On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> Nupedia
isn't making any money either. In fact, Wikipedia is much
> closer to the point where it might (somehow) make money for Bomis (and
> therefore, potentially, for anyone else who wants to use the content
> for profit).
It is a little confusing. The FSF started Gnupedia and then they
gave up
and joined Nupedia. Maybe if there is a commercial problem with the
expansion, bandwidth and maintainace we should either :
* move back to the FSF
* or start Wikipedia2 one way or the other
*Nod* Obviously what we don't want is a fork, nor to offend Bomis
(well, not much *grin*). My guess is that Bomis has things WELL under
control in the backup department and that they may never have
significant financial or maintenance problems.
But, if we're just talking extreme contingency here ("What if Bomis were
hit by a tonado"), it might be a good idea to have an alternate
organization able to fill in until Bomis gets back on their feet. I'm
not sure the FSF is the best choice; they're awfully busy with other
matters. One organization that springs to mind is SEUL - Simple End
User Linux - who are also hosted out of MIT. Their focus is on end user
applications, science, and education, and I suspect they'd be willing to
serve as a temporary backup. I'm sure there are also other
organizations, too.
As long as Bomis continues to provide tarballs periodically, and as long
as at least one of us downloads them each time, I think we'll be able to
recover from even a bad catastrophy.
Bryce