__/ [www.1-script.com] on Monday 17 October 2005 15:05 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Is the Creative Commons Licence an invitation to massive, huge-scale
>> ripoffs? A community of WikiPedians around the world is voluntarily
>> spending time in vain? To get somebody else rich(er)?
>> http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archives/2005/10/17/wikimirror/
>
> An excerpt from a Wikimirror.com:
>
> <quote>
>
> Content Credit
>
> Wikimirror financially supports the Wikimedia Foundation. Displaying this
> page does not burden Wikipedia hardware resources. This article is from
> Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free
> Documentation License. Contact: info [AT] wikimirror [DOT] com
>
> </quote>
>
> Did you check if the statement is true before giving them this much bad
> publicity? I have no idea if they do "financially support" WiKi or not,
> but it is very well possible that they donate some part of the money they
> earn from AdSense on this pages (at least for tax relief purposes), and
> then you would really sound like an a**hole attacking people that support
> the same cause that you do.
>
> What is it, Roy, maximalism of youth?
In guess you may have a point, but are Wikipedians aware of that? I sure
wasn't and I contributed a little.
I can think of a variety of free and Open projects that opted for ways of
making money 'under the table' or in indirect ways that are questionable. I
don't know what exactly is happening -- business-wise that is -- with
mozilla.com. DMOZ is one candidate for toppling, but I am not sure any
proof can be recovered.
It is fine to make money from OSS as far as support goes. It is wrong,
however, to /sell/ away certain values and, as in this case, take a
collaboratory content Encyclopedia and convert it into static pages, which
could wind up making profits... off people's contributions -- people who
will receive nothing in return. You should have heard the outcry when
similar things happened in the past like Open Source projects sold to large
corporation that take advantage of advertisements space. Skype or ICQ are
not a good example, but Flickr or Geocities might be. If you need more
convincing, let me know.
I added your disclaimer as a clarification, which I think is well-deserved a
mention.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Useless fact: 21978 x 4 = 21978 backwards
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