Chad Perrin a écrit:
Anthere wrote:
Christopher Mahan a écrit:
--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
On the other hand, if other organisations are the legal editors, how can we somehow get a benefit over the content distributed ? Or should we get a benefit ?
Our benefit is that the information will be made available to people who do not have it today. That is a great benefit, and probably the most important reason for the Wikipedia's existence.
Chris Mahan
Nod.
Now, right now, MOST of the propositions we hear about are from commercial organisations, who want to make *cash* on the CD rom. Right ?
Nothing wrong with this...
But that means readers must pay for the cd rom...
Are those who need more information... those who can pay for the cd rom ? Or those who can not ?
Here's an idea:
Nonprofit organization, talks to a commercial organization, gets a massive discount (80-90% off, maybe) on those $10 CD-recorded encyclopediae. Uses donations to fund its efforts. Buys CD-media copies at the discounted rate. Avoids taxes due to nonprofit status. Distributes to those in need of the material without the ability to get it themselves.
Voila: outside entit(y/ies) deal(s) with the issue. I'm not saying that's the only way to handle it, but it's "so crazy it just might work". While it seems odd to suggest buying back its own content, it's even possible that WMF might do the media-buying-and-distributing itself for third-world distribution.
Then, of course, the major problem becomes how to get the same knowledge into the hands of those without eletricity.
There's no reason I can see why for-profit packaging of Wikipedia can't be leveraged for non-profit distribution. The fact that someone is repackaging the collected knowledge for the purpose of making a buck doesn't necessitate all that work being lost to the nonprofit purposes of the original project.
I agree with you.
Ant