Slashdot Mirror
Dvorak on Google and Wikipedia
cryptoluddite writes "PC Magazine has an article by John C. Dvorak expanding on the community discussion of Google's offer for free web hosting of Wikipedia. Those against the deal point out that Google may be planning to co-opt the encyclopedia as Googlepedia (by restricting access to the complete database). In a revealing speech given by the Google founders, Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.' Should public domain information be free?" It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days. Update: 02/16 20:16 GMT by T : This story links inadvertently to the second page of the column; here's a link to the first page.
Google wouldn't be like msn and only show certain articles, plus that wouldn't work with wikipeida since it's user made/edited
Signatures are so 90s
You were supposed to keep a low profile, now Jason is gonna whack you for sure.
Trust Your Technolust
Wow --
"It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days."
That's horrible.
Wouldn't Wikipedia take measures to ensure nothing bad happened? I mean, that's what contracts are for...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Great, more giant monopolies. Google seem to be attempting to become the Microsoft of the internet. At least they're being open about it I guess.
I wonder if this would be a viable strategy for SBC to adopt with regards to AT&T's historical archives. It is absolutely true that AT&T's archives would serve a much broader purpose than mere technological curiosity, but SBC may decide that it does cost them to maintain the entire collection.
And this is another thing they can leverage in their war against MS... Next up, a total web-based OS (Firefox/Linux backend?)... Would be interesting to see where this is going; someone needs to stand up to the behemoth that is Microsoft, for the sake of all mankind!
In a revealing speech given by the Google founders, Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.'
For a company that claims they are endevouring to never be evil, this strikes me as a pretty evil bait-and-switch type scheme to me.
I think I'm going to start checking out Yahoo's search engine. Not because I think I'll ever prefer it, but because I think I'd better start getting used to it, just in case.
Google's one step closer to taking over the world now...
Just hosting Wikipedia would work with google's already profitable model. Why would they bother creating a fee based model for a community product?
What do we do if Google turns evil?
I'm a big tall mofo.
This is something that will be very interesting. The information in wikipedia should be available to everyone for free. There could be an interesting situation where people could subscribe to a service to have no advertising. That way it would pay for the wikipedia services to continue running, while still providing the benefit to the community. I know I use online services reguarly and its something that I would pay a nominal fee for without complaining to much.
However it must have both free and subscription based services for it to be a viable system.
Lots of people know that Wikipedia hasn't had the server power to keep up, but a pay-for-service model isn't the answer. A free web-based encyclopedia is what makes wikipedia so great.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
I thought the content on Wikipedia was licensed under a free, open license? How can Google "revoke" that to do this?
if someone ruins it, sure it is a shame, but something else will pop up to replace it. The internet is just a big game of whack-a-mole, no matter if you are the RIAA, the Feds, a kiddie porn fiend, or a information seeker.
It's kind of the whole point...
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
Can they do that? The wikipedia is governed by the GNU Free Documentation License . . .wikipedia details here.
IF (and it IS an if), google do start restricting and charging - it would be a pity.
This information was collected for free, and would be disseminated at a cost. While this has been done before (volunteer organisations are not new) - it would probably lead people away from making the effort in the next thing that comes along and is "by the people for the people"
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
Let's not speculate on what they're planning. I hope that whatever it is they are going to do doesnt leave a "dependency" situation. And above all it should be possible for others to download and re-use all the content.
Wikipedia needs an endowment of a 10 to 15 million dollars or more.
Are there are millionaires out on slashdot willing to do it?
I'm waiting to see if google becomes an example of a "benevolent corporation". Pipe-dream I'm sure, but all the years of crack smokin's gotta pay off someday.
Speculation runs rife. I guess security through well... not very obscurity's bound to get someone chatting in the end.
The deal in the short to medium term with wikipedia is expected to be the provision of about a dozen caching servers. No actual database work would be done by google. There is already a small (3) squid cluster in Paris that does this for users in the UK and France saving on some transatlantic bandwidth.
What exactly are you throwing a hissy fit about? By sold-out, do you refer to google becoming publically as opposed to privately traded?
It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days.
*insert Bush comment about hunting down Osama Bin Laden here*
Hey, you're right!
Whether Wikipedia should accept is another matter. I don't think that they should. It's much easier to appear independent if you have to pay your way, and for an encyclopedia, appearing independent is really pretty important.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Yes, yes it should indeed be free. Information is the essential ingredient to the advancement of society. This is why public libraries, schools, and lectures were created, so that information could be dissemenated to all individuals who actively sought it out for themselves and for their children. Charging $20 a month for access to information is an outrageous idea and is particularly frightening when uttered by an individual whose company holds the key to so much of the electronic information on the web. I think if they continue with his "vision" of the future, Google's usage will plummet quite rapidly.
Hasn't the Open Source community taught anyone the value of free information exchange??
What is this Dvorak smoking? Is his article old, because I see Groups on the start page of Google and I logged in and used it yesterday to find some code on making Windows Z-Order behave and making transparent windows without the Platform SDK installed. His other complaint that Groups is in Beta is bogus too, when you consider that a Google Beta is more like a released product from other companies, hell it is better then most companies version 2.0 of a product. Then there is the whole Google is company so they are going to make stuff suck, doesn't he get it the whole Google biz model is based around not sucking (being evil, etc.). Of couse some of my complaints are invalid if Google responded to Dvorak column by focusing on groups again, hard to tell without dates on stuff like his column or in the /. post...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
As opposed to private businesses which have no interest in maximizing profits?
What?
back in the 80's, He hasn't been that smart or up to date since.
I wouldn't take anything he says too seriously.
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
I'm fine with Google offering a faster mirror/interface to Wikipedia, because mirroring of information is always good. From the last /. article on the subject, I gathered that Google would offer their faster processing power and ub3r bandwidth to Wikipedia....but that doesn't necessarily mean they get to hijack the content....they'd just provide a faster way to get to information that's mirrored elsewhere.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Of course.
Public domain information is only as useful to society as people can access it. You cannot have an Open society without access to the public domain information.
Charging for public domain content makes access a privelege for those who can afford it. Public domain information must be easily available to *all* of the public, or else its not public domain.
And since libraries (particularly in US public schools) are divesting in books, and investing in technology, but they generally cannot afford access to pricey information bases.
This data needs to be kept freely accessable.
As policy has it, all references to Mark Jen will be purged :)
Mark Jen @ wikipedia
Esta es una firma en Espanol.
If it's not worth it, don't pay for their service, and find another means of accessing that same info. (If it's public domain, someone else is bound to have it.)
The submitter obviously drew a paralell between a speech given 4 years ago and Google's actions today. Just because Google once want to charge people $20 for some webservice, dosen't mean that they're robbing us of Wikipedia! Sometimes, goodness is just goodness, and charity is charity, even (Shudders) with Big Business. Maybe, just MAYBE, Google is trying to help them out?
I suspect they would have something like the normal wikipedia, and then on some articles have a "premium content" which is written by a professional researcher and all sources verified. Right now wikipedia is great but you can't use it as a source in a paper/essay without going out and checking all the facts yourself as well (which isn't nessercarily a bad thing). Having a free publicly written entry, with a link to a paid guarranteed accurate entry wouldn't be so bad. Then again what do I know, maybe google will say first 5 entry views a day are free and $20 a month after that.
John C. Dvorak's opinions haven't been relevant since the mid 1990's. Now that we all have access to information via the Internet, Dvorak's opinion columns amount to little more than an angry man's rantings -- Slashdot has made him obsolete.
Having said that, Dvorak's article seems to have little point, and even less evidence to back up his opinions. It's pretty sad when a smart guy is reduced to shouting "Doom! Woe! The end of the World!." The fact he does it in the bilge-ridden pages of PCMag, just makes it worse.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Ok, so does this mean Google's bad now ?
Keep it free. No ads either.
But... "premium members" get access to a version where the articles written by agenda-driven lunatics are color-coded in a red font and the stuff plagiarized and submitted by high school kids on a dare is in blue.
Whaddya think?
Google realized long ago that per user fees would never work in the search engine business, and it would never work for a wiki either.
What is worrisome is what exactly will they sell? Maybe it would be moderately benign like text ads on associated topics. Or maybe they will sell the ability to lock a topic to a business, to ensure 'competitors' don't tarnish their image?
One thing is for sure, google is way too smart to try to charge consumers for access, they charge businesses for advertising.
First, if the relationship between the Wikipedia and Google can be properly maintained, and boundaries established, I think this is a good thing for the Wikipedia.
People are fearful that Google will attempt to co-opt the Wikipedia. That's what is apparent in the Dvorak article. However, what Wikipedia needs is a slick lawyer to write a contract between Google and Wikipedia. (IANASL)
1. Google will host the Wikipedia as a donation.
2. Google will not restrict access to the Wikipedia except as mutually agreed upon by both parties, and a public page to explain what restrictions and why. At no time will restrictions be based upon subscriptions or charges.
3. Wikipedia will put a slick Google icon somewhere on the page to say "thanks Google for hosting us."
4. This agreement may be terminated with fair notice to the other party at any time.
If Wikipedia is able to maintain its autonomy, and the relationship is clearly labelled a donation of server space, then I think the Wikipedia could be hosted on Google.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Second, Google may just want to be in on the ground floor if and when Wikipedia decides to allow Adsense-type ads.
Third, companies do often do charitable things. It's a tax write-off.
Given those three things, I recommend that some commenters pay attention to the big, friendly letters in the subject line.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
"Actually, Google provides search over about 1.3 billion web pages... it actually doubles roughly every year." wow, that's pretty impressive, if they said that in 2001. I mean, in 4 years it's gotten eight times bigger. They've surpassed themselves!
There are 2 types of people in the world, those who find that stupid binary joke funny, and those who don't.
Asking if "public" information should be "free" starts the discussion off on the wrong foot. A more useful question is: "Who should pay for it and how should they pay?"
Public information is paid for by income tax, sales tax, property tax, use fees, and so on. It isn't free.
SCO already tried to 'pull a Gracenote' and it's not unreasonable to think others (not necessarily Google) would try the same with Wikipedia
AC comments get piped to
Still IS on the front page of google...well 1 click away. And the search is still perfectly usable...what IS Dvorak on about?
While I will agree with him that DejaNews should NEVER have ended up in the hands of a corporate entity when the oportunity came for it to enter public hands; google havnt done a bad job of maintaining it. Its just a pitty no-one has come up with a service to compete with Google on that level since it COULD be a lot better.
Can't take anything he says without a grain of salt after all the time he spent pimping OS/2 and declaring the "Death of Apple" every other week.
And it appears most of the 'it has to be free' crowd don't want to be the ones to pay. if you haven't made a dontation to wikipedia, then you need to shut up.
You are a hippie idiot. Any company is a company to make MONEY, not to serve some general good. Guess what, even Kaiser and Cancer treatment places are there to MAKE MONEY, not for any other purpose. Maybe the people working there do so out of the "kindness of their heart," but that is not the intent of the organization as a whole. Same with Google. Same with Slashdot. And same with anything else.
A blog like any other.
In a revealing speech given by the Google founders, Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.
/. story could have equally read "Does Google Want to Pay Wiki authors?" but of course, that would have derailed cryptoluddite's agenda to smear Google.
The only thing "revealing" about that article is that Page continues "Somebody else needs to figure out how to reward all the people who create the things that you use. " In other words, what Page would like to see is a system where "users" pay for accessing content and "contributors" are paid for providing it.
This
To the editors: when you see the words may be planning, just ignore the submission in the future. TIA.
I remember when I heard that Google bought Deja -- I was estatic. Deja by that point really blew, and the Google interface was much better. Don't tell me that the old Deja crap was better, it's not.
WTF? The Groups link is still present on the main site. And it works, say what you will about the new interface "improvements." However, even if you don't like the new interface -- how the hell do you read that as "Google is going to ruin Wikipedia?"
Summary of the article: Google ruined my Usenet, I'm gonna blame them on Usenet being marginalized. Usenet, Google groups sucks, la, la, la. Wikipedia is in bed with Google, Google is a corporation! Bad, bad, bad!!!
Public domain information is already free (free as in speech), but that doesn't mean that somebody can't also charge for it.
It's no different than the GPL -- also free as in speech, but not necessarily free as in beer.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
um, ignore this, i slept through high school math.
There are 2 types of people in the world, those who find that stupid binary joke funny, and those who don't.
AC comments get piped to
I own a business, and maximizing profits is no where on my list. I make enough money to pay my employees and myself. We all get a reasonable job so we don't have to go through life miserable, and we get to eat and have places to live. I could make more profit, but that would have an adverse effect on my employees lives, so I don't. If I were the CEO of a public company, I would not have that option, shareholders demand that nothing matters but short term profits.
If Google buys wikipedia, why wouldn't they be able to change the licensing?
What's Hertzfield got to do with this?
Read or hear about it, and try the link suggested as an alternative and enjoy. Then we can all giggle like school girls over our lattes as we watch its stock drom from $200 to $2 in an afternoon. Seriously, the barrier for entry is pretty significant hardware wise. But getting people to switch isn't. Can anyone here remember the search engine they used before google without saying, "Oh yeah" is a wistfully distant tone?
What the hell is Dvorak babblin about? I don't see any "digging" necessary to search Usenet. There's a Groups link right on the google.com main page...
Does Dvorak have crippling arthritis that prevents him from moving his mouse to the Groups link and clicking it?
I think the guy is starting to lose it.
scott king
It seems obvious enough to me that DejaNews/Google Groups has kept Usenet far more prominent than it would have been otherwise (Dvorak doesn't seem to get that the archive isn't ownership of Usenet itself), but given that he's claiming that Groups isn't linked off the Google front page at all, why bother arguing details.
Whatever. If dumbasses who have seen Star Wars too many times enjoy droning on about how Google used to be Good and Not Evil, but is now Evil, who am I to argue? At any rate, Wikipedia isn't going anywhere.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
15 or so years ago Dvorak had some insightful articles, even if they didn't always come 100% true. Nowadays he's another has-been from a past era trying to pimp his FUD and general tech conspiracy theories. IMO, if you steadily bet AGAINST Dvorak you'll come out ahead over the long run.
In the days of 10Mhz 286's I used to really enjoy John's columns. Now, I don't know if I've just gotten smarter, or he's gotten dumber (heh), but I can't remember the last time he didn't seem like a technology lunatic to me.
-This sig intentionally left blank
I'm *not* necessarily taking Google's side here, just playing devil's advocate to see what happens with the discussion.
IANAL, but free (beer) != free (unencumbered). An encyclopedia might be PD, which means there are no restrictions on copying or using it, but you still may need to pay some sort of money to acquire the material. You *are* paying for your internet connection to get to the webopedia, right?
Likewise, IIRC, Dover Books makes money by reprinting old textbooks that have gone PD after their copyrights expired, but you still need to pay to get a copy because there are printing costs, etc.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
This is just like what happened to the CDDB (Compact Disc DataBase). It was open source, public server, free client. Millions of us entered our CD data, in exchange for access to everyone else's data, for free. Then the founders sold the operation to GraceNote corporation, which took it proprietary, and slapped licensing restrictions on access, protected by secure login - locking out all the "owners" of the shared data we'd entered.
Some other people cloned the DB server into FreeDB, and jumpstarted it by datamining the CDDB server while it was still publicly accessible. We'll probably need to do that with Wikipedia. How big is it? Since "Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License", we should take a page from the FreeDB folks who saved our data from privateering clutches. How big is Wikipedia, in GB? Sounds like a job for BitTorrent, or perhaps Archive.org, or maybe a more passive archive, which would redistribute it only if access is restricted. Just distributing copies of the valuable data we've all produced would probably preempt Google, or any other "benefactor" from taking Wikipedia private. Let's not repeat the history that stole from us.
--
make install -not war
No, because the article copyright is owned by the contributors, not Wikipedia. Only the contributors can change the license on the content.
I wouldn't be too worried.
Capitalism has checks and balances.
If I'm running a business and have only a couple dozen highly intelligent investors funding me, I have a good chance of convincing them my business will do much better in the long term if I don't bleed the customer dry for short term profits and returns. My intelligent investors who don't plan to cash out in the next couple years will like this since they get long term returns on their investment. However, when I go public, whoever wants to may buy part of my company. I may end up with thousands of investors who don't give a shit about long term profit as long as they can sell their stock for a profit next week or next year.
As serious evidence? No. But thanks for the commentary.
No, what it is telling of though, is the mindset at Google at the time of writing. This little insight is important now because it's quite possible that their end goal is to monopolize information in such a way as to extract their income from it.
As they've recently made copious amounts of money and gained incredible power, it's quite possible its gone to their heads. Let's not paint them as a humanitarian group just because we like them: they are a company, after all, and have the same potential for evil that Microsoft (or any large company or government) has and does demonstrate.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I don't particularly understand your reasoning. Are you saying that since the founder of Wikipedia also has a pornography business, Wikipedia is thusly tainted and cannot be recommended by you or others to information seekers?
...
If so, why? I've never been browsing Wikipedia and stumbled upon pornography. I'd been using Wikipedia for about a year or so before I even found out its founder has an adult business.
But, if you're going to make that judgement for a community resource such as Wikipedia, do you do it with other businesses as well? It's been said recently that the consumer electronics industry is driven largely by what the adult industry needs in such devices (camcorders, DVD standards, etc.). Do you hold these companies to the same standard and refuse to purchase or recommend their products if they have any ties to adult oriented business?
Just sayin'
Since the copyrights are owned by the people who contribute to the articles, Google would have to contact each of them and ask them to relicense their contributions under a less permissive one. It's a bit like when that dude asked if a Linux kernel snapshot could be released under a BSD license for $50,000. Not going to happen.
AC comments get piped to
if you think about it, this whole thing started as a "web hosting" problem. If wikipedia, or any other community effort, didn't have this kind of problem we wouldn't be talking about paying for PD information.
Now, with all this P2P thing going on and being presented as the paradigm of a free internet, wouldn't it be possible to create a P2P Web Server? I imagine a central application that would divert request to different peers accordingly, I'm not talking about creating a P2P network with new clients and so, just use your browser and then let the server handle the P2P part.
This would keep free whatever the community would like to remain free, as people would be contributing with something they already paid for and are not using.
Would such a thing be feasable from a technical point of view?
That the same guy in PC magazine? I used to read that eons ago... I found myself in the grocery store and read his latest column (in PC Mag). It was kinda interesting, he was mentioning the Cell processor.
But he incorrectly stated, not once -- but three times, that the Cell was going to be a 250 "Teraflop" processor.
Dunno about him, but everywhere I've seen info on this chip, it was a gigaflop processor, not teraflop. Don't believe me? Go pick up the most recent PC Magazine, see for yourself.
FLR
WTF? 'Raid array'?? It does appear relevant to the whole of the 1st part of the article.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
For access to the Federated sum total of human knowledge, you're not going to get a lot of argument.
But what he means is we're going to put a branded toll booth on the public roads, patent maps, and the toll will be $20 a month. Muwahahahaha, that'll buy a lot of sharks with fricken lasers on their heads.
I pay enough for google's services now. I do them the very great courtesy of looking at the ads they provide and clicking on the ones that interest me. I could always do that for someone else. And if they do a better job than google, I will.
Dvorak? How is he an expert on Google and Wikipedia all of the sudden? Wasn't his one accomplishment just switching the keys on a keyboard?
According to Dvorak, W3Schools == W3C.
What a tool.
"You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute."
--From the GNU FDL
So, Google could not legally prevent access, no could they prevent content from being mirrored. Don't like Google? Then help maintain a wiki mirror elsewhere.
Seems to me Google just wants to co-opt an information resource that has become extremely popular of late. They'd like to be to serve it up as they do now, but with Google ads sprinkeled in the sidebar. Since I currently ignore the Google ads now in their searches and in my Gmail account, this wouldn't be an issue for me personally.
Smell that? You smell that? Burning karma, son. Nothing in the world smells like that...
Given Google's political donations, perhaps the worry is not without cause.
Perhaps the whole article was just flamebait.
As Wiki grows they need someone/somthing with the resources behind the scenes to provide the infrastructure. The GNU licence should provide sufficient protection and I'm sure there are enough legal eagles in the OSF community to provide help with the contract if neccessary.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Books that are in the public domain still cost money. Anyone has rights to publish them, but publishing them is still a business enterprise and still costs money. If google hosts Wikipedia, they ought to be able to attempt to make money off of it, but NOT by leveraging IP ownership or DRM. As long as the information can still be freely distributed as a public domain resource, mirrored by other interested parties, etc., then I don't see a problem with google hosting and charging for access.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Think about it - what is one of the greatest weaknesses of Wikipedia? It is not used in schools because it's not a paper encyclopedia, and doesn't have the reputation to overcome that hurdle. If Google lends its name to Wikipedia (since this relationship is already public), then will it provide enough respect to Wikipedia that searching for an item in Google and ensuring you use the Wikipedia entry (as well as other results) qualify as 'good enough' research?
After all, if that's what happens, Google sells a lot of search (which is ad revenue to them). For the investment (small relative to what Google has available), it's a heck of a good bet to make.
It said offering to host Wikepedia, which doesn't even closely resemble ownership or even a say in what happens with Wikipedia. I don't get how people are coming to these scenarios where Google is charging for it or ruining it somehow. They're just hosting it, The good press alone is worth the cost of a few servers, and if things start to get sticky for Wikipedia, there will be nothing stopping them from giving the servers back and moving along.
I dunno, maybe the article says something about this. I'll go read it now that I've posted.
This too, will end.
But I already know everything.
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
Go easy on the original poster.
He's most likely still a student, with eyes bright and glimmering full of idealism and hope.
He'll come to the sobering, crushing realization of how the "real world" works soon enough.
why anyone bothers to read his crap is beyond me. dvorak stopped being relevant a long time ago and hasn't written anything worth while or insightful in over a decade.
Dvorak's doing much the same thing for the tech industry that your paper's sports columnists do for the local teams. His role isn't "provide a balanced picture of such-and-so," it's more like "provoke a reaction by pushing every subject to distorted extremes."
Every sports section has at least one writer like that. Their job is to generate traffic, or responses, by staking out polemical opinions. Usually the one writer who pulls this duty paints a bleak picture of the local teams' moves, so as to get the loyalists to write in. It helps circulation. The same people work extra shifts on call-in shows, pretty often.
In this case, our sage has consistently been on the wrong side of basically every technology he's commented on in my book. He's a sort of gadfly to all things Apple, for example. (His reaction to the idea of the mouse was as spectacularly wrong as anything ever written on computers.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
This isn't evil...it's for taking care of sites just like this one who make a huge profit while producing very little content of their own...why should we all be allowed to use other peoples content and work for our own sites...why SHOULDN'T we pay if we want to use it...I think more of you need to RTFA because I immediately thought EVIL EVIL EVIL when I read the blurb but changed mind after RTFA. He's not even saying where you HAVE to buy in...he's saying where you CAN buy in...so if I have a site that I want to populate with content, and I produce near to zilch of my own (just like /.!!!) I could still use the content directly on my site vs linking people elsewhere to another site with the whole story...
It seems to me that they're talking about copyrighted content here. Rather than concocting a plan to bundle up free content and make people pay Google for access, it looks to me like Page was actually talking about reasonable means of access to copyrighted information.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The GNU Free Documentation License does NOT say collections have to be made available. If google hosts a competing wikipedia they are free to make it like their groups / usenet archive: you can browse some amount of pages/time before being banned for spidering but you can't download the whole archive even for a fee. Those are all public domain articles and the only way to get them is through google. The same could happen with wikipedia because the GNU license does not say the entire collection must be made available.
That's right. Google cannot be evil in this circumstance because they would be disobeying the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License). One of the first lines of this licence states: " Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein.". Doing what the article states would obviously be against it.
Also, this would probably not be profitable for Google since anyone could fork the material and offer it for free like wikipedia already has.
DejaNews was able to "sell" the Usenet stuff because it did not have any licenses attached to it. Fortunately, the people that founded Wikepedia are a bit smarter.
Ya for smart people.
Clearly they need to follow the internet/software model and offer two versions. One that is verified and supported for money and one that is degraded, unchecked and unsupported for free. That way everyone will have access to information but only people with money will have the right information. And then they can extend that model to premium services such as going out and looking for the information for you, collating it, packaging it and presenting it.
How else could trust fund kids make it through college?
This is a simple problem. Think about it, whatever google wants to do or plans in the future, Wikipedia is obviously against any sort of evil like this. All they have to do is make sufficient backups of the pedia and be careful not so sign anything away in the fine print of any contracts. Then if google turns evil wikipedia can sue, or just bring the pedia back up on some other hosting. Wikipedia wont die unless wikipedia turns evil.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days
should read
It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take anything from John C Dvorak as serious evidence these days
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
In particular, ladies and gentlemen, consider MSN Search's fantastic Encarta Integration feature; you ask, for instance, "Who killed Abraham Lincoln? (to take MSN's own sample search string), and it gives you the answer. As much as I hate MSN, I think this makes it MSN 1 - Google 0; nope, Google's answer.com integration just doesn't match.
I'd consider Google's offer of hosting Wikipedia sites in the light of this feature offering by Microsoft.
More than mere navel gazing.
oh... google is an evilbad overlord monopoly-abuser this week? I forgot to check the calendar.
Just offering a free service, in exchange perhaps to displaying some text ads or offering more relevant results to their searches. If someone is not satisfied, he can always host a copy himself.
As for subscription or pay-per-view information services, I am all for it, even for $100 per month, if the knowledge/art I get is not further restricted - I can burn a CD and give it to someone who can not afford access.
Google and Wikipedia on John C. Dvorak.
This is why I recently bought a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica and OED. I don't mind paying for paper, binding, etc., but there is no way I should pay per access for that which is the commons of humanity.
The Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has said before that he won't even allow ads to run on Wikipedia, no matter how much the site may cost to operate and how much revenue the ads would bring in.
Does anyone really think he's going to sell it off to Google and let them close it up like this?
Liberty in your lifetime
FTA: "But let's say that Google is as honorable as it claims and has no intention of doing anything more than making life better for everyone."
This reminds me of the day when our beloved Slashdot was bought. Concern were that it would lose its objective edge. Rob Malda said that if it happened, he'd start "Slashdot2". As it turns out, Slashdot has only grown and remained pretty much the same.
I suppose the same could happen here, where people could start "Wikipedia2" if Google mishandles it or tries to limit access.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
PC Magazine is zombie, it's empire crumbled, aside from it's regular product comparison charts (which are widely blamed for much of today's feature-bloat) nobody would still be aware of it's continued existence. From that sad little bailiwick Dvorak bleats for attention and worse yet the gullible wanna-be defenders rush to dispute him.
This week he's on a smear against Google & Wikipedia. It could as well been another (willfully) know-nothing Linux FUD article, or another Mac-troll, or whatever. They're all trash and only PHB's struck in the 80's still pay the slightest attention to his "opinions" (quotes because I don't think be means a bit of what he says himself.)
The folks who run Wikipedia are notably honest. To date the folks at Google have done pretty well by their "No Evil" credo. Everything on Wikipedia is open so if need be it could be quickly reconstituted elsewhere. Thus, whatever the negotiations between Wikipedia & Google there's nothing to fear.
If the current Wikipedia administration does something heinously stupid the project will route around them. Besides which the best guesses are Google is talking bandwidth & caching, perhaps prioritized ranking, not ownership.
Dvorak, he's taking an old quote out of context and trying to create a scare. That's not reporting, or even editorializing, that's just baiting, pure & simple. Don't play into his game, he's the SCO of journalism.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Everyone knows that Wikipedia is in the public domain and common intellectual property that has been contributed by thousands of volunteers in order to keep it in the public domain.
Google cannot charge for work, time, and knowlegde you and I have provided not only with promise but under the condition of keeping it public domain and common property.
Any attempt of Google to charge US for OUR intellectual property would not only be a hideous betrayal but theft of IP and a criminal offense.
Need I remind everyone about CDDB? I contribute my time and effort into uploading track descriptions, etc., only to have my contributions co-opted by the guy running the database. I don't plan on letting this happen again.
What, you mean like The Killer List Of Videogames, who collected submissions on all known arcade games from hundreds of people... then overnight suddenly announced that all the information added was their copyright, all submissions now belonged to them and you need express permission to use etc...
Dvorak's theory seems to be based on the idea that Google removed Groups from the front page and will lose Wikidedia as well. If I go to Google.com I can see Groups right at the top. So what's his point?
First, full discloser - I'm a long time wikipedia user and I probably accidentally played a peripheral role in breaking this story. I first heard about the google deal back in July. Google is not the first company to offer to host wikipedia. The typical offer comes from "Mom and Pop ISPs" (Jimbo's words) that really don't have any idea what they're getting themselves into (1,400 hits/sec is a helleva lot to do for free). What I have to say in reply to this story is - it is, IMHO, totally FUD. It's completely hypothetical, and it's unrealistic. You have to remember - all the text on Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License or in the public domain; all the images and audio are licensed under the GNU Free Documetnation license, or CC-by-SA, or something liberal equivalent. So even if, on the off chance, Google succumbs to the Corporate pressure to be evil, anyone can take the text and reuse it in less evil ways. Furthmore, I trust Jimbo, Angela, and Anthere (the visible members of the board) in dealing with google to make sure the deal is done right by the rest of us contributors. There's a long history on Wikipedia of being against ads of any form - the spanish wikipedia forked several years ago over hypothetical discussion of it.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Given your reasoning, I can only suppose then that you also refuse to watch the FOX news network or buy products from their sponsors. Ruppert Murdoch's FOX channel is part of his News Corporation. The same is true for Viacom Corporation, which provides another large swath of TV that seems close to the hearts of TV watchers everywhere. If you were to take the trouble to check, both are also among of the largest distributors of pornography in the country. There was a nice piece on PBS's Frontline program discussing thi issue.
Murdoch and Redstone are not dummies, but rather a shrewd businessmen. They've provided a nice conservative mouthpieces to satsify all the politicans who find it easy to appeal to the reactionaries moralists among us, so that they can also continue to bring in revenue from enterprises that other people also seem to be willing to pay for.
Next time you sit down to take in the FOX channel and the highly popular O'Reiley factor, you might want also to keep a bar of soap and some disinfectant handy so as to maintain your purity.
They might give you a better perspective on what it means to be "free" in America
Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.'
This is absolutely wrong. What Page was saying is all content that is charge for today could be made accessible for a flat fee and the creators of the content would be rewarded for the use of their content. He's talking about aggregating content and making it ALL available at a price point that people can afford, while at the same time reward content creators for their effort, not taking already free content and charging for it.
John C. Dvorak is a schmuck.
seriouslyexcited.net
On the other hand, as long as the Web is not Google's exclusive property (it seems so for the moment, but it might not last.), the free access portals might still triumph just because $20 per month is quite high for an access fee, for many parts of the world.
You're wrong. The problem wasn't that we didn't have enough servers, but that the servers we had were misconfigured. The slowness experienced in January was resolved when the configuration bugs were ironed out. The problem is a lack of skilled sysadmins and developers. (And for the record, we just put in an order for 10 more servers)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I fear that authors/editors would withdraw from Wikipedia if it were under the arm (or in the iron-fist) of a for-profit company. If these people felt like Google was profiting on the backs of their freely-contributed content, these content creators would leave and the Wiki would whither for lack of fresh/updated content. Donating time so that other may profit does not seem likely.
What is interesting is that Amazon makes this work. The company is clearly a for-profit entity. Yet its crown jewels are the volunteer-created book reviews. I'm not sure what makes this work. It might be that friends-of-authors are motivated to post glowing reviews, it might be that people who disliked the book are motivated to post scathing reviews, it might be that some reviewers simply like to publish, or all of the above. Perhaps Wiki/Google-pedia could borrow this model to mix free-labor with for-profit.
Looking further into the future on an alternate path, I wonder if Googlepedia could become a fully for-profit (or at least self-sufficient) professionally run and staffed encyclopedia. With micro-royalties to authors/editors (and moderation-based revocation of payments for "bad" content), the organization would attract content creators on a for-pay basis. This aligns the motivational underpinnings of the organization with those of the content creators. The current Wikipedia is for-free people creating for-free content. A future Googlepedia could by for-pay people creating for-pay content.
One overriding lesson from Wikipedia (and Slashdot for that matter) is the ultimate necessity of sources of hard currency for online sites. As long as something is small (and below a certain scale of popularity) it can survive on donated hardware, bandwidth, or the benevolence of a monied patron (someone who pays the hosting bills out-of-pocket). But once it reaches a certain scale, the cost of serious server power, bandwidth, and professional administrators pushes the budget far beyond the hobby scale. Although pleas for donations can help, I suspect large-scale sites must, ultimately, turn to ads, tie-in product sales, and subscriptions.
What is fascinating, in a long-term trend sense, is that the cost of scale are steadily declining. Cheaper hardware, declining bandwidth costs, and improvements in systems management tools mean that sites can reach ever-larger scales before generating prohibitive burn rates on costs. The number of visitors that a hobbyist/free-site can support continues to rise. Perhaps Wike need only wait for the singularity point when the cost to reach (and serve packets to) the entire world is within the reach of a home-grown, volunteer-run organization.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If Google hosts the space needed for Wikipedia, they will end up holding all the cards. Cause if the information is stored on a Google server, and not anywhere else, what prevents Google from pulling out or even threatening to pull out?
now ?
Google be be 0wning u base for time already. Every search is permanently logged, and unless you disable their cookie it keeps track of all u search across sessions, so they have a nice record like this:
Youe unique Cookie ID: 12Wdc3D28605k50261117fG4:
IP: 1.2.33.44 Browser: Moz' comp' Search: warez
IP: 1.2.33.44 Browser: Moz' comp' Search: pron
IP: 1.2.33.44 Browser: Moz' comp' Search: John Smith (my name)
IP: 1.2.33.44 Browser: Moz' comp' Search: Bloggs inc (my work)
IP: 1.2.33.44 Browser: Moz' comp' Search: oral sex
IP: 1.2.33.44 Browser: Moz' comp' Search: Fred Tonk (my boss)
build up a nice little profile on someone
You are a hippie idiot. Any company is a company to make MONEY, not to serve some general good. Guess what, even Kaiser and Cancer treatment places are there to MAKE MONEY, not for any other purpose. Maybe the people working there do so out of the "kindness of their heart," but that is not the intent of the organization as a whole. Same with Google. Same with Slashdot. And same with anything else.
Yes, but is the company in control or are the people in control? The moment companies start tossing people around, it's time to smash them. Capitalism is a sickening religion and we must always be ready to plunge an obsidian knife into its black heart.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
I suggested Google to support Wikipedia long time ago
Anyone else notice that when clicking out of the pcmag article a popup appears... even when using firefox? I have 1.0 installed right now with adblock and flashblock, as well as a new window suppressor, but that thing appeared anyway.
What's with this bullshit speculation? Just spell the contract out so that they can go back to the old way whenever they want.
If google wants to be charitable, I think they sholdn't have anything against such arragment. If they want to lock them into their hosting with a contract however -- I'd say that they have a fox's tail in tow.
(Eeehee... I'm afraid that Finnish proverb didn't translate too well...)
Bot Assisted Blogging
Does anyone know, by any chance, if there is a transcript available of the talk by Larry Page mentioned in the "revealing speech" linked from the new item? Apparently it was about the possibility of making television archives available online. I searched for it using... well, no prizes for guessing... but I didn't come up with anything.
Peer Pressure
When slashdot was purchased by andover networks (which was then purchased by VALinux) CmdrTaco got a contract stating that they would have control over it.
All wikipedia needs to do get a contract stating that google is not allowed to change the access system for the content. Google obviously has an intrest in getting at the worlds more organized datasources, since the internet is turning to crap thanks to spammers.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Actually, you're still the idiot...yes..99% of companies do want to make a profit but there are SOME that make enough to survive and provide FREE medical treatment etc...they even made a movie about one of these places...go educucate yourself a bit more before makeing assinine statements that are over generalized.
Information can be free, sure. The process of obtaining that free information is not necessarily free. The free information is hosted on a server that must be bought, and transmitted over a connection that must be bought. If it's a large-scale hosting project, support staff must be present to keep it working, and these staff must be paid. The person accessing the information is paying their ISP for their own connection, and had to buy their own computer. How much would you pay for a wikipedia that responded to requests as fast as Google does to searches?
They would no more charge to usage as they do their search engine.
I DO see them having advertisements like they do on Google now...not obnoxious ad banners, but side bars.
Come on, Dvorak is another fear-monger like all the other ones out there that wish to stir up controversy so people will go to his site and click his ads. I mean, you all DO know this right? I don't have to tell you this...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Actually, you're still the idiot...yes..99% of companies do want to make a profit but there are SOME that make enough to survive and provide FREE medical treatment etc...they even made a movie about one of these places...go educucate yourself a bit more before makeing assinine statements that are over generalized.
I think you need to learn the difference between company and non-profit organization. Look it up.
I see Google as one of the most worrisome longterm threats to the internet, and the "$20 per month" content fee comment is exactly why. I think Google intents to be the conduit through which every user accesses data over the internet with plans to profit by charging subscription fees, selling marketing data and doing targeted advertising.
Personally I see Google as a bigger threat than MS. MS sells a product which you can use or not use. Google plans on control of information.
The whole thing leaves a bad taste.
Should public domain information be free?
Slashdotters wouldn't have asked this question if the concerned company wasn't Google. Google obviously comes before silly things like free information.
If you didn't type the query into google, you would have missed out on this helarious blond joke!
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
There are also other operating systems, office suite applications, media players, web browsers,... you can use. Do a search for BSD, Linux, AtheOS, SkyOS, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, BSPlayer, PowerDVD, AbiWord, OpenOffice...).
So don't claim Microsoft has a monopoly over these things?
I didn't see how any of the links only remotely had anything to do with Wikipedia, other than being critical of how Google has handled DejaNews (without offering any ideas for a fix, and yes Usenet is generally broken), and to 'infer evil' based on nearly the last paragraph of a 'vision speech' from 2001.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I'm no expert on the license used, but I can well imagine that the following is true:
Google can charge a fee for accessing their servers, no problem.
Google can *not* prevent users from (legally) saving and distributing the content they got access to by paying, even after their subscription ended.
Then it disappeared, and now it's on a subpage that you have to dig for, and the search totally stinks.
Say what you will about the quality of Google Groups, but the link is still on the homepage...I know because I just looked.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
For all of you who speak German, I tried to explain certain aspects of this upcoming "thing".
For me as an active Wikipedian, it's amazing how strange these argumentations can become when you simply ignore the facts (such as wikipedia's license...).
I would love to see comments from you about my article which is more or less based on reliable facts, not rumors. Thanks.
Dvorak aka Wrong John has a well earned reputation for being 100% wrong on most occasions concerning technology directions.
I recall in the 90's how Wrong John stated without reservation that high speed cable networking would never work.
Wrong John has also opined about the dismal future for Linux - he thought that Apple would produce a version of the Apple OS for '86 processors and steal the desktop market from Microsoft.
Yup, Wrong John is for amusement only - not for serious debate.
Bar
Copyright © 2005 CD Baric. All rights reserved.
Seriously... so lets say google co-opts wikipedia and starts charging. What would stop some other like minded folk from setting up another wikipedia? And why would folk pay $20 a month for an encyclopedia, when the new (old) wiki is free?
I'm sure there's more to it that this...
The speech certainly is revealing - it reveals cryptoluddite's agenda, which is anti-google.
If you look at the quote in context, I think it's pretty clear that google is not talking about doing the selling, unless they are the gateway to ALL the content. They will never be that gateway. I do think that there is a market for commercial versions of some of this media, but I think the future is that you will pay only for directed media, and for convenient access to media. For instance a newspaper will have several classes of information, based on what they think they can sell to who; There will be information that is free on the web and also in print, information that is included in the cost of the paper but for which you must pay extra on the web, and so on.
In the meantime sites like E2 and Wikipedia will probably be freely available for the forseeable future, but I would like to see them have commercial or "pro" versions of the site. For example, the pay site would have full-text searching, and the free side might not (and in both cases, currently does not.) You would also be able to enter RFBs for research papers, and you could accept them based on price and posting history. This model would work better for E2 than for Wikipedia due to Wikipedia's collaborative nature, but it is not inapplicable to Wikipedia.
Anyway, any comissioned research would become a part of the database at an appropriate time (possibly part of the license agreement) and thus everyone would benefit. At the minimum, the site would make a commission, which would definitely benefit all of the service's users.
This is precisely the way software is going, and I don't see any reason that all kinds of media won't see the same development. In fact, I see no way that any kind of media can survive without making this transition.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Similarly, there are two ways to stop people from reading a library book: you can remove the book from the shelf, or you can just remove it's entry in the card catalog.
We should all keep in mind that Google is becomming the "card catalog" for much of the on-line world. Many would argue that if it doesn't exist on the from page of a Google search, then for most of the world, it just doesn't exist.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
a contract?
A public company is legally obligated to do everything reasonable to maximize profits. A private company can serve other interests if it likes.
Watch how fast Google generosity turns on a dime if their stock price collapses to 10% of its current value. Suddenly goodness and charity are nothing more than vehicles to monitize their investments.
There's no such thing as free when stock holders are involved.
I'm all for groups helping out the Commons, just as the long as the Commons makes sure that it isn't compramised in the process. Luckily, the Wikipedia group have a lot of good heads on their collective shoulders.
No artist tolerates reality. -- Nietzsche
He gave Network Solutions an award for Outstanding commercial Internet organization.
It's amazing how the world is hoodwinked every time an initially well meaning entity is transformed once money is introduced into the equation. If Google charge for Wikipedia, then the poor will once again be unable to provide an education to their children, while the wealthy minority will be able to further line their wallets. If on the other hand, Google simply host WikiP, then that will be great news. Be assured however that those in high places will do their utmost to stop the poor majority from seeking the world's most valuable asset, knowledge. For that is the way that those in power stay in power. And that's no conspiracy but the way the world has worked for millenia. Solution? A wealthy person of good character needs to back Wikipedia before it is too late.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
do you really want google's billing and marketing departments to know that you search daily on "donkey-porn"?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I've gotten around a lot of the countless screen clutter out there by hacking together a consortium of the main search forms i use every day (including wikipedia) and making this my home page. I get all the information i need in one single location, and i really didn't have to learn much html to do it.
Of course i hope for the best for wikipedia and all things open source/gnu, and i trust google. If they do anything to wikipedia, i'm sure they'll have long since learned from their usenet mistakes and actually change wikipedia -- if they DO change wikipedia (pretty big if there) -- for the general public good.
But, as my subject implies, so long as i can still grab their form and use it to get to the information i need without my corneas being bombarded by some corporate advertising jiz, then i really have no personal cause for alarm.
eric http://www.ericdfields.com/
Would be more like 20 bucks for access to ALL the world's content. Lexis-Nexis, academic journals, and other subscription only services. Access to all of 'em.
Would be nice. I'd pay for it in a heartbeat.
What's your point?
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days.
There is no more apt example than President himself.
Free not-necessarily-accurate data for everyone, fact-checked and extended commercial data for some?
"fact-checked and extended commercial data for some, tiny American flags for others!"
the coolest club on
...for a huge fee. So why can't Google charge for public domain.
Registrant:
Google Inc. (DOM-418736)
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
Domain Name: googlepedia.com
Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com
Administrative Contact:
DNS Admin (NIC-1467103) Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
+1.6503300100 Fax- +1.6506188571
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
DNS Admin (NIC-1467103) Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
+1.6503300100 Fax- +1.6506188571
Created on..............: 2004-Mar-04.
Expires on..............: 2006-Mar-04.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Mar-04 07:20:51.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.32.10
NS2.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.34.10
NS3.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.36.10
NS4.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.38.10
Too many people at Slashdot are blinded by Google's great products. Google is a public company whose goal is to make cash for its share holders. It's naive to think that they're going to be good old "free" Google. Sooner or later, they'll start charging for certain features of their site, just so that they can open up another revenue stream (anyone who thinks that ads and appliances is enough, outght to think again).
What's needed is an open-source search engine that can match Google in relevance and performance. An idea would be to make it a distributed search engine (people would donate parts of their hardware/bandwidth to the search engine).
Also, everything in Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL and available for free download. From what I understand, the GFDL is analagous to the GPL - basically, if you had the hardware, you could get MediaWiki and fork the entire 'pedia.
I see lot's of posts complaining about having to pay for wiki content etc.
The Davorak column and this story are total and complete FUD. Please highlight this fact, would be great if someone from the wiki could post something along these lines more officially.
In the hosting offer being considered there isn't even the requirement to show ads, Google could take the content and show ads alongside it already if they wanted to.
Further, Google may not "lock up" wiki, it is generally under GNU FDL which was written to handle all this sort of stuff.
The speech is simply along the lines of, how do we pay people to create content. Somewhat innocuous I think.
What DejaNews did to USENET was actually worse than merely not helping it--I think they destroyed it. What used to be an informal discussion forum where people could have frank conversations turned into something where every word you wrote was archived in perpetuity, under your real name. As a result, people went to other media, or at least started using anonymous accounts.
In general, making information easy to get to changes the use people make of that information. Sometimes that's for the better, and sometimes it's for the worse.
Has Dvorak ever written an article which wouldn't fit that description?
Not meaning to be incendiary, but am I the only person that thinks John Dvorak is an idiot? He predicted the collapse of Microsoft with no supporting evidence, and some really tenuous stretches of logic.
the general idea is that businesses exist to maximize their market value, making money isn't the same.
xb0x
I seriously think Google is offering to host Wikipedia because they are tired of seeing their bot timeout when indexing pages from the site.
Sindri Traustason.
Wow, you assume a lot.
I don't watch TV in general, for those reasons, among others(although you might examine other news sources just as critically, it would reveal a lot to you). I've never seen or heard Bill O'Reilly, just heard people complain about him on the internet.
I do read Wikipedia, as I said. I don't participate or refer others to it, generally. Large difference.
How in the WORLD do you assume that I watch a particular news station or on-air personality from what I said? You must have some serious existing prejudices that you should examine.
Didn't Jesus teach you anything?
His reaction to the idea of the mouse was as spectacularly wrong as anything ever written on computers.
"Wikipedia uses an experimental contribution model called a 'volunteers.' There is no evidence that people want to read articles by these people".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
But yes, Google is a public company now, and as such is statutorily required to maximize profits. Page and Brin could be sued for doing anything else.
If it were just the founder having something on the side, that would be an easily negligible matter, thanks to the impartiality of Wikipedia itself. Last I'd heard, though, Wikipedia is hosted and funded by the same company which had dealings in pornography.
I personally had no idea until I read it elsewhere (as I said, it's a long shot to get to pornography from the Wikipedia front page). I personally see it as a moral issue, but even more importantly for me--and more relevant for others--is that it's a matter of reputation for such an important project.
While I don't boycott electronics giants for selling camcorders without an agreement to not use them for porn (that opens up too many legal issues) or simply because they make money from people who make pornography (I'd sell a Pop-Tart to insert-your-favorite-convicted-felon-here), I do try to distance myself from companies that make money from pornography, or other things I find morally offensable. I buy my music from Russia or negligible-profit-margin sales, rather than support US copyright cartels, for instance.
Obviously, no one can find 100% separation from things that offend them, but everyone has a responsibility to exercise at least some judgement in what they participate in/support/purchase. I'd like to see Wikipedia be something that as few persons as possible can reasonably object to. It's close already, and this is one of the few roadblocks.
I dunno, I kind of enjoy it. It has that whole "freedom" thing, where your success depends on your own skill and drive in pursuing your objectives. Better a million losers get stuck in dead-end jobs to clear the way for the occsional towering genius than for everyone to be forcibly confined to safe, stagnant mediocrity.
Just my 2 cents, eh.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Yeah, blatant censorship is definitely the way to go for a company whose success is solely dependent on its reputation for reliability as a provider of information. (/sarcasm)
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
First any offer of hosting by Google or anybody else for that matter will not make the 40 or so servers that the Wikimedia Founation already owns go away or stop the foundation from paying its own hosting costs for those servers. Nor will it stop donations from coming in so the foundation can buy more hardware and bandwidth. And the foundation is *not* going to just rely on any one hosting partner but will instead seek out and act upon multiple offers (this is in fact necessary due to the exponential growth of traffic to the sites it operates; such as Wikipedia.org).
The most glaring omission Dvorak makes is the simple fact that due to the license Wikipedia uses, that it would be impossible for any one company to control it. If the 'end' were really near, somebody with better intentions could just download the *whole* Wikipedia and host it. But it would never come to that because the foundation would not allow it ; its very mission is to ensure free access to the projects it runs.
I'm very disappointed in Dvorak.
How in the world is that censorship?
If Wikipedia was hosted by a political party, I would say the same thing. Separating content from questionable providers isn't even only a slight deviation from the definition of censorship, it really has nothing at all to do with censorship.
I think he means Google Directory. That definitely disappeared from the front page when Google recently redesigned their pages.
For all the praises sung of Google's making Internet search actually useful and all of the technologically cool things that have come out of their research labs, it is often overlooked that they really dropped the ball when it came to Usenet. Formerly a very useful service, especially for those seeking support and discussion of the arcane, DejaNews has become pretty lame under Google. While Google is one of the more trusted Internet companies, their road to stratospheric stock prices has not been without falter.
Whole lotta FUD in there, and the linked article by Larry is twisted into FUD too. He wants people to pay $20 bucks so that the people who are creating content on the internet can get paid for making that content, not so Google will give you access to it.
Also, could someone explain what's wrong with Google Groups to me? From what I've looked at of it, it's pretty nice.
Sheesh, it's like Google Haterade month on the Internet.
"Kaiser"? That's a famous brewery here in Brazil.
That's Mav, Wikimedia's CFO :)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Yup, just like that fee they charge me to use their search engine!
If anything, Google is the most reliable website I've every experianced and recent problems at Wikipedia last month indicated that Wikipedia might need such help. I know that personally I prefer to search Wikipedia with Google more than the native search engine.....
Open Source Sushi
_IF_ google is to start charging for the Wikipedia content do I get a piece of that for each entry that I have helped to edit or create? I just dont think that this legality is worth Googles time. That doesnt mean that we should continue to turn a blind eye (admit it, most of you /.ers are blind sheep and Google is your shepard) to Googles ever increasing evilness and deny the possibility of them begining to charge for their services.
Or not in his world, anyway. Not that he's run a controlled experiment or anything...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Public domain information is free.
That doesn't mean access to it will be at no cost.
For example, the records of your local municipal government are almost certainly available to the public. But, it will cost you to get yourself downtown to City Hall to look at them. If you'd rather opt for another form of access -- say, sending someone downtown to find, copy, and deliver records to you -- you'll need to fork over some cash.
Neither Google or anyone else has any obligation to provide no-cost access to public domain data.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Does google link to any F/OS software in it's google appliances? Does "distribution" somehow exclude appliances? If not, is google distributing source code?
But can't a company make money by persuing a general good, or does every corporation HAVE to be an evil, rapacious monster? Kaiser is a for-profit venture which makes money to serve the public good, the profit is merely a side-effect of their main goal. Non-for-profits use all the money beyond operating costs to fund their goals, this should be a slight differential in the structure of the financing and not a complete reconsideration of their ultimate goals.
A company that does cancer research and is solely interested in profit would never achieve any kind of findings because research is their revenue-stream, finding a cure to cancer would kill the company, therefore sole interest in profit would be a Bad Thing(TM)
So, any company should exist to achieve goals--best OS, best car, a cool search engine--and consider profit the end-result. Anything else is the modus of a drug dealer or an assassin, profit above all other moral considerations.
You should know better.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
I can't figure out how to look it up.
Separating content from questionable providers is the definition of censorship...
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Hosting costs money, putting yourself on the radar takes time, having a huge database with considerable active content contributors takes effort
Wiki is not a dime a dozen. I certainly don't want to wait for another 5 years for the next one to come along
What does Google have a monopoly on? How about the original Usenet archives? You know, the ones from the 1980's, where the only copy was kept on a single tape at a University, that a former sysadmin went back and stole?
He then gave it to Google.
It's funny - I never heard about google ever offering to share THAT with anybody. And Google has made a lot of money off of it.
And, come to think of it, I don't recall Google ever offering to pay the University that originally had it.
That said, while they're under no obligation to give you a mirror of the entire database, once you have it, they obviously can't stop you from distributing it yourself.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I understand there are operating costs, but isn't Google's revenue stream that currently has it as one of the most successful business out there sufficient enough? The Google share holders certainly wouldn't argue against the current business plan.
It is not necessarily that I don't want to pay for outstanding services, its just that I fear the precident this would set for all services (e.g. pay-per-use operating systems and software) especially those on the web.
Adblock can handle anything from google ;)
Real men don't write sigs
Yes, the that's right. We have lots of wikipedia stories and more and more coming with this googlepedia story. It's time to create a Wikipedia category so we can use their logo in the stories!
Lest we forget, Google is not in this game as a benevelent dispenser of information...in whatever form. They are a publicly-traded, profit-driven corporation who is on-track to becoming the next 800 lbs. gorilla that everyone regrets dancing with.
In the end, Google, like Microsoft, will only get in the way of progress and innovation.
And how does this go counter with the original post, except that he doesn't call himself a hippie idiot?
What dictionary do you use?
Not only does censorship refer to the content or expression, but it is fundamentally different.
If voting process documentation was hosted by one political party and there was a call to have it hosted by an impartial party instead, would that be censorship?
(2) commercial software deprives people of vital rights - ie, they are evil.
Commercial software does no such thing. It is proprietary software that deprives people of rights. The GP's point was that it's important to realize that commercial FOSS projects can be good for the community, and note that FOSS part means (among other things) non-proprietary. Or to quote RMS:
Perhaps that makes it clearer what he thinks. Not that what he thinks matters as much as you claim it does.
[1] Quotation from an interview available here.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Q. When you started your company in 1964, was your intention to do research?
Q. Did you have lean times because of that commitment?
Q. Couldn't you have survived by going public?
Q. You would rather have let the company die than go public?
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
We could distribute the load and share the costs?
The mag might be a dinosour, the writer a hack but history has a habit of repeating (Tragedy of the Commons., Garrett Hardin, 1968.). Especially in the face of plunderers.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
While I don't speak for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, I am a regular follower and poster of the events on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list where this proposal has taken on a bit of urgancy.
/. articles as well as references in news media. All of this crushing demand to view content (where Wikipedia could produce a slashdot effect on /. itself) is taking up bandwidth that simply requires money just to be able to serve up the content.
The main point that needs to be looked at is the fact that Wikipedia has been experiencing some absolutely explosive growth in demand from people both trying to add articles, as well as people simply accessing it, like numerous cross-links to Wikipedia mentioned in various
The current proposed budget for maintaining the servers is on the order of $130,000 and all of that comes from voluntary donations of the community. (BTW, please give some $$$ if you are a regular user of Wikipedia).
Google has quietly given an offer to not only co-locate some Wikimedia servers at their facilities, but also to pay for the servers themselves as part of the general Google server farm.
From what I've seen, nothing in the proposal is to have Google "take over" the Google content. Just like Google uses data in the Open Directory Project for their google website directory, they are free to use the content of Wikipedia as long as they comply with the terms of the Gnu Free Documentation License.
This is not a way to "lock up" the content, but rather a way to browse Wikipedia in a way where you can be assured that the bandwidth is available to view the content. Basically, a mirror of the Wikipedia project. This is not even a new idea.
I would imagine that the fine points of negotiation right now are that links to add content would be folded back into the main-line Wikipedia database. This is just like the Open Directory Project has been doing for a number of years, so the preceedence is definitely there, even for Google. I don't deny that there is a valid business rationale for Google to host Wikipedia, but don't read more into it than is there: Google offering to host Wikipedia content.
John Dvorak absolutely does not speak for the Wikimedia Foundation, or even as a member of the community in general, and his comments are just to inflame issues from an otherwise uninterested technology journalist just trying to improve the sales of the publications he works for. Having been through similar publicity flare-ups in the past with other "open source" groups, Mr. Dvorak is not showing behavior consistant with even mediocre journalists that would at least contact members of the community he is reporting about. He is just doing raw speculation and that is it.
This article is disingenuous and I hope that Dvorak gets taken to task for the comments that he has made. I also hope that people like him don't kill the good-faith proposal that frankly the Wikipedia could really use, nor "poison" the water of other potential offers to help out in relieving the crushing bandwidth needs of the Wikipedia and other related projects. It is articles like this that give journalists an awful name and destroy what is left of credibility to their profession.
granted you can get access to the code, content AND have the ability to use the information. But your forgetting the costs associated with hosting and running hardware.
Wikipedia is reliant on Noblesse Oblige. Looking at the Wikipedia Foundation Inc is set up as a non profit organisation and according to its benefactors page is actively seeking funds to operate and expand.
The Wikipedia foundations agenda for wikipedia is ambitous.
To execute these objectives require fundraising of some sorts. The question I ask is if wikipedia does a deal with google in line with their aims will google try to use this ready made information source to generate revenue? And what steps will they take to avoid *non-payers* accessing wikipedia - hence the reference to the *commons*. The advantage wikipedia has over say the news groups or the domain registration is they have a voice (wikipedia foundation) and a solid license (gpl release of software and data).
So yes you can take the code and data but delivering the wikipedia service is another matter.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days.
3 31208&tid=155&tid=109&tid=117&tid=111&tid=95&tid=1 7
Cute, guys. 1991 is valid, though.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/15/2
But still, Google would still hold more power than Wikipedia. Cause the information held on the server would be more valuable than a lawsuit resulting.
Don't you just love hypocrisy?
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
Wikipedia isn't the code. Wikipedia isn't the Foundation. Wikipedia isn't the board. Wikipedia isn't the domain, or the hardware, or the bandwidth. Wikipedia isn't even the current corpus.
Those are all trees - step back and see the forest.
Wikipedia is contributions that have been made to it, the ways people use it, the value people find in it. If Wikipedia turns evil, through tainting by Google, or subversive grants, or Emperor Ming's Mind Control Ray, then we can start another one.
It's happened before & it'll happen again.
You're investing everything in some sort of centralized deified eternal object, and it simply t'aint that way.
Ten minutes after there is sufficient concern that folks feel a need to fork there will be a new domain, a donated server, a chunk of bandwidth, and a tip jar. Sure Wikipedia costs money, you honestly think it can't be found? Four phone calls and Wikipedia Next-Generation is funded for three months. Honestly.
That's all it takes, it's that easy, if there's a need.
Otherwise you've just got Angry Bob's personal Wikipedia and who cares?
What counts is the community, dedicated to the Wikipedia idea. That community isn't stupid or sheep like or without resources.
So yes, Wikipedia could fail. Any service or institution can fail. But the strength of a Wikipedia is that anyone can pick up the pieces and start the ball rolling again.
It's not a Tragedy of the Commons, it's the Strength of the Commons.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Wouldn't Google be obligated legaly to pay the people who submit articles wikipedia ?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
The original post opines that it would be a "scary scenario" to have, in essence, a massive database of information for $20/month. I spend more than that on *coffee* per month. Even if the database contains public domain sources, the massive level of effort required to digitize some large fraction of them (a far greater level of effort and storage requirements than Project Gutenberg so far) justifies a charge all by itself - not to mention that it would be buying access to a massively parallel server farm containing many terabytes of data and constantly updated.
There are people who are so anti-business and so cheap by nature that they'd rather forgo the greatest research tool in the history of humanity than pay something (and an absolutely piddling, trivial price) for it and have somebody make a profit.
So, we left that week with much improved load balancing for the Apaches. Much more consistent page load times now.
I addressed some of the other issues in an earlier post. Recommended reading if you want to know how the guy doing much of the capacity planning is thinking.
Google is doing a good thing. Still, being concerned is natural. We're well aware of the need to be independent and are looking out for ourselves and those who rely on us. The best way to help? Easy enough: if you've skills or equipment we need we need, offer those. If not, listen for us requesting money and respond when we ask, to whatever extent makes sense for you.
What the hell gives Google (or anyone else for that matter) the right to take content provided willingly and free by millions of people, take ownership of it and start charging for it?
This kind of stunt is exactly how Russian ogliarcs managed to aquire every major state asset for a small fraction of 1% of their true value.
Imagine if Google actually had to PAY the contributors -- say $10 per page. What would WikiPedia be worth? Of course even at that they have the bucks to do it -- but look at it another way -- would YOU be willing to contribute YOUR time and effort to create content for FREE that someone ELSE would package up and PROFIT from?
If so, you're a bigger sucker than I am. Unfortunately, all the WikiPedia contributors will probably NOT receive ANY of the $20 that was mentioned. It'll just go to the new 'information ogliarcs'.
On another front -- who the hell says that EVERYONE on the planet CAN EVEN AFFORD or has access to ANY METHOD of paying for this knowledge? School kids around the world sure don't -- unless they steal their parent's credit cards perhaps. Of course that doesn't help people who are too poor or live in countries where credit cards don't even exist.
For a minute there I got all excited thinking that Google had taken Wikipedia as a dataset and applied patterns in Antonin Dvorak's music to Wikipedia's usage and editing patterns to find the most interesting parts. Oh well. These are the open questions.
Deborah MacPherson Projects Director,Accuracy&Aesthetics On a Quest for Original Context
Nah, he was one of the early victims of TechTV's dumbing down. Now G4 has completed the task.
That said, the point made earlier about how withdrawing the servers later could kill Wikipedia is an interesting point...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I pay 29.95 for it already
bravo... those are great arguments. I miss this on slashdot :)
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Is nobody here aware of the terms of the GFDL? Derived works must be released under the same license. The whole point of Wikipedia's license is that nobody can make it proprietary.
Sheesh! Has no one on Slashdot read the damned license?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca