On 1/9/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
If the source text written for free is well
referenced an hour
wouldn't be too bad. Of course, what people really seem to be missing
is that the $10 million is merely the seed money. *If* they can get
some good content created by that (even just 2000 articles would
probably do it), there should be no problem raising more money
(through donations, sales, services, etc.).
This is possible, but I think still a bit of a stretch. Apart from
starting with no articles, they have a number of disadvantages:
I'm not sure what you're comparing them to, but I'll comment on your
points as is.
* They're a commercial organization rather than a
non-profit, which
tends to make people less willing to donate and volunteer
Digital Universe Foundation is a non-profit organization incorporated
in Nevada. See for youself at
https://esos.state.nv.us/SOSServices/AnonymousAccess/CorpSearch/CorpSearch.….
There is a for-profit which runs the ISP but supposedly this is set
up in a way so that most of the profits from the for-profit go to the
non-profit. I'm not sure exactly what the arrangement is, though.
* They are known to have $10m, which makes people less
likely to donate
or work for free
Small time people, maybe, but the larger grant money which they are
probably targetting is actually more likely to donate to a company
which isn't hanging on by a thread.
For donations of time, I'm not sure I agree, but you might be right.
I think it depends more on how they spend their money than how much of
it there is, though.
* They appear to be charging for user accounts, which
will drastically
reduce the number of people who create them
I have an account and didn't pay anything. AFAIK you only have to pay
if you subscribe to the ISP.
* The end result appears to be under a murky and
possibly proprietary
license, which will not encourage people to work on it for free
Seems to me they will release *some* things under proprietary licenses
and some things under free licenses. I certainly agree it will be
tough to get people to contribute to those parts under the proprietary
licenses for free, though if it's set up right maybe not too hard
(people will donate time to proprietary non-profit projects in some
circumstances).
What's murky, it seems, is exactly what they're going to do. I'm sure
it'll be clear once they start publicizing this.
Not necessarily fatal flaws, but I'd say it's
a long-shot that they will
be a serious competitor to Wikipedia anytime in the near future.
-Mark
Well, you seem to have been misinformed on all your points. But I see
them filling a different niche from Wikipedia anyway.
I have my doubts as to whether or not DU will be successful. It's
really a matter of how well it's managed. I think the idea is a good
one, though. (I've personally watched a company I've co-founded, with
a similar idea, waste millions of dollars and go out of business,
during the dot-com days. Actually when I showed this to one of the
other co-founders he asked me if this was our old CEO, who botched the
thing up back then, trying the idea again. It isn't.)
Anthony