On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
Nupedia isn't making any money either. In fact, Wikipedia is much closer to the point where it might (somehow) make money for Bomis (and therefore, potentially, for anyone else who wants to use the content for profit).
It is a little confusing. The FSF started Gnupedia and then they gave up and joined Nupedia. Maybe if there is a commercial problem with the expansion, bandwidth and maintainace we should either :
- move back to the FSF
- or start Wikipedia2 one way or the other
*Nod* Obviously what we don't want is a fork, nor to offend Bomis (well, not much *grin*). My guess is that Bomis has things WELL under control in the backup department and that they may never have significant financial or maintenance problems.
But, if we're just talking extreme contingency here ("What if Bomis were hit by a tonado"), it might be a good idea to have an alternate organization able to fill in until Bomis gets back on their feet. I'm not sure the FSF is the best choice; they're awfully busy with other matters. One organization that springs to mind is SEUL - Simple End User Linux - who are also hosted out of MIT. Their focus is on end user applications, science, and education, and I suspect they'd be willing to serve as a temporary backup. I'm sure there are also other organizations, too.
As long as Bomis continues to provide tarballs periodically, and as long as at least one of us downloads them each time, I think we'll be able to recover from even a bad catastrophy.
Bryce