On 8/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Heh, funny. This opening description is interesting:
"...encyclopaedia
operating under an open-source management style...uses a collaborative
software known as wiki that facilitates the creation and development
of articles." What an interesting idea to describe our "management
style" as "open-source" and to relegate the role of the wiki as just
"facilitating" article creation and development. Is this the prejudice
of a "traditional" encyclopaedia which has rigid management
structures, and sees that as the most striking difference?
What would you say is the most striking difference? I'd say it's a
close tie between free as in open source and open as in...wiki. In
most news reports I've heard the first part is less emphasized though.
As for relegating the role of the wiki to just "facilitating" article
creation and development, what would you say it does? The wiki
certainly doesn't write the articles, people do!
Anyway, I'd say the much worse snippet is the one linked to by "open
source":
"computer software whose source code is put into the public domain,
subject to the restriction that any improvements or derived software
also include the source code and be put into the public domain."
I suppose the term "public domain" has other meanings apart from the
technical "copyright free" one, but that's still damn confusing for
someone who doesn't know that open source software is still
copyrighted.
Looking at the rest of the snippet though, I see "Open source refers
to both a model of software development and an ideology of
intellectual property." There again are those two things which I
think are the most striking difference(s) in Wikipedia.
Anthony