On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Anthere wrote:
I don't agree at all with you on this point. Even with a z and s matter, you speak the same language and understand each other. The fork had apparently nothing to do with a castillan and spanish language. The fork seemed to come from a scare upon "english imperialism".
Whatever the reason, a fork or spinoff is, in my opionion, not necessarily bad. I think it would be worse if Bomis, Inc. was the only entity in this world that has the energy to start and operate general purpose encyclopedias based on Wiki technology. Independence and ownership are strong driving forces that promote responsibility and innovation.
An analogy: Gottlieb Daimler in Germany was the first to build a useful automobile, but the Americans weren't late to "fork" that project, add the assembly line, and build their own cars. The Japanese too stole the idea, and started to compete with the Americans in their own market. Most would agree that the U.S. automotive industry has gained more than they lost from the competition from Japanese car makers. Whining about people who stole ideas and forked projects is not the way forward. Let the forking projects be, let them implement their own innovations (and then steal back their ideas!). Competition is good, we'd better learn to embrace it.
The project at the University of Sevilla is no longer "the Spanish Wikipedia", but a separate project with its own name, "Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Espanol", http://enciclopedia.us.es/ They've grown faster than any non-English Wikipedia, just like the Polish Wikipedia did during its breakout period. Some of their articles are mere templates for geographic place names, but more substance has been added lately.