On 1/9/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
If the source text written for free is well referenced an hour wouldn't be too bad. Of course, what people really seem to be missing is that the $10 million is merely the seed money. *If* they can get some good content created by that (even just 2000 articles would probably do it), there should be no problem raising more money (through donations, sales, services, etc.).
This is possible, but I think still a bit of a stretch. Apart from starting with no articles, they have a number of disadvantages:
I'm not sure what you're comparing them to, but I'll comment on your points as is.
- They're a commercial organization rather than a non-profit, which
tends to make people less willing to donate and volunteer
Digital Universe Foundation is a non-profit organization incorporated in Nevada. See for youself at https://esos.state.nv.us/SOSServices/AnonymousAccess/CorpSearch/CorpSearch.a.... There is a for-profit which runs the ISP but supposedly this is set up in a way so that most of the profits from the for-profit go to the non-profit. I'm not sure exactly what the arrangement is, though.
- They are known to have $10m, which makes people less likely to donate
or work for free
Small time people, maybe, but the larger grant money which they are probably targetting is actually more likely to donate to a company which isn't hanging on by a thread.
For donations of time, I'm not sure I agree, but you might be right. I think it depends more on how they spend their money than how much of it there is, though.
- They appear to be charging for user accounts, which will drastically
reduce the number of people who create them
I have an account and didn't pay anything. AFAIK you only have to pay if you subscribe to the ISP.
- The end result appears to be under a murky and possibly proprietary
license, which will not encourage people to work on it for free
Seems to me they will release *some* things under proprietary licenses and some things under free licenses. I certainly agree it will be tough to get people to contribute to those parts under the proprietary licenses for free, though if it's set up right maybe not too hard (people will donate time to proprietary non-profit projects in some circumstances).
What's murky, it seems, is exactly what they're going to do. I'm sure it'll be clear once they start publicizing this.
Not necessarily fatal flaws, but I'd say it's a long-shot that they will be a serious competitor to Wikipedia anytime in the near future.
-Mark
Well, you seem to have been misinformed on all your points. But I see them filling a different niche from Wikipedia anyway.
I have my doubts as to whether or not DU will be successful. It's really a matter of how well it's managed. I think the idea is a good one, though. (I've personally watched a company I've co-founded, with a similar idea, waste millions of dollars and go out of business, during the dot-com days. Actually when I showed this to one of the other co-founders he asked me if this was our old CEO, who botched the thing up back then, trying the idea again. It isn't.)
Anthony