Jimmy Wales's Open Source Collaboration Tips

destinyland writes "In a new interview Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales acknowledges his debt to Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation and discusses his new open source search project. He applauds the way Open Source developers work around their ideological differences, acknowledges that he's an Ayn Rand objectivist who's skeptical of the wisdom of crowds, and blames Slashdot for his grandstanding comment that Wikipedia would bury Encyclopedia Brittanica within five years."

Comments

If you don't have the time, don't do it

[heroine]

If you don't have the time and the resources to fully support what you put on the internet, don't do it, or plan on a huge legal bill. You will be sued for negligence. You will lose your job. You're obligated to support what you put on the internet, whether or not the GPL says "no warranty".

Re:Ayn Rand? The fan dancer?

[NewIntellectual]

I encourage anyone reading CRCulver's flat-out lies about Ayn Rand's writings to read her works for themselves. Evidently he considers her philosophy - which holds that reality has natural laws, men should use logical thinking and should have rational self-interest, that capitalism is good - is "crackpot". Objectivism is the philosophy for thinking people - and it is true that it really riles up both the religious mystics, and secular mystics who believe that "society is all".

If you love science, reasoning, don't hate yourself, like trading the things that you create for things of value created by others, and generally find that your own happiness is important to you, it's likely that you'll love Ayn Rand's writings.

If you can't stand logical thought, think that every blade of grass on earth is more important than your own life, want a handout from the government, and think that all that counts is serving others, well, there's always Jesus or Karl Marx for you ...