Madame Katherine pontificates for our amusement
Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2018 12:51 am
‘There Is No Public Internet, and We Are the Closest Thing to It’
Only because Jimbo couldn't bullshit the people who did most of the work in 2001-2002 into making it for-profit. In other words, he tried to heel it, and failed, because he's not as brilliant or as glorious as he thinks he is....
Also not mentioned by Her Highness: that the WMF is heavily dependent on Google and is therefore not "free" at all. Of course she's not going to say anything that would upset the Larry&Sergeys and the Zuccs of the valley. So we get politically-neutral nonsense.
We were created for a very different purpose at a different time. The web that we came into actually had a number of larger collaborative, non-commercialized early projects, some of which still exist, and some of which don’t, that were more community-driven. And we sort of are a legacy of the original spirit of the web, and that’s very much what the Wikimedia Foundation was created to do — to ensure that Wikipedia was preserved as a nonprofit entity, with respect for community governance, and in the public interest and in the public spirit.
Only because Jimbo couldn't bullshit the people who did most of the work in 2001-2002 into making it for-profit. In other words, he tried to heel it, and failed, because he's not as brilliant or as glorious as he thinks he is....
Also not mentioned by Her Highness: that the WMF is heavily dependent on Google and is therefore not "free" at all. Of course she's not going to say anything that would upset the Larry&Sergeys and the Zuccs of the valley. So we get politically-neutral nonsense.