On 11/11/10 19:47, MZMcBride wrote: > I don't understand why this specific company/organization has been given > special status (when there are surely thousands of companies looking to > partner with Wikimedia). They had a custom MediaWiki extension installed[2] > that has a very prominent place in the sidebar of one of the most popular > sites in the world. Why? > > I also don't understand who would want a printed copy of a Wikipedia > article. It seems antithetical to the point of the Internet and the creation > of an online encyclopedia.
These two paragraphs contradict each other. You say that there must be thousands of companies willing to do what PediaPress did, and then you say that their product is pointless and you don't see why anyone would buy it. PediaPress developed the PDF export system (Collection, mwlib) with their own money, and released them under an open source license. There was nobody else offering to do such a thing. They had no way to tell whether they would be able to recover this development cost, and their other startup costs, from book sales. But to give themselves a fighting chance, they negotiated with Wikimedia to get sidebar placement. >From Wikimedia's point of view, the proposition was hard to resist. Offline copies were always part of the Foundation's mission, and the Foundation has a history of partnering with commercial organisations to do distribution. For example, there was a CD of the German Wikipedia for sale in November 2004. This distribution concept predates the Foundation, and has been consistently supported by Jimmy and others. It's not antithetical to anything. See for instance from 2001: http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_FAQ "Q. What legalities must be considered in creating conventional printed snapshots of Wikipedia? Are there any plans for any?" "Re the second question: No specific plans on the part of Bomis yet, anyway (there has been vague talk and long-term dreams)--that doesn't mean someone else couldn't do it, even right now. This is open content, after all." >From January 2003: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Paper_Wikipedia >From August 2003: <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Pushing_to_1.0&oldid=1319379> -- Tim Starling _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
