On 5/5/07, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
I think it would be confusing to use wikipedia.com for this since the distinction is non-obvious to pretty much any non-geek. It is simply too fine a distinction.
However, A long time ago, I had the same idea for the use of the Nupedia.com domain. If that were done by a spin-off of Wikimedia (let's call it Nupedia Publishing for the sake of conversion), then they could use that revenue to fund a printed/DVD version for sale and donate money back into Wikimedia. The relationship would be symbiotic and not dissimilar to the relationship between Linux distros and the Linux development community.
Having a separate legal entity for publishing helps the Foundation avoid a lot of potential legal liability and keeps our goal on content production/improvement and the methods of dissemination that directly support content production/improvement (e.g. wikis on the Internet). Of course, IANAL.
The odds of any such company being able to compete effectivly with answers.com and the like are minimal.