[Foundation-l] Bertelsmann publishes "Wikipedia Encyclopedia in One Volume"

[Brianna Laugher]

On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell <mary_murrell at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is interesting, but it raises a lot of questions:
>
>  1. So much for "free," I guess.

In what sense?
For free as in beer:
de.wikipedia.org isn't going anywhere.

For free as in speech:
The Free Encyclopedia is about free content, free licenses. Freedom
for the reader to use, adapt and distribute. Free cultural works are
not anti-commercial. So a commercial product does not in any way
encroach on the freedom of the works -- any more than offering
pre-compiled software for convenience means that software is not "open
source".

>  2. How will this "make wikipedia material accessible to a wider range of readers" than wikipedia on-line? Can you be more specific about that?

Our mission is to "disseminate [our content] effectively and
globally". I'm not speaking on behalf of WMDE, but it's clear to me
that there are many people (and institutions) around the world who are
not comfortable with purely internet-based things. Books, they can
grok.

Congrats WMDE, I think this is really exciting and I look forward to
seeing the German reaction.

cheers
Brianna

-- 
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/