- GNUPedia
GNUPedia (later renamed GNE) was a project to create a
free content encyclopedia (licensed under theGNU Free Documentation License ) under the auspices of theFree Software Foundation . The idea for the project was initially proposed byRichard Stallman in 1999 and officially started in January 2001.Immediately upon its creation, GNUPedia was confronted by confusion with the similar-sounding
Nupedia project led byJimmy Wales andLarry Sanger , and controversy over whether this constituted a fork of the efforts to produce a free encyclopedia. In addition, Wales already owned the gnupedia.orgdomain name .GNUPedia participants frequently expressed concern about the amount of editorial control and bureaucracy involved in contributing to Nupedia. As GNUPedia wrestled with the issues regarding the level of moderation to apply for contributions to the encyclopedia, Wales invited contributors to look at
Wikipedia , which had just been started as a side project of Nupedia.The new Wikipedia project received an enthusiastic reaction from some GNUPedia participants, and Wikipedia eventually overtook both of the original efforts. The GNUPedia project continued to exist, and addressed the naming controversy by changing its name to GNE (an abbreviation for "GNE is Not an Encyclopedia", a
recursive acronym similar to that of theGNU project) and by redefining the project as a comprehensive "library of opinions" or "knowledge base ". However, the name change failed to help the project gain traction, and it gradually became inactive. Stallman has since lent his support to Wikipedia. [ [http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/encyclopedia.html The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)] ]ee also
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List of online encyclopedias External links
* [http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html Richard Stallman's initial proposal]
* [http://gne.sourceforge.net/eng/ GNE website] (inactive - random article retrieval returns blank page; search fails, with database error returned)
* Gnupedia/GNE mailing list discussions:
** [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gne/ General information] (inactive - only spam is being posted)
** [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gne/ Technical discussions] (inactive - only spam is being posted)References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
