[Foundation-l] PediaPress

[Liam Wyatt]

If we're concerned about the WMF referring in its blog to a for-profit
organisation that happens to be working with us in a way that is
open-source, offline and furthering our mission to distribute our content
widely, why did no one complain about the OpenMoko Wikireader being in the
WMF blog:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2009/10/13/openmoko-launches-wikireader/

There are several examples of commercial services being used in Wikimedia
projects that are integrated in a way that is acceptable because they
further our mission of sharing free-cultural resources effectively:

- The Geohack tool that you see when clicking on any geocode link in an
article (e.g. "Eiffel Tower":
http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Eiffel_Tower&params=48.8583_N_2.2945_E_type:landmark_region:FR-75)
This brings up a list of for-profit and non-profit mapping services
notably Google Maps and OpenStreetMap respectively.

- The ISBN lookup tool (e.g. "Anna Karenina"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1-84749-059-9 ) brings
up an extensive list of commercial book services and public/university
libraries.

- The "template:social bookmarks" that appears at the bottom of every
Wikinews article http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Social_bookmarks (and
briefly appeared recently next to every commons file recently) refers our
users to several commercial organisations to
share/like/fan/digg/tweet/stumble/dent a Wikinews article.

All three of those systems are community-developed and no one is reasonably
complaining that we are sending our readers to those commercial services
because they are integrated in a way that is relevant/appropriate for the
kind of re-use that is A Good Thing™.

I suspect that the issue lies not with the fact that you are only a couple
of clicks away from the PediaPress bookprinting service from every Wikipedia
article, but more the fact that the PediaPress system is the *only *service
listed on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book As Erik
mentioned in the previous email, the relationship with PediaPress is
non-exclusive and entirely independent from the  "Book Creator" code.

If there is another organisation out there that offers a
printing-and-binding service that is comparable to what PediaPress offers
then we could/should add it to the list but I don't believe there is.


-Liam

wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata