Anyone? any ideas on what to say about the benefits and philosophy behind licensing our material as free use would be helpful. I'm thinking of how content can be reused in different formats (e.g. cd-rom, print, ...) and redistributed to places with limited internet access. Other ideas? Regards, -Aude ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> Date: Apr 9, 2007 3:24 PM Subject: Innovative (re)uses of Wikipedia content To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> What innovative (re)uses of Wikipedia or Wikimedia content are out there? I have looked through the Mirrors and forks page, but nothing jumps out at me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks Also, what potential innovated uses of content might there be? I'm seeking permission to license images I have of NHL trophies under GFDL or compatible license. I'd like to give them examples or explanation of positive benefits of such licensing and reuse of content and the philosophy behind it. Regards, -Aude -- Aude

http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/education-cd.htm http://www.schoolnet.na/ Schoolnet Namibia is making Wikipedia content available on thin client PCs http://www.widernet.org/digitallibrary/ includes Wikipedia content http://mobiled.uiah.fi/ provides mobile access to spoken (!) Wikipedia content, piloted in African schools OLPC (already mentioned) wants to involve kids in the editing process as well. There's a bunch of data mining projects which make use of Wikipedia's huge text corpus. No time for a more detailed response .. but briefly, by becoming part of the commons, resources can and do spread freely even into regions that don't have Internet coverage. Innovators, in the non-profit or the for-profit sector, can experiment freely with new ways to disseminate and derive knowledge. Sandy, our Communications Director (in CC), is working on a press kit that includes these and other use cases -- you may want to get in touch with her to share info. On 4/9/07, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

Sorry for the late reply on this one; I'm just back from vacation. Aude wrote: One interesting one is freebase.com. (Disclaimer; I have pals who work there, and have done some work for them myself.) They are calling themselves a "data commons", and are importing information from a number of open sources and turning it into API-friendly structured data. Unfortunately it's in private beta right now, but I have a couple of spare invitations for people who are likely to be either active contributors or active API users and would give them good feedback. Part of the magic of an open content license is that you don't know quite what people will do with this. The Wikipedia-on-DVD and the One Laptop Per Child projects are great examples of how your info might be used for public benefit. With Freebase, the notion is that people will be able to easily build data-driven sites. So for example some hockey fan might build per-team discussion areas or some cute fan game using the open content. Perhaps it would end up in a kiosk at a hockey museum. Hoping that helps, William -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri