Nupedia: Open Source: Open Review Discussion

[Nick Hockings]

Hmm,

this is slightly ironic since Nupedia is part of the GNU-project, and RMS 
arranged some programmers to assist Nupedia. 

Nupedia rules wrt writing articles require the author to be of proven expertise 
in the field for which he writes. That probably rules me out being a newbie. 
However we could put together spec for an article on this list. 

Sugested spec(just a starting point, please add/modify):

#What is free software: the four freedoms of free software
History: 
#When free was the norm.
#The start of non-free.
#RMS leaves MIT to found FSF
#Why: "The four freedoms of free software"
#Copyleft & The GPL
#The GNU project
#other FSF licences: LesserGPL, FDL
#Other free licenses: GPL compatible copyleft, non-copy left free licenses
#The growth of freesoftware: cronology of GNU project and other major 
freesoftware.
#The arrival of the Linux kernel, linking Linux to GNU => GNU/Linux
#Distributions and commercial involvement in GNU/Linux
#Associate organizations of the FSF: FSFE, Savana, FSFchina, FSFindia, 
#The FSF and the freesoftware movement: relationship, other organizations/major 
figures not formally associated with FSF.


Then any volunteer can write a draft and post it on  Nupedia's non-refereed 
sibling, Wikkipedia for criticism. Once the Wikkipedia article has been 
thoroughly polished we could get some senior members of FSF to give it their 
stamp of aproval and submit it to Nupedia.

It would also be a good idea to ensure accuracy and agreement with the open 
source article. (Just so long as we convert Open Source'ers to Freesoftware 
rather than driving them off.) A dificult point will be Eric S Raymond's 
departure from FSF. I'm not sure either ESR or RMS like talking about that.


Quoting Olivier Berger <oberger at april.org>:
> Hi.
> 
> I think that we may watch closely what happens with the Open Source
> article being written in nupedia at the present time :
>http://www.nupedia.com/newsystem/ordiscuss_1.phtml?arean=compsci&instr=off&id=3
2
> I'm afraid a Free Software article isn't under work :(
> 
> Regards,



Nick Hockings

<s96121272 at op.up.ac.za>,
<s96121272 at tuks.co.za>,
<nickh at nupedia.com>