
most free software projects, for a lot of the reasons that Larry
mentions.  And it is possible that a less "open" model will be useful
soon, using Wikipedia articles as a base.

--Jimbo