[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Open-Site.org]

[Ray Saintonge]

Magnus Manske wrote:

> Vlad from the Open-site project (open-site.org), another free 
> encyclopedia just starting, answered to my "merger" proposal. I 
> forward this to the list for discussion.
>
>Hello Magnus,
>
>Another integration possibility would be code-only, it would be cool to have 
>the same code power both projects. See http://open-site.org/code for more 
>details.
>
>Anyway, I hope we find the time to explore those possibilities in the future, 
>in order to provide to the Internet community the best opened content 
>possible.
>
>Vlad.
>
I don't know that integration would be the way to go, but there is still 
plenty of room for co-operation.  Jimbo raised some interesting points 
around the copyright issue.  When I looked through Open-site my 
impression was that this whole matter has simply no been thought 
through.  There is a copyright notice on the bottom of each page.  On 
the help page after a routine admonition against using copyright 
material there is, "It's of vital importance to keep the open character 
of open-site, therefore we can't accept submissions that violate the 
copyright laws. We must pay special attention, in order not to stop the 
flow of information due to patents that are applied to our information." 
 That's all there is, and I find that last sentence to be cryptic.  Does 
this suggest that Open-site is proprietary?

They are younger project, and I see nothing in there about how they 
would handle such issues as NPOV and vandalism.  These are bound to be 
perpetual problems for any open encyclopedia project.

Some of their presentation and material organization is interesting, and 
they to have a Rumanian language section which we don't.  

Personally, I don't at this time support any kind of merger.  It may in 
fact be healthy to have competing projects each attracting its own 
particular blend of contributors.  On the other hand the free sharing of 
content and code to the benefit of both projects would be a perfectly 
healthy activity.  

When it comes to copyright, the real problem is not going to be with 
people who put copyrighted material into an on-line encyclopedia. 
 That's easily removed as soon as it's recognized.  It's going to be 
with people who try to claim personal copyrights on openly licensed or 
even public domain material.  

Eclecticology