http://www.eol.org/home.html

"Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth, available everywhere by single access on command. " --E.O. Wilson

They have an amazing number of sponsors, partner organisations, FUNDS, etc...

Want to be mega-impressed? Check out one of their demo pages: http://www.eol.org/vision/rice_expert.html (although they list Wikipedia as one of the sources, which is, um...)

Now that's a killer interface.

They don't have a statement about what the license will be, but they say this: "A possible area of obstacles or dangers is intellectual property. The Encyclopedia will be very generous with credit and recognition, and we will soon be posting a general statement of principle about open and accessible content, encouraging sharing, and so on. The world of the Internet and software changes so fast, we know we need to be very alert to what are considered good and prudent practices."

From their FAQ:

== 6. What about Wikipedia? Wikipedia inspired us. Wikipedia accumulated about 1.5 million entries in English in its first four years. That gave us confidence that our tasks are manageable with current technology and social behaviour, although the expert community in a lot of the subjects for pages in Encyclopedia of Life may be only a handful of people. Wikipedia has also created some species pages, as have other groups. Encyclopedia of Life will, we hope, unite all such efforts and increase their value. The Wikimedia Foundation is a member of the Encyclopedia's Institutional Council. ==

I'm not sure what an 'Institutional Council' does.

(BTW didn't we used to own http://www.wikispecies.org/ ? It seems to have lapsed, if so.)

So... hm, what will success for Wikispecies look like?

regards Brianna user:pfctdayelise