On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Kim Bruning kim@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
Why? Because our mission is to make things free (as in speech). You may have heard about that ;-)
Here is WMF's mission statement:
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity." Here is the vision statement:
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. "
Just thought I'd remind people of the actual Foundation mission and vision, since technically Wikipedia itself does not have a mission statement (and perhaps someone will correct me if I'm wrong). Wikipedia however does have the purpose to be the world's largest free encyclopedia.
Commons also only
hosts actual free (as in speech) images. Because -hey- that's
their mission.
As I have always understood it Commons scope is: "Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content to all. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation."
However, I am beginning to think that Commons might have to change it's scope since "educational media" has evolved to encompass what everyone believes is every free image on earth.
-Sarah
On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 05:04:43PM -0400, Sarah Stierch wrote:
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Kim Bruning kim@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
Why? Because our mission is to make things free (as in speech). You may have heard about that ;-)
Here is WMF's mission statement:
"...under a free license..."
In general: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_as_in_speech
More specifically: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre_knowledge
even more specifically: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Content
Past which point we start analysing the actual free licenses.
Just thought I'd remind people of the actual Foundation mission and vision, since technically Wikipedia itself does not have a mission statement (and perhaps someone will correct me if I'm wrong). Wikipedia however does have the purpose to be the world's largest free encyclopedia.
In general for the movement: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Founding_principles
Specific on en.wikipedia: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
sincerely, Kim Bruning
(Incidentally, it will be very interesting to see how CC and FSF react to filtering and/or prejudicial labelling of CC and/or GFDL content.)
However, I am beginning to think that Commons might have to change it's scope since "educational media" has evolved to encompass what everyone believes is every free image on earth.
-Sarah
Not a problem if the global community wishes to support such a mission.
Frankly, I think all our projects are going to be severely limited, in comparison to full archiving of all knowledge, images, and information. That does not mean they are not going to be massive at full build out, just tiny in comparison to "all".
I think realistically only about one person in a thousand is going to pitch in with significant contributions. That remains an incredible global cooperative effort.
Fred
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org