www/encyclopedia encyclopedia-announcement.txt ...

[Ali Reza Hayati]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Ali Reza Hayati <arh>   21/01/04 13:57:58

Added files:
        encyclopedia   : encyclopedia-announcement.txt 
Removed files:
        encyclopedia   : anencyc.txt 

Log message:
        Changed the name of anencyc.txt to encyclopedia-announcement.txt [RT 
#1670731]

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/encyclopedia/encyclopedia-announcement.txt?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/encyclopedia/anencyc.txt?cvsroot=www&r1=1.1&r2=0

Patches:
Index: encyclopedia-announcement.txt
===================================================================
RCS file: encyclopedia-announcement.txt
diff -N encyclopedia-announcement.txt
--- /dev/null   1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ encyclopedia-announcement.txt       4 Jan 2021 18:57:58 -0000       1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,475 @@
+From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
+Subject: Re: Evaluation of Gcompris
+To: vtamara@gnu.org
+Date:  Mon, 18 Dec 2000 15:21:47 -0700 (MST)
+Reply-to: rms@gnu.org
+
+       The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource
+                       -- Richard Stallman
+
+The World Wide Web has the potential to develop into a universal
+encyclopedia covering all areas of knowledge, and a complete library
+of instructional courses.  This outcome could happen without any
+special effort, if no one interferes.  But corporations are mobilizing
+now to direct the future down a different track--one in which they
+control and restrict access to learning materials, so as to extract
+money from people who want to learn.
+
+To ensure that the web develops toward the best and most natural outcome,
+where it becomes a free encyclopedia, we must make a conscious effort
+to prevent deliberate sequestration of the encyclopedic and
+educational information on the net.  We cannot stop business from
+restricting the information it makes available; what we can do is
+provide an alternative.  We need to launch a movement to develop a
+universal free encyclopedia, much as the Free Software movement gave
+us the free software operating system GNU/Linux.  The free
+encyclopedia will provide an alternative to the restricted ones that
+media corporations will write.
+
+The rest of this article aims to lay out what the free encyclopedia
+needs to do, what sort of freedoms it needs to give the public,
+and how we can get started on developing it.
+
+* An encyclopedia located everywhere.
+
+In the past, encyclopedias have been written under the direction of a
+single organization, which made all decisions about the content, and
+have been published in a centralized fashion.  It would not make sense
+to develop and publish the free encyclopedia in those ways--they fit
+poorly with the nature of the World Wide Web and with the resources
+available for writing the encyclopedia.
+
+The free encyclopedia will not be published in any one place.  It will
+consist of all web pages that cover suitable topics, and have been
+made suitably available.  These pages will be developed in a
+decentralized manner by thousands of contributors, each independently
+writing articles and posting them on various web servers.  No one
+organization will be in charge, because such centralization would be
+incompatible with decentralized progress.
+
+* Who will write the encyclopedia?
+
+In principle, anyone is welcome to write articles for the
+encyclopedia.  But as we reach out for people to help, the most
+promising places to look are among teachers and students.  Teachers
+generally like to teach, and writing an article a year for the
+encyclopedia would be an enjoyable change from their classroom duties.
+For students, a major school paper could become an encyclopedia
+article, if done especially well.
+
+* Small steps will do the job.
+
+When a project is exciting, it is easy to imagine a big contribution
+that you would like to make, bite off more than you can chew, and
+ultimately give up with nothing to show for it.
+
+So it is important to welcome and encourage smaller contributions.
+Writing a textbook for a whole semester's material is a big job, and
+only a small fraction of teachers will contribute that much.  But
+writing about a topic small enough for one meeting of a class is a
+contribution that many can afford to make.  Enough of these small
+contributions can cover the whole range of knowledge.
+
+* Take the long view.
+
+The encyclopedia is a big job, and it won't be finished in a year.  If
+it takes twenty years to complete the free encyclopedia, that will be
+but an instant in the history of literature and civilization.
+
+In projects like this, progress is slow for the first few years; then
+it accelerates as the work that has been done attracts more and more
+people to join in.  Eventually there is an avalanche of progress.  So
+we should not feel discouraged when the first few years do not bring
+us close to completion.  It makes sense to choose the first steps to
+illustrate what can be done, and to spread interest in the long-term
+goal, so as to inspire others to join in.
+
+This means that the pioneers' job, in the early years, is above all to
+be steadfast.  We must be on guard against downgrading to a less
+useful, less idealistic goal, just because of the magnitude of the
+task.  Instead of measuring our early steps against the size of the
+whole job, we should think of them as examples, and have confidence
+that they will inspire a growing number of contributors to join and
+finish the job.
+
+* Evangelize.
+
+Since we hope that teachers and students at many colleges around the
+world will join in writing contributions to the free encyclopedia,
+let's not leave this to chance.  There are already scattered examples
+of what can be done.  Let's present these examples systematically to
+the academic community, show the vision of the free universal
+encyclopedia, and invite others to join in writing it.
+
+* What should the free encyclopedia contain?
+
+The free encyclopedia should aim eventually to include one or more
+articles for any topic you would expect to find in another
+encyclopedia.  In addition, since there is no practical limit to the
+amount of encyclopedic material that can be on the web, this
+encyclopedia should eventually also cover the more advanced and
+specialized topics you might expect to find in specialized
+encyclopedias, such as an "Encyclopedia of Physics", "Encyclopedia of
+Medicine", "Encyclopedia of Gardening", or "Encyclopedia of Cooking".
+It could go even further; for example, bird watchers might eventually
+contribute an article on each species of bird, along with pictures and
+recordings of its calls.
+
+However, only some kinds of information belong in an encyclopedia.
+For example, scholarly papers, detailed statistical data bases, news
+reports, fiction and art, extensive bibliographies, and catalogs of
+merchandise, useful as they are, are outside the scope of an
+encyclopedia.  (Some of the articles might usefully contain links to
+such works.)
+
+Courses in the learning resource are a generalization to hypertext of
+the textbooks used for teaching a subject to yourself or to a class.
+The learning resource should eventually include courses for all
+academic subjects, from mathematics to art history, and practical
+subjects such as gardening as well, to the extent this makes sense.
+(Some practical subjects, such as massage or instrumental ensemble
+playing, may not be possible to study from a "book" without a human
+teacher--these are arguably less useful to include.)  It should cover
+these subjects at all the levels that are useful, which might in some
+cases range from first grade to graduate school.
+
+A useful encyclopedia article will address a specific topic at a
+particular level, and each author will contribute mainly by focusing
+on an area that he or she knows very well.  But we should keep in the
+back of our minds, while doing this, the vision of a free encyclopedia
+that is universal in scope--so that we can firmly reject any attempt
+to put artificial limits on either the scope or the free status of the
+encyclopedia.
+
+* Criteria pages must meet.
+
+To ensure this encyclopedia is indeed a free and universal
+encyclopedia, we must set criteria of freeness for encyclopedia
+articles and courses to meet.
+
+Conventional non-free encyclopedias published by companies such as
+Microsoft will surely be made available on the web, sooner or
+later--but you will probably have to pay to read an article, and you
+surely won't be allowed to redistribute them.  If we are content with
+knowledge as a commodity, accessible only through a computerized
+bureaucracy, we can simply let companies provide it.
+
+But if we want to keep human knowledge open and freely available to
+humanity, we have to do the work to make it available that way.  We
+have to write a free encyclopedia--so we must first determine the
+proper interpretation of "free" for an encyclopedia on the Internet.
+We must decide what criteria of freedom a free encyclopedia and a free
+learning resource should meet.
+
+* Permit universal access.
+
+The free encyclopedia should be open to public access by everyone who
+can gain access to the web.  Those who seek to gain control over
+educational materials, so they can profit by restricting access to
+them, will push us to "compromise" by agreeing to restrict access
+in exchange for their participation.  We must stand firm, and reject
+any deal that is inconsistent with the ultimate goal.  We are in no
+hurry, and there is no sense in getting to the wrong place a few years
+sooner.
+
+* Permit mirror sites.
+
+When information is available on the web only at one site, its
+availability is vulnerable.  A local problem--a computer crash, an
+earthquake or flood, a budget cut, a change in policy of the school
+administration--could cut off access for everyone forever.  To guard
+against loss of the encyclopedia's material, we should make sure that
+every piece of the encyclopedia is available from many sites on the
+Internet, and that new copies can be put up if some disappear.
+
+There is no need to set up an organization or a bureaucracy to do
+this, because Internet users like to set up "mirror sites" which hold
+duplicate copies of interesting web pages.  What we must do in advance
+is ensure that this is legally permitted.
+
+Therefore, each encyclopedia article and each course should explicitly
+grant irrevocable permission for anyone to make verbatim copies
+available on mirror sites.  This permission should be one of the basic
+stated principles of the free encyclopedia.
+
+Some day there may be systematic efforts to ensure that each article
+and course is replicated in many copies--perhaps at least once on each
+of the six inhabited continents.  This would be a natural extension of
+the mission of archiving that libraries undertake today.  But it would
+be premature to make formal plans for this now.  It is sufficient for
+now to resolve to make sure people have permission to do this
+mirroring when they get around to it.
+
+* Permit translation into other languages.
+
+People will have a use for encyclopedia material on each topic in
+every human language.  But the primary language of the Internet--as of
+the world of commerce and science today--is English.  Most likely,
+encyclopedia contributions in English will run ahead of other
+languages, and the encyclopedia will approach completeness in English
+first.
+
+Trying to fight this tendency would be self-defeating.  The easier way
+to make the encyclopedia available in all languages is by encouraging
+one person to translate what another has written.  In this way, each
+article can be translated into many languages.
+
+But if this requires explicit permission, it will be too difficult.
+Therefore, we must adopt a basic rule that anyone is permitted to
+publish an accurate translation of any article or course, with proper
+attribution.  Each article and each course should carry a statement
+giving permission for translations.
+
+To ensure accuracy of translation, the author of the original should
+reserve the right to insist on corrections in a translation.  A
+translator should perhaps have to give the original author a
+reasonable amount of time to do this, perhaps three months, before
+publishing the translation in the first place.  After that, the
+translator should continue to make corrections at the author's
+request, whenever the author asks for them.
+
+In time, as the number of people involved in encyclopedia activity
+increases, contributors may form Translation Accuracy Societies for
+various languages, which undertake to ensure the accuracy of
+translations into those languages.  An author could then designate a
+Translation Accuracy Society to check and correct a certain
+translation of a certain work.  It may be wise to keep the Translation
+Accuracy Societies separate from the actual translators, so that each
+translation will be checked by someone other than the translator.
+
+* Permit quotation with attribution.
+
+Each encyclopedia article or course should permit anyone to quote
+arbitrary portions in another encyclopedia article or course, provided
+proper attribution is given.  This will make it possible to build on
+the work others have done, without the need to completely replace it.
+
+Different authors may--if they care--set different rules for what
+constitutes proper attribution to them; that is ok.  As long as the
+rules set for a particular work are not unreasonable or impractical,
+they will cause no problem.
+
+* Permit modified versions of courses.
+
+Courses must evolve, and the original authors won't keep working on
+them forever.  And teachers will want to adapt course materials to
+their own curriculum plans and teaching methods.  Since courses will
+typically be large (like a textbook today), it would be unacceptably
+wasteful to tell teachers, "Write your own from scratch, if you want
+to change this".
+
+Therefore, modifying an existing course must be permitted; each course
+should carry a statement giving permission to publish a modified
+version.
+
+It makes sense to require modified versions to carry proper
+attribution giving credit to the authors of the previous version, and
+be labelled clearly as modified, so that there is no confusion about
+whose views they present.
+
+* Permit modified versions of pictures and videos, for courses.
+
+Pictures and videos, both drawn and photographic, will play an
+important role in many courses.  Modifying these pictures and videos
+will be pedagogically useful.  For example, you could crop a picture
+to focus attention on a certain feature, or circle or label particular
+features.  Using false color can help make certain aspects easier to
+see.  Image enhancement is also possible.
+
+Beyond that, an altered version of a picture could illustrate a
+different but related idea.  You could start with a diagram useful for
+one theorem in geometry, and add to it, to produce a diagram that is
+relevant to another theorem.
+
+Permission to modify pictures and videos is particulary important
+because the alternative, to make your own picture or video from
+scratch, is often very hard.  It is not terribly hard to write your
+own text, to convey certain facts from your own angle, but doing the
+same thing with a picture is not feasible.
+
+Of course, modified versions of pictures and videos should be labeled
+as modified, to prevent misattribution of their contents, and should
+give credit properly to the original.
+
+* Only free software in the encyclopedia.
+
+Articles, and especially courses, will often include software--for
+example, to display a simulation of a chemical reaction, or teach you
+how often to stir a sauce so it won't burn.  To ensure that the
+encyclopedia is indeed free, all software included in articles and
+courses should meet the criteria of free software
+(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) and open source software
+(http://www.opensource.org).
+
+* No central control.
+
+People often suggest that "quality control" is essential for an
+encyclopedia, and ask what sort of "governing board" will decide which
+articles to accept as part of the free encyclopedia.  The answer is,
+"no one".  We cannot afford to let anyone have such control.
+
+If the free encyclopedia is a success, it will become so ubiquitous
+and important that we dare not allow any organization to decide what
+counts as part of it.  This organization would have too much power;
+people would seek to politicize or corrupt it, and could easily
+succeed.
+
+The only solution to that problem is not to have any such
+organization, and reject the idea of centralized quality control.
+Instead, we should let everyone decide.  If a web page is about a
+suitable topic, and meets the criteria for an article, then we can
+consider it an article.  If a page meets the criteria for a course,
+then we can consider it a course.
+
+But what some pages are erroneous, or even deceptive?  We cannot
+assume this won't happen.  But the corrective is for other articles to
+point out the error.  Instead of having "quality control" by one
+privileged organization, we will have review by various groups, which
+will earn respect by their own policies and actions.  In a world where
+no one is infallible, this is the best we can do.
+
+* Encourage peer review and endorsements.
+
+There will be no single organization in charge of what to include in
+the encyclopedia or the learning resource, no one that can be lobbied
+to exclude "creation science" or holocaust denial (or, by the same
+token, lobbied to exclude evolution or the history of Nazi death
+camps).  Where there is controversy, multiple views will be
+represented.  So it will be useful for readers to be able to see who
+endorses or has reviewed a given article's version of the subject.
+
+In fields such as science, engineering, and history, there are formal
+standards of peer review.  We should encourage authors of articles and
+courses to seek peer review, both through existing formal scholarly
+mechanisms, and through the informal mechanism of asking respected
+names in the field for permission to cite their endorsement in the
+article or course.
+
+A peer-review endorsement applies to one version of a work, not to
+modified versions.  Therefore, when a course has peer-review
+endorsements, it should require anyone who publishes a modified
+version of the course to remove the endorsements.  (The author of the
+modified version would be free to seek new endorsements for that
+version.)
+
+* No catalogue, yet.
+
+When the encyclopedia is well populated, catalogues will be very
+important.  But we should not try to address the issue of cataloguing
+now, because it is premature.  What we need this year and for the
+coming years is to write articles.  Once we have them, once we have a
+large number of volunteers producing a large number of articles, that
+will be the time to catalogue them.  At that time, enough people will
+be interested in the encyclopedia to provide the manpower to do the
+work.
+
+Since no one organization will be in charge of the encyclopedia, there
+cannot be one authoritative catalogue.  Instead, anyone will be free
+to make a catalogue, just as anyone is free to provide peer review.
+Cataloguers will gain respect according to their decisions.
+
+Encyclopedia pages will surely be listed in ordinary web search sites,
+and perhaps those are the only catalogues that will be needed.  But
+true catalogues should permit redistribution, translation, and
+modification--that is, the criteria for courses should apply to
+catalogues as well.
+
+What can usefully be done from the beginning is to report new
+encyclopedia articles to a particular site, which can record their
+names as raw material for real catalogues, whenever people start to
+write them.  To start off, we will use http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia
+for this.
+
+* Making links to other pages.
+
+The last and most important rule for pages in the encyclopedia is the
+exclusionary rule:
+
+  If a page on the web covers subject matter that ought to be in the
+  encyclopedia or the course library, but its license is too
+  restricted to qualify, we must not make links to it from
+  encyclopedia articles or from courses.
+
+This rule will make sure we respect our own rules, in the same way
+that the exclusionary rule for evidence is supposed to make police
+respect their own rules: by not allowing us to treat work which fails
+to meet the criteria as if it did meet them.
+
+The idea of the World Wide Web is that links tie various separate
+pages into a larger whole.  So when encyclopedia articles or courses
+link to a certain page, those links effectively make the page part of
+the encyclopedia.  To claim otherwise would be self-deception.  If we
+are to take seriously the criteria set forth above, or any criteria
+whatsoever, we have to base our actions on them, by not incorporating
+a page into our network of pages if it doesn't fit the criteria.
+
+When a topic ought to be covered in the encyclopedia or with a course,
+but it isn't, we must make sure we don't forget that we have a gap.
+The exclusionary rule will remind us.  Each time we think of making a
+link to the unacceptable page, and we stop because of the exclusionary
+rule, that will remind us that someone ought to write another page
+about the same topic--one that is free enough to be part of the
+encyclopedia.  Eventually, one of us will do the job.
+
+On the other hand, many web pages cover material that wouldn't
+normally be included in an encyclopedia--for example, scholarly
+papers, detailed statistical data bases, news reports, fiction and
+art, extensive bibliographies, and catalogs of merchandise.  Such
+pages, regardless of whether they are free enough to be in the
+encyclopedia, are outside its scope.  They do not represent gaps in
+the encyclopedia.  So there is no need to apply the encyclopedia
+criteria in making links to such pages.
+
+To produce a complete encyclopedia which satisfies the principles of
+freedom stated here will take a long time, but we will get it done
+eventually--as long as we remember the goal.  The greatest danger is
+that we will lose sight of the goal and settle for less.  The
+exclusionary rule will make sure we keep going all the way.
+
+* Uphold the freedom to contribute.
+
+As education moves on-line and is increasingly commercialized,
+teachers are in danger of losing even the right to make their work
+freely available to the public.  Some universities have tried to claim
+ownership over on-line materials produced by teachers, to turn it into
+commercial "courseware" with restricted use.  Meanwhile, other
+universities have outsourced their on-line services to corporations,
+some of which claim to own all materials posted on the university web
+sites.
+
+It will be up to professors to resist this tendency.  But there is
+more than one way to do so.  The most obvious basis for objection is
+to say, "I own this work, and I, not the university, have the right to
+sell it to a company if I wish".  But that places the faculty on the
+same selfish moral level as the university, so that neither side has a
+moral advantage in the argument.
+
+If, on the other hand, professors say, "I want to be able to make my
+work fully available to the public without restriction," they occupy
+the commanding moral position, which a university can oppose only by
+setting itself against the public, against learning, and against
+scholarship.
+
+Resisting the selling of the university will not be easy.  Professors
+had better make use of any advantage they can find--especially moral
+advantages.
+
+Two other points that will help are that (1) a few prestigious
+universities will probably gobble up most of the commercial business,
+so other universities would be deluding themselves to think they can
+really get a great deal of funds from selling themselves, and (2)
+business is likely to drive even the elite universities out of the
+most lucrative parts of the field.
+
+* Spread the word.
+
+When you post a potential encyclopedia article or a course, you can
+reference this plan if you wish, to help spread the word and inspire
+others to help.
+
+
+Copyright 1999 Richard Stallman
+Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article
+are permitted in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
+
+

Index: anencyc.txt
===================================================================
RCS file: anencyc.txt
diff -N anencyc.txt
--- anencyc.txt 13 Feb 2001 01:21:44 -0000      1.1
+++ /dev/null   1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
@@ -1,475 +0,0 @@
-From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
-Subject: Re: Evaluation of Gcompris
-To: vtamara@gnu.org
-Date:  Mon, 18 Dec 2000 15:21:47 -0700 (MST)
-Reply-to: rms@gnu.org
-
-       The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource
-                       -- Richard Stallman
-
-The World Wide Web has the potential to develop into a universal
-encyclopedia covering all areas of knowledge, and a complete library
-of instructional courses.  This outcome could happen without any
-special effort, if no one interferes.  But corporations are mobilizing
-now to direct the future down a different track--one in which they
-control and restrict access to learning materials, so as to extract
-money from people who want to learn.
-
-To ensure that the web develops toward the best and most natural outcome,
-where it becomes a free encyclopedia, we must make a conscious effort
-to prevent deliberate sequestration of the encyclopedic and
-educational information on the net.  We cannot stop business from
-restricting the information it makes available; what we can do is
-provide an alternative.  We need to launch a movement to develop a
-universal free encyclopedia, much as the Free Software movement gave
-us the free software operating system GNU/Linux.  The free
-encyclopedia will provide an alternative to the restricted ones that
-media corporations will write.
-
-The rest of this article aims to lay out what the free encyclopedia
-needs to do, what sort of freedoms it needs to give the public,
-and how we can get started on developing it.
-
-* An encyclopedia located everywhere.
-
-In the past, encyclopedias have been written under the direction of a
-single organization, which made all decisions about the content, and
-have been published in a centralized fashion.  It would not make sense
-to develop and publish the free encyclopedia in those ways--they fit
-poorly with the nature of the World Wide Web and with the resources
-available for writing the encyclopedia.
-
-The free encyclopedia will not be published in any one place.  It will
-consist of all web pages that cover suitable topics, and have been
-made suitably available.  These pages will be developed in a
-decentralized manner by thousands of contributors, each independently
-writing articles and posting them on various web servers.  No one
-organization will be in charge, because such centralization would be
-incompatible with decentralized progress.
-
-* Who will write the encyclopedia?
-
-In principle, anyone is welcome to write articles for the
-encyclopedia.  But as we reach out for people to help, the most
-promising places to look are among teachers and students.  Teachers
-generally like to teach, and writing an article a year for the
-encyclopedia would be an enjoyable change from their classroom duties.
-For students, a major school paper could become an encyclopedia
-article, if done especially well.
-
-* Small steps will do the job.
-
-When a project is exciting, it is easy to imagine a big contribution
-that you would like to make, bite off more than you can chew, and
-ultimately give up with nothing to show for it.
-
-So it is important to welcome and encourage smaller contributions.
-Writing a textbook for a whole semester's material is a big job, and
-only a small fraction of teachers will contribute that much.  But
-writing about a topic small enough for one meeting of a class is a
-contribution that many can afford to make.  Enough of these small
-contributions can cover the whole range of knowledge.
-
-* Take the long view.
-
-The encyclopedia is a big job, and it won't be finished in a year.  If
-it takes twenty years to complete the free encyclopedia, that will be
-but an instant in the history of literature and civilization.
-
-In projects like this, progress is slow for the first few years; then
-it accelerates as the work that has been done attracts more and more
-people to join in.  Eventually there is an avalanche of progress.  So
-we should not feel discouraged when the first few years do not bring
-us close to completion.  It makes sense to choose the first steps to
-illustrate what can be done, and to spread interest in the long-term
-goal, so as to inspire others to join in.
-
-This means that the pioneers' job, in the early years, is above all to
-be steadfast.  We must be on guard against downgrading to a less
-useful, less idealistic goal, just because of the magnitude of the
-task.  Instead of measuring our early steps against the size of the
-whole job, we should think of them as examples, and have confidence
-that they will inspire a growing number of contributors to join and
-finish the job.
-
-* Evangelize.
-
-Since we hope that teachers and students at many colleges around the
-world will join in writing contributions to the free encyclopedia,
-let's not leave this to chance.  There are already scattered examples
-of what can be done.  Let's present these examples systematically to
-the academic community, show the vision of the free universal
-encyclopedia, and invite others to join in writing it.
-
-* What should the free encyclopedia contain?
-
-The free encyclopedia should aim eventually to include one or more
-articles for any topic you would expect to find in another
-encyclopedia.  In addition, since there is no practical limit to the
-amount of encyclopedic material that can be on the web, this
-encyclopedia should eventually also cover the more advanced and
-specialized topics you might expect to find in specialized
-encyclopedias, such as an "Encyclopedia of Physics", "Encyclopedia of
-Medicine", "Encyclopedia of Gardening", or "Encyclopedia of Cooking".
-It could go even further; for example, bird watchers might eventually
-contribute an article on each species of bird, along with pictures and
-recordings of its calls.
-
-However, only some kinds of information belong in an encyclopedia.
-For example, scholarly papers, detailed statistical data bases, news
-reports, fiction and art, extensive bibliographies, and catalogs of
-merchandise, useful as they are, are outside the scope of an
-encyclopedia.  (Some of the articles might usefully contain links to
-such works.)
-
-Courses in the learning resource are a generalization to hypertext of
-the textbooks used for teaching a subject to yourself or to a class.
-The learning resource should eventually include courses for all
-academic subjects, from mathematics to art history, and practical
-subjects such as gardening as well, to the extent this makes sense.
-(Some practical subjects, such as massage or instrumental ensemble
-playing, may not be possible to study from a "book" without a human
-teacher--these are arguably less useful to include.)  It should cover
-these subjects at all the levels that are useful, which might in some
-cases range from first grade to graduate school.
-
-A useful encyclopedia article will address a specific topic at a
-particular level, and each author will contribute mainly by focusing
-on an area that he or she knows very well.  But we should keep in the
-back of our minds, while doing this, the vision of a free encyclopedia
-that is universal in scope--so that we can firmly reject any attempt
-to put artificial limits on either the scope or the free status of the
-encyclopedia.
-
-* Criteria pages must meet.
-
-To ensure this encyclopedia is indeed a free and universal
-encyclopedia, we must set criteria of freeness for encyclopedia
-articles and courses to meet.
-
-Conventional non-free encyclopedias published by companies such as
-Microsoft will surely be made available on the web, sooner or
-later--but you will probably have to pay to read an article, and you
-surely won't be allowed to redistribute them.  If we are content with
-knowledge as a commodity, accessible only through a computerized
-bureaucracy, we can simply let companies provide it.
-
-But if we want to keep human knowledge open and freely available to
-humanity, we have to do the work to make it available that way.  We
-have to write a free encyclopedia--so we must first determine the
-proper interpretation of "free" for an encyclopedia on the Internet.
-We must decide what criteria of freedom a free encyclopedia and a free
-learning resource should meet.
-
-* Permit universal access.
-
-The free encyclopedia should be open to public access by everyone who
-can gain access to the web.  Those who seek to gain control over
-educational materials, so they can profit by restricting access to
-them, will push us to "compromise" by agreeing to restrict access
-in exchange for their participation.  We must stand firm, and reject
-any deal that is inconsistent with the ultimate goal.  We are in no
-hurry, and there is no sense in getting to the wrong place a few years
-sooner.
-
-* Permit mirror sites.
-
-When information is available on the web only at one site, its
-availability is vulnerable.  A local problem--a computer crash, an
-earthquake or flood, a budget cut, a change in policy of the school
-administration--could cut off access for everyone forever.  To guard
-against loss of the encyclopedia's material, we should make sure that
-every piece of the encyclopedia is available from many sites on the
-Internet, and that new copies can be put up if some disappear.
-
-There is no need to set up an organization or a bureaucracy to do
-this, because Internet users like to set up "mirror sites" which hold
-duplicate copies of interesting web pages.  What we must do in advance
-is ensure that this is legally permitted.
-
-Therefore, each encyclopedia article and each course should explicitly
-grant irrevocable permission for anyone to make verbatim copies
-available on mirror sites.  This permission should be one of the basic
-stated principles of the free encyclopedia.
-
-Some day there may be systematic efforts to ensure that each article
-and course is replicated in many copies--perhaps at least once on each
-of the six inhabited continents.  This would be a natural extension of
-the mission of archiving that libraries undertake today.  But it would
-be premature to make formal plans for this now.  It is sufficient for
-now to resolve to make sure people have permission to do this
-mirroring when they get around to it.
-
-* Permit translation into other languages.
-
-People will have a use for encyclopedia material on each topic in
-every human language.  But the primary language of the Internet--as of
-the world of commerce and science today--is English.  Most likely,
-encyclopedia contributions in English will run ahead of other
-languages, and the encyclopedia will approach completeness in English
-first.
-
-Trying to fight this tendency would be self-defeating.  The easier way
-to make the encyclopedia available in all languages is by encouraging
-one person to translate what another has written.  In this way, each
-article can be translated into many languages.
-
-But if this requires explicit permission, it will be too difficult.
-Therefore, we must adopt a basic rule that anyone is permitted to
-publish an accurate translation of any article or course, with proper
-attribution.  Each article and each course should carry a statement
-giving permission for translations.
-
-To ensure accuracy of translation, the author of the original should
-reserve the right to insist on corrections in a translation.  A
-translator should perhaps have to give the original author a
-reasonable amount of time to do this, perhaps three months, before
-publishing the translation in the first place.  After that, the
-translator should continue to make corrections at the author's
-request, whenever the author asks for them.
-
-In time, as the number of people involved in encyclopedia activity
-increases, contributors may form Translation Accuracy Societies for
-various languages, which undertake to ensure the accuracy of
-translations into those languages.  An author could then designate a
-Translation Accuracy Society to check and correct a certain
-translation of a certain work.  It may be wise to keep the Translation
-Accuracy Societies separate from the actual translators, so that each
-translation will be checked by someone other than the translator.
-
-* Permit quotation with attribution.
-
-Each encyclopedia article or course should permit anyone to quote
-arbitrary portions in another encyclopedia article or course, provided
-proper attribution is given.  This will make it possible to build on
-the work others have done, without the need to completely replace it.
-
-Different authors may--if they care--set different rules for what
-constitutes proper attribution to them; that is ok.  As long as the
-rules set for a particular work are not unreasonable or impractical,
-they will cause no problem.
-
-* Permit modified versions of courses.
-
-Courses must evolve, and the original authors won't keep working on
-them forever.  And teachers will want to adapt course materials to
-their own curriculum plans and teaching methods.  Since courses will
-typically be large (like a textbook today), it would be unacceptably
-wasteful to tell teachers, "Write your own from scratch, if you want
-to change this".
-
-Therefore, modifying an existing course must be permitted; each course
-should carry a statement giving permission to publish a modified
-version.
-
-It makes sense to require modified versions to carry proper
-attribution giving credit to the authors of the previous version, and
-be labelled clearly as modified, so that there is no confusion about
-whose views they present.
-
-* Permit modified versions of pictures and videos, for courses.
-
-Pictures and videos, both drawn and photographic, will play an
-important role in many courses.  Modifying these pictures and videos
-will be pedagogically useful.  For example, you could crop a picture
-to focus attention on a certain feature, or circle or label particular
-features.  Using false color can help make certain aspects easier to
-see.  Image enhancement is also possible.
-
-Beyond that, an altered version of a picture could illustrate a
-different but related idea.  You could start with a diagram useful for
-one theorem in geometry, and add to it, to produce a diagram that is
-relevant to another theorem.
-
-Permission to modify pictures and videos is particulary important
-because the alternative, to make your own picture or video from
-scratch, is often very hard.  It is not terribly hard to write your
-own text, to convey certain facts from your own angle, but doing the
-same thing with a picture is not feasible.
-
-Of course, modified versions of pictures and videos should be labeled
-as modified, to prevent misattribution of their contents, and should
-give credit properly to the original.
-
-* Only free software in the encyclopedia.
-
-Articles, and especially courses, will often include software--for
-example, to display a simulation of a chemical reaction, or teach you
-how often to stir a sauce so it won't burn.  To ensure that the
-encyclopedia is indeed free, all software included in articles and
-courses should meet the criteria of free software
-(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) and open source software
-(http://www.opensource.org).
-
-* No central control.
-
-People often suggest that "quality control" is essential for an
-encyclopedia, and ask what sort of "governing board" will decide which
-articles to accept as part of the free encyclopedia.  The answer is,
-"no one".  We cannot afford to let anyone have such control.
-
-If the free encyclopedia is a success, it will become so ubiquitous
-and important that we dare not allow any organization to decide what
-counts as part of it.  This organization would have too much power;
-people would seek to politicize or corrupt it, and could easily
-succeed.
-
-The only solution to that problem is not to have any such
-organization, and reject the idea of centralized quality control.
-Instead, we should let everyone decide.  If a web page is about a
-suitable topic, and meets the criteria for an article, then we can
-consider it an article.  If a page meets the criteria for a course,
-then we can consider it a course.
-
-But what some pages are erroneous, or even deceptive?  We cannot
-assume this won't happen.  But the corrective is for other articles to
-point out the error.  Instead of having "quality control" by one
-privileged organization, we will have review by various groups, which
-will earn respect by their own policies and actions.  In a world where
-no one is infallible, this is the best we can do.
-
-* Encourage peer review and endorsements.
-
-There will be no single organization in charge of what to include in
-the encyclopedia or the learning resource, no one that can be lobbied
-to exclude "creation science" or holocaust denial (or, by the same
-token, lobbied to exclude evolution or the history of Nazi death
-camps).  Where there is controversy, multiple views will be
-represented.  So it will be useful for readers to be able to see who
-endorses or has reviewed a given article's version of the subject.
-
-In fields such as science, engineering, and history, there are formal
-standards of peer review.  We should encourage authors of articles and
-courses to seek peer review, both through existing formal scholarly
-mechanisms, and through the informal mechanism of asking respected
-names in the field for permission to cite their endorsement in the
-article or course.
-
-A peer-review endorsement applies to one version of a work, not to
-modified versions.  Therefore, when a course has peer-review
-endorsements, it should require anyone who publishes a modified
-version of the course to remove the endorsements.  (The author of the
-modified version would be free to seek new endorsements for that
-version.)
-
-* No catalogue, yet.
-
-When the encyclopedia is well populated, catalogues will be very
-important.  But we should not try to address the issue of cataloguing
-now, because it is premature.  What we need this year and for the
-coming years is to write articles.  Once we have them, once we have a
-large number of volunteers producing a large number of articles, that
-will be the time to catalogue them.  At that time, enough people will
-be interested in the encyclopedia to provide the manpower to do the
-work.
-
-Since no one organization will be in charge of the encyclopedia, there
-cannot be one authoritative catalogue.  Instead, anyone will be free
-to make a catalogue, just as anyone is free to provide peer review.
-Cataloguers will gain respect according to their decisions.
-
-Encyclopedia pages will surely be listed in ordinary web search sites,
-and perhaps those are the only catalogues that will be needed.  But
-true catalogues should permit redistribution, translation, and
-modification--that is, the criteria for courses should apply to
-catalogues as well.
-
-What can usefully be done from the beginning is to report new
-encyclopedia articles to a particular site, which can record their
-names as raw material for real catalogues, whenever people start to
-write them.  To start off, we will use http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia
-for this.
-
-* Making links to other pages.
-
-The last and most important rule for pages in the encyclopedia is the
-exclusionary rule:
-
-  If a page on the web covers subject matter that ought to be in the
-  encyclopedia or the course library, but its license is too
-  restricted to qualify, we must not make links to it from
-  encyclopedia articles or from courses.
-
-This rule will make sure we respect our own rules, in the same way
-that the exclusionary rule for evidence is supposed to make police
-respect their own rules: by not allowing us to treat work which fails
-to meet the criteria as if it did meet them.
-
-The idea of the World Wide Web is that links tie various separate
-pages into a larger whole.  So when encyclopedia articles or courses
-link to a certain page, those links effectively make the page part of
-the encyclopedia.  To claim otherwise would be self-deception.  If we
-are to take seriously the criteria set forth above, or any criteria
-whatsoever, we have to base our actions on them, by not incorporating
-a page into our network of pages if it doesn't fit the criteria.
-
-When a topic ought to be covered in the encyclopedia or with a course,
-but it isn't, we must make sure we don't forget that we have a gap.
-The exclusionary rule will remind us.  Each time we think of making a
-link to the unacceptable page, and we stop because of the exclusionary
-rule, that will remind us that someone ought to write another page
-about the same topic--one that is free enough to be part of the
-encyclopedia.  Eventually, one of us will do the job.
-
-On the other hand, many web pages cover material that wouldn't
-normally be included in an encyclopedia--for example, scholarly
-papers, detailed statistical data bases, news reports, fiction and
-art, extensive bibliographies, and catalogs of merchandise.  Such
-pages, regardless of whether they are free enough to be in the
-encyclopedia, are outside its scope.  They do not represent gaps in
-the encyclopedia.  So there is no need to apply the encyclopedia
-criteria in making links to such pages.
-
-To produce a complete encyclopedia which satisfies the principles of
-freedom stated here will take a long time, but we will get it done
-eventually--as long as we remember the goal.  The greatest danger is
-that we will lose sight of the goal and settle for less.  The
-exclusionary rule will make sure we keep going all the way.
-
-* Uphold the freedom to contribute.
-
-As education moves on-line and is increasingly commercialized,
-teachers are in danger of losing even the right to make their work
-freely available to the public.  Some universities have tried to claim
-ownership over on-line materials produced by teachers, to turn it into
-commercial "courseware" with restricted use.  Meanwhile, other
-universities have outsourced their on-line services to corporations,
-some of which claim to own all materials posted on the university web
-sites.
-
-It will be up to professors to resist this tendency.  But there is
-more than one way to do so.  The most obvious basis for objection is
-to say, "I own this work, and I, not the university, have the right to
-sell it to a company if I wish".  But that places the faculty on the
-same selfish moral level as the university, so that neither side has a
-moral advantage in the argument.
-
-If, on the other hand, professors say, "I want to be able to make my
-work fully available to the public without restriction," they occupy
-the commanding moral position, which a university can oppose only by
-setting itself against the public, against learning, and against
-scholarship.
-
-Resisting the selling of the university will not be easy.  Professors
-had better make use of any advantage they can find--especially moral
-advantages.
-
-Two other points that will help are that (1) a few prestigious
-universities will probably gobble up most of the commercial business,
-so other universities would be deluding themselves to think they can
-really get a great deal of funds from selling themselves, and (2)
-business is likely to drive even the elite universities out of the
-most lucrative parts of the field.
-
-* Spread the word.
-
-When you post a potential encyclopedia article or a course, you can
-reference this plan if you wish, to help spread the word and inspire
-others to help.
-
-
-Copyright 1999 Richard Stallman
-Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article
-are permitted in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
-
-