[Foundation-l] Seeking clarification

Wed Jan 23 11:56:50 UTC 2008

On 23/01/2008, Jason Safoutin <jason.safoutin at wikinewsie.org> wrote:

> Right. The ones *not* in competition are the ones that are not the same
> projects or similar to projects of WMF Wikieducator = Wikiverity and
> Encyclopedia of Life = Wikispecies.  Those IMHO are *direct* competition
> and both of which receive an endorsement by WMF. Again, WMF needs to
> endorse and think about their projects first and foremost. Period.

Yes, but I disagree that this would entail behaving as if this is a
zero-sum game. It's not. More freely-licenced content is in everyone's
interest, and encouraging it on third-party sites is well within the
Foundation's mission statement. The reason is to make freely-licenced
content normal and expected, which it presently isn't. More
freely-licenced content is a win for the world and everyone.

In the world of software, each of the BSDs and each of the Linux
distributions are separate projects competing with each other on
merit, but there's a whole world out there they (and we) haven't
reached yet. Encouraging free content *at all* is still necessary.

- d.