An excellent Interview of Jimmy Wales, founder of WikiPedia
Via the Creative Commons Weblog, Slashdot has an excellent interview of the amazing founder of WikiPedia, Jimmy Wales
The online collaborative encyclopedia WikiPedia has already more traffic than its commercial competitor Britannica. Here are some quotes:
[I] "Was wondering if you view the Wikipedia as a competitor or an additional tool compared to a World Book or an Encyclopedia Britannica?
Jimmy Wales:
I would view them as a competitor, except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within 5 years.
[...]
It is my intention to get a copy of Wikipedia to every single person on the planet in their own language. It is my intention that free textbooks from our wikibooks project will be used to revolutionize education in developing countries by radically cutting the cost of content.
[...]
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.
[...]
I have every confidence that we'll be just fine. The thing is: everyone loves Wikipedia. When I asked the world for $20,000 last January, we raised nearly $50,000 in less than a week."