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

[David Gerard]

On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell <mary_murrell at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 1. Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.


Not bad for a 1000-page lump of dead tree, I'd say.


> 2. And free as in anyone can use and re-use it? I hope so. However, can, say, Indian printers make even cheaper editions and sell them wherever they want in all parts of the world, even Europe?


Yep - except possibly the Wikipedia trademark, which is a trademark
matter and not a copyright matter.

(An analogy: you can buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or you can download
the same thing free from centos.org minus the Red Hat trademarked
graphics.)


> 3. This is German encyclopedia--an important but hardly global language. It is a commercial endeavor by a publishing behemoth for a prosperous European audience.  Ideals of global distribution to those underserved by the Internet hardly seem to apply here.


It's a very important proof of concept for the idea of open source
content production. Wikipedia DVDs in German have already sold very
nicely (as commercial products). A book further demonstrates the
viability of the model for producing a "real" encyclopedia.


> Perhaps the real value to wikipedians is the increased "branding" of wikipedia? I don't know, but I think this print projects feels like a diminution of wikipedia. ButI respect people's labor, always, and I don't want to denigrate that. I just wonder why this is any sort of priority to wikipedians.


Ever since the wikipedia.com days, producing printed final editions
has been a goal. This involves crass commerciality to make it a
happener, because dead trees with ink on cost money to make and
distribute.

See Erik Moller's essay "NC Licenses Considered Harmful" for a
detailed opinion of why commerciality is good for free culture, as it
provably has been for free software:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/11/16331/0655


- d.