On 7/19/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I was making the assumption (an assumption which I
maintain isn't
invalid) that having put the Wiki infrastructure in place, and having
done a little advertising, the project would have been successful. I
don't think Wikipedia was successful because it grew from the FLOSS
community. It was successful because anyone could edit it (you could
argue that this was entirely because Wikipeida grew out of the FLOSS
community). Britannica could have been just as successful if they had
allowed anyone to edit.
....
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)
Is this so certain, though? It seems fairly clear that Britannica
wouldn't be using copyleft licensing, but proprietary licensing of
some sort. Speaking for myself, I know I would not be contributing to
a proprietary EB wiki. A lot of the initial seed for Wikipedia (for
starting the virtuous cycle/exponential growth) seems to have been
essentially ideologically motivated, and I do not think any
significant segments of technically literate, motivated, educated and
willing-to-donate-their-time people would have tossed their lot in
with an EB wiki, except perhaps some academics.
~maru