I've recently been digging in to some of the Wikipedia history (including pointing links from the Wikipedia timeline to Wayback machine's versions of the Nupedia list) but the one link I haven't been able to find is Wale's statement about the confusion resulting from Stallman's announcement: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/20/0319231_F.shtml -> http://www.themestream.com/gspd_browse/browse/view_article.gsp?c_id=299223 Unfortunately, that page is just ads and links now and Jimbo doesn't seem to have a copy and he recommended this list as a possible source.
On Tuesday 18 October 2005 10:36, Joseph Reagle wrote:
Unfortunately, that page is just ads and links now and Jimbo doesn't seem
to
have a copy and he recommended this list as a possible source.
I have not been able to find a copy of that document, but Richard Stallman was able to explain what happened from his point of view and gave me permission to share it publicly:
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Re: You and Nupedia? From: "Richard M. Stallman" rms@gnu.org To: Joseph Reagle Message-Id: E1EUoPy-0006Hp-2D@fencepost.gnu.org
So, evidently Jimmy Wales was able to explain the confusion, but, unfortunately, that document has been lost. I was wondering if you could tell me whether you intended to create a separate project, was there some confusion, or did you merely wish to express the principles of freedom that you thought would be important in such a project?
I was discussing with each of them at intervals of weeks or months. Thus, in between messages, I mostly forgot about them both. Thus, most of the time I was not consciously aware I was talking with two different encyclopedia projects. Meanwhile, at least for some of the time, it was not clear at the time that Nupedia would be free. Thus, at some times when I was aware there were two projects, I could not conclude that Gnupedia was superfluous.
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