[Foundation-l] in defence of Google

Sun Jan 21 10:00:57 UTC 2007

Hoi,
The question of "central or decentral" will have to decided. You mention 
a "wikifoundation" and that implies an hierarchy of some kind. Wikia is 
a for profit organisation, so what? Does that make Wikia and Jimmy evil? 
I would also not be surprised that Jimmy is doing it at Wikia because it 
takes a long time to convince the Wikimedia Foundation that a new 
project is the right thing to do. In this case I am not even sure that 
this project is in line with the aims of the WMF, my money would not be 
on it and I am not a betting man.

With the feeling for a need of an alternate search engine, you will have 
obviously considered a business model for this project, even "not for 
profits" need business plans. This business plan will make plain why it 
is a good thing to do but most of all how it will be possible to make it 
a sustainable project. Sustainable as in being both able to scale and to 
be there next year as well.

Freedom from the hierarchy only works for those that are the hierarchy 
or are not part of a collaborative process. Even within collaborative 
processes there is a hierarchy. The point of this thread is that it is 
best to acknowledge the cooperation and the help that we get even when 
it comes from "unexpected" corners. It is not only sensible, it is also 
the gracious thing to do.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Till Weber schreef:
> Anthony, I don´t think it is posible to merge both projects, wikiasari and peerpedia. Though the central person is Jim Wales, but he already decided to built a project without the foundation and one for profit. As well the proposal concept for wikiasari is still missing, if it is central or decentral. So I recommend to have the wikifoundation to run as well a search propject the p2p way.
>
> Just my to cents. If there are persons, which decide to act, it then really a question of freedom in organizations. Open source is one thing, but freedom from the hierachy is one other.
>
> /Till
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] in defence of Google
>
>   
>> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>>
>>     
>>> I'd love to see Google torn down and replaced with an open source
>>> collaborative search engine run democratically by the world.  I'd love
>>> to have access to a search engine as good as Google, with a truly open
>>> API (i.e. sans http://code.google.com/apis/soapsearch/api_terms.html),
>>> and with all the results being released under an open content license.
>>>  Is Wikimedia the one to do that?  It's arguable whether it'd be
>>> within the scope of the Foundation's mission.  And in any case, I
>>> haven't seen a reasonable proposal of how to do it.  So I guess when
>>> it comes to that point, we're both in agreement.  And yeah.  Google
>>> did good.  Google does good.  But Google did bad, too.  Google does
>>> bad, too.  And Microsoft also did/does good/bad.
>>>
>>> Anthony
>>>
>>>       
>> Who is in defence of Google? Wikifoundation?
>> "wikifoundation in defence of Google"
>>
>> The problem is, Jimmy is one of the founders of wikipedia, has nothing to
>> do with wikiseek; and wikiasari is a concept supported by a lot of people.
>> But: If wikifoundation makes a peerpedia-search, this means that there are
>> several conflicts. Is wikiasari more in solidarity to wikiseek, because
>> they both are for-profit ads-projects? or more in solidarity to peerpedia, to
>> support the core competencies of the foundation? 
>> Wikifoundation need the courage, to steal Jimmies Idea to make it (a
>> search project) really open with p2p and without ads.
>> Ok, this is not about one person and I do not want to annoy anyone, so
>> let´s talk about the peerpedia project of the foundation here on this list.
>> Wikiasari is a different project on a different list.
>>
>> This simple sentence, said by Jim originally, means foe the rest of the
>> foundation members, to have the courage, to first develop a similar project
>> and split the development. This must be the rest of the foundation board
>> members aware of. Acting like wikiseek and play a card against the
>> wikisariproject. And this card here was suggested as a peerpedia-search, which means
>> (as the url was announced with a concept) to set up several yacy.net servers
>> to index the web p2p.
>>
>> (Or: Jim has to be asked, if he is agreeing to make wikiasari a kind of a
>> peerpedia project and if we are pulling the same goals. He still has not
>> announced, if nutch or yacy is on the three servers and/or if there is a
>> cooperation with the foundation, last I guess not, but if this is clear, this
>> means we need couraged people to do the same from the foundation side but
>> only p2p with the community). 
>>
>> I wonder, why the members here on the list doubt the core cometencies or
>> Mission of the foundation, if the peerpedia-search project is in accordance.
>>
>> Here is the mission again:
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
>>
>> you see, several stars fit the project and social software is nutch not at
>> all, it is yacy, this is why I recomment to ask Jim to join the peerpedia
>> idea with his large knowledge and history experience.
>>
>> We could wook out a proposal (which jim announced the day before his
>> disney journey on anotehr list,  but still has not published) together, here is
>> the peerpedia "blanket" for this:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_P2-search_peerpedia
>>
>>     
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
>>
>> The general purpose and objectives of the Foundation shall be the
>> following:
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of
>> online *free*, *open content* encyclopedias, collections of quotations,
>> textbooks *and other collections of documents*, *information*, and other
>> informational *databases* in *all* the languages of the world that will be
>> distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license such
>> as the Free Documentation License written by the Free Software Foundation
>> Inc. at http://www.fsf.org or similar licensing scheme, see
>> http://www.wikimedia.org.
>>
>> The goals of the foundation are to *encourage* the further growth and
>> development of *open content*, *****social software**** WikiWiki-based projects
>> (see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) and to provide the full contents
>> of those projects to the public free of charge. In addition to managing the
>> already developed multilingual general encyclopedia and almanac named
>> Wikipedia, (http://www.wikipedia.org) there is a multi-language dictionary and
>> thesaurus named Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of quotations named Wikiquote,
>> a collection of e-book resources aimed specifically toward students (such
>> as textbooks and annotated public domain books) named Wikibooks and a
>> collection of source works called Wikisource; other projects are envisioned like
>> **peerpedia** - the open source search-engine yacy.net community in a p2p
>> style. The Foundation also manages the operations of the largely dormant
>> Nupedia project (which is not a wiki but is open content).
>>
>>     
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/date.html
>>
>> BTW: we discuss here only in a free brainstorming, and indeed the leader
>> of foundation and the leader of wikia should meet at a round tabel and
>> discuss, if a collaboration is possible, and if the foundation is behind the p2p
>> idea, which several times was stated as the only way to have 1 Mio google
>> servers in defence. If both leaders or the board does not agree, the
>> question is open, if the foundation is willing to start and found a
>> yacy-wikipedia-indexing serverfarm project with several servers.
>>
>> Ok, let´s say each year we add 2 servers. Is this too much?
>> Yacysearch.com has done this in one weel with 7 servers.
>>
>> Kind regards.
>>
>>     
>
>   