(CCing Ilario as he has not subscribed)
Am Samstag, 11. April 2009 schrieb Ilario Valdelli:
Surely, the real problem is that WM IT has received a 50% of its 2008's incoming with the royalties of the DVD... without this new version they will lose this incoming for the following year.
I think that they are seriously looking for a new software.
Well, we are aiming to provide a "standard" for storing offline data (especially Wikipedia, but also websites in general) and so we are very much interested in having the major DVD publishers aboard with us.
This will make the data files (aka ZIM files) more convenient for the users, as they can exchange them freely and viewing them using their favourite reader. Then it will help us to spread the software as it becomes more usable, as there is more content to use it on. This ends up in getting more developers to the project and therefore being able to provide a clean and stable solution for offline Wikipedia.
Currently a lot of people are doing the same work, all of them achieving between 10 and 80% of the goal. A lot of projects are abondand, users disappointed as they have installed an application and aren't able to get new data files for it (eg. the iPhone application). With ZIM as a standard anyone can make a new ZIM file and live goes on.
As you know we're trying to get a new german DVD ready by June - bear with us! I'm pretty optimistic that we will get it done.
If WMIT decides to use ZIM I would be happy - whether they use openZIM, Kiwix or they convince the company integrating libzim - it doesn't matter. Pretty sure the project can only benefit from that and if this involves new developers it would be the best to happen for us.
Greets,
Manuel