On 29 Nov 2005, at 01:19, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
How could you accuse me of rewriting history when you admit yourself that you're not sure. Check the WP article. "Bomis is most notable for creating the online encyclopedia project Nupedia, and hiring Larry Sanger to manage it. During the early stages of this project, Sanger began the development of Wikipedia, which was originally intended as a sub-project and drafting platform for the more formally organized Nupedia. However, Wikipedia, with its much lower barrier to entry, rapidly outgrew its "parent", and soon became far larger than the main business of Bomis itself."
You could say ads and porn didn't fund Wikipedia *directly*, because Wikipedia itself didn't contain ads and porn. But Bomis did, and Bomis provided pretty much the sole funding for Wikipedia in the beginning. Wikipedia was a sub-project of Nupedia, which was a project of Bomis.
Also, from the [[Wikipedia]] article, "Nupedia was founded on 9 March 2000 under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a Web portal company." And "Funded by Bomis, there were initial plans to recoup its investment by the use of advertisements."
Either the Wikipedia article(s) are wrong as well as my memory, in which case Jimbo should speak up and clarify so we can rewrite it, or my recollection of history is much more accurate than yours.
Sorry, yes I should have checked first. Apologies. Was based on my memory. I am not quite convinced by the article though, based on what Jimbo has said. He has always said that he personally paid for Nupedia (the sum of $250000 springs to mind); however as Bomis basically is Jimbo this is rather vague. Jimbo says Bomis never made large amounts of money (or lost it), and that he made his money before that. I think the article could be made more precise.
WP clearly was owned by Bomis. Its not that important, although as a footnote in the history of the web we should be the first to get it right.
Justinc