[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

Thu Jul 20 00:23:47 UTC 2006

On 7/19/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was making the assumption (an assumption which I maintain isn't
> invalid) that having put the Wiki infrastructure in place, and having
> done a little advertising, the project would have been successful. I
> don't think Wikipedia was successful because it grew from the FLOSS
> community. It was successful because anyone could edit it (you could
> argue that this was entirely because Wikipeida grew out of the FLOSS
> community). Britannica could have been just as successful if they had
> allowed anyone to edit.
....
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)

Is this so certain, though? It seems fairly clear that Britannica
wouldn't be using copyleft licensing, but proprietary licensing of
some sort. Speaking for myself, I know I would not be contributing to
a proprietary EB wiki. A lot of the initial seed for Wikipedia (for
starting the virtuous cycle/exponential growth) seems to have been
essentially ideologically motivated, and I do not think any
significant segments of technically literate, motivated, educated and
willing-to-donate-their-time people would have tossed their lot in
with an EB wiki, except perhaps some academics.

~maru