In amongst the many and varied discussions, users of our forums make insightful observations which deserve highlighting. One such post is in response to this comment by Wolfe:
“If people can write a functional open source operating system, there is no reason why they can’t write an encyclopaedia.”
UseOnceAndDestroy writes:
This comparison keeps turning up, and while it sounds reasonable on a sloganeering level, its fundamentally wrong.
The driver for the development of Linux is real and pressing - the movement of mass computing to a monolithic, corporately-controlled standard is stiflingly unhealthy, and OSS breeds diversity and invention. Particularly, had LAMP [Editors note: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP] not been created, a lot of the web innovation of the last decade likely wouldn’t have happened. Good-quality developers were drawn to OSS for good reasons, and established a decent level of governance because you just can’t engineer software without it. Because the technically incompetent don’t last long, Linux benefits from a virtuous circle: better software = more users = more developers = better software.
On 23 March 2008, Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden posted the below to her user space on Wikipedia, she posted the same thing to Jimbo Wales’s talk page. Marsden had conducted a brief affair with the Wiki God-King, who then ordered changes to her biography on her behalf. In early March, Wales posted a long personal message on Wikipedia detailing the end of their relationship. Marsden’s response some three weeks later, posted to the same place, was hastily deleted by Wales’s Wiki-minions and Marsden was unceremoniously blocked from the site.
Rachel Marsden : As anyone who has ever cared about Jimbo here knows, the only way to have any sort of rational or caring discussion with him is in the Wikimatrix here. Alright, fine. Game on, sweetheart. Newsflash: Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia; it is a cult. I wouldn’t even be included in a real encyclopedia. I want the Wikipedia entry about me deleted. I don’t know why this is such a difficult concept to accept.
This post was submitted to the forum by The Review’s resident Wikipedia Watcher Daniel Brandt. The post was in response to a piece in The Register by Cade Metz researching Roger McNamee, the major donor to the WikiMedia Foundation.
___________________________________
Daniel Brandt : The New York Times yesterday quoted Florence:
Florence Nibart-Devouard, the chairwoman of the Wikimedia board, who has never met Mr. McNamee, did not sound enthusiastic.
“It’s not a huge concern right now, but I am not comfortable with the concept,” she said, of venture capitalists consistently making donations to the foundation. “I would much prefer a varied diverse base of donors, some could be large, some could be long-term friends, who help in finding new friends. I hope the foundation won’t rely on these relationships.”
She said that she had proposed a resolution, passed recently, to require that any donation larger than 2 percent of revenues be approved by the board. And she said she would “make some noise” if a venture capitalist were to try to become a board member.
In the same NYT piece, Jimbo very strongly stated that Wikipedia will always remain nonprofit, and he will continue to show the door to greedy venture capitalists.
I think there’s a conspiracy going on, and Florence’s reaction is reasonable, but too little and too late. She’s in over her head. Jimbo is pushing bullshit to distract from the conspiracy. It’s sort of hard to tell, because Jimbo is almost always unbelievable. Maybe that’s by design!
In amongst the many and varied discussions, users of our forums make insightful observations which deserve highlighting. One such post is in response to this comment by Wolfe:
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On 23 March 2008, Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden posted the below to her user space on Wikipedia, 
In the same NYT piece, Jimbo very strongly stated that Wikipedia will always remain nonprofit, and he will continue to show the door to greedy venture capitalists.