On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 10:20:27AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.
Suppose the next political protest we're asked to participate in is pro-war? Or anti-war? Or whatever. Taking sides is something that all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.
Well, software patents may be dangerous to Wikipedia as a project. We could have become target of legal action by Unisys, or Fraunhofer, or somebody else with weird patent. Maybe they'll patent wiki ? Or hyperlinks ?