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Will The Real Nupedia Please Stand Up?

Posted by michael on from the you-say-tomato-I-say-gnupedia dept.

jwales writes: "There was a bit of confusion recently regarding the announcement of a 'gnupedia' project. There already exists a free encyclopedia project, with all code GPL'd and all content FDL'd, and that project is Nupedia. I have written an article explaining what happened. Basically, RMS got confused." Clear as mud.

2 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Good! by KjetilK · · Score: 5
    I'm glad to see this sorted out. I signed up with nupedia a few weeks ago, and while I'm usually following RMS a long way in his ideas, it looked as if he was grabbing the idea.

    Now, the Nupedia folks seem to have given the encyclopedia idea far more thought than RMS. What RMS seemed to be announcing was little more than the web as we know it now plus a bit of resource description on top, but far from the Semantic Web of TimBL.

    The Nupedia folks have really thought carefully about formal peer review, which is a very important feature of a real encyclopedia, and with the FDL, it's very promising.

    --
    Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
  2. Oops... Although the real world would be similar. by alexhmit01 · · Score: 5

    Grin, in the corporate world, the same thing would have likely happened, probably with a $1 settlement. Given the relationship between Nupedia and FSF, there normally would have been an NDA, so "gnupedia" would have been in violation. The main difference here is than FSF is small enough that rms should know what is going on (especially if he is doing both items).

    Ooops, Brain Fart, an apology, and (probably?) an oops post on GNU.org at some point. At the very least, if gnupedia.(com|org|net) was acquired, they should point to nupedia.

    In the real world, this stuff happens. When MS does the NDA violation, they usually pay a large sum (to the little company, not to MS) to either buy the company or settle so the company can launch a new business idea. When other companies do it, they either back down (and pay $1 + legal fees), or they fight and lose badly.

    Now, if you don't use an NDA and give details, well, what can you do.

    Now, as Nupedia is wide open, NDA isn't quite the perfect analogy. A non-compete would be, but contracts to divide the market are not looked on favorably by the anti-trust laws.

    Hmm, enough ramblings, but I wonder, could a Free Software agreement not to compete be seen as anti-trust? It wouldn't really prevent "competition" as anyone can take the work for free... is it market dumping? Hmm... IP applies artificial scarcity to force IP based products to follow normal microeconomics (albeit with a monopoly/oligopoly), how do you reconcile this with Free Software...

    Hmm...