Re: Slightly Off Topic: GPL'ed Encyclopedia ?

["John P.Looney" <valen redbrick dcu ie>]

On Thu, Nov 12, 1998 at 11:41:06PM -0500, Soren Harward mentioned:
> Phew, that's a helluva idea.  Unfortunately, the GNU/OSS/FSF movement
> if not a "free information" movement, it's a "free software" movement.
> There's a huge difference: if you don't like your mail client or there
> isn't a program that does something you want, you can just write one of
> your own from scratch.  However, you can't just make up factual
> information.  The research effort would be enormous, as would the entrophy
> level.  You'd end up with stuff like supercomplex descriptions of quantum
> particle physics while the "18th-century British Literature" article
> forgets to mention Pope's _The Rape of the Lock_.
> 
> Can you imagine the FUD?

 Yes, but can you imagine reading through it, and taking offence at someone
leaving some (what you consider vital) piece of information out of a piece,
and mailing the maintainer reminding them of this, and then, it's in the
next version a few weeks later.

 I can also imagine that there would likely be a massive imbalance in
content - much more techy stuff, say than literatute, but then again, it's
like that most of it's users would also be more techy than average...

 How could it be started ? Someone announcing a home page, and a request
for submissions in (say) sgml format ? Wait two years for enough
submissions to present something worthwhile...

Kate

-- 
'As my grandmother used to say, as she worked away on her spinning wheel,
"Those who do not remember history, are doomed to repeat it, especially if
they change the addressing modes, or wordsize of their architechture"'
 - Peter Van Der Linden