[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales in the news

[Lars Aronsson]

Brian wrote:

> Wales originally used Bomis to help fund the Nupedia project 
> from which Wikipedia developed. Wikipedia was placed under the 
> non-profit Wikimedia Foundation in 2003, but Bomis continued to 
> pay for basic expenses. As traffic increased and more servers 
> became necessary, Wikimedia fundraisers helped purchase the 
> needed equipment while Bomis remained responsible for the cost 
> of hosting and bandwidth.

Let's discuss Bomis. Did that company ever make any profits?  
When Wikipedia was new, I took a look at Bomis and it didn't look 
very good.  I guess Jimbo used his old money (from being a futures 
trader in Chicago) to pay for starting Bomis, but did the 
investment really pay off?  It wasn't really the new Yahoo.  
That's probably why they tried every odd idea, such as starting 
encyclopedias.  But then again, I'm only guessing.  However, if 
I'm right, the phrase "Wales used Bomis" should be turned around.

There's no blame here.  The late 1990s was a time when a lot of 
people tried a lot of things on the Internet.  Most failed.  
That's nothing unusual, and nothing to be ashamed of.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se