Erik Moeller wrote:
Wales says he is already talking with some of
the larger search
engine players about licensing specific portions of the Wikipedia
knowledge base
This must be a misunderstanding. Jimbo or the Wikimedia Foundation do not
have particular rights to the content, it is freely licensed to the
general public under the GNU Free Documentation License by the authors.
You're right, Erik, but the line you quote in the article is
technically correct, too. The way the article is written, it sounds
like these search engine players would have to execute some special
license agreement with us, which is of course not true.
But I have talked to them about using our content. It's a funny kind
of sales job -- "here's our stuff, use it, it's free!" And the
"specific portions" is that someone at Yahoo asked me about using our
movie star biographies, and I said "Sure, fine" and suggested that
they donate money as well, a suggestion which was received with
enthusiasm. No results yet, but big companies move very slowly... :-)
Another side effect is that if, for some reason, Jimbo
would lose interest
in Wikipedia, or try to do something with it that the community does not
support, we could just take the content somewhere else and continue
working on it there. The project can, by virtue of its license, never die;
it will always reincarnate.
Absolutely, and this is essential. Volunteers volunteer because what
we are doing is nonproprietary. Just being a nonprofit is not enough.
--Jimbo