Ten Things That Will Be Free
Posted December 22, 2008 · Charles O
Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) discussed his views on the future of the free content movement, at a Wikimania conference in Frankfurt. He details 10 important things he feels will be free (in the “free content” sense) by the next decade.
# Encyclopedia – This is essentially what is happening with Wikipedia.
# Dictionary – This is happening with Wikipedia’s sister project, Wiktionary. Wales admits that it isn’t as far along as Wikipedia, but is optimistic that it will go as far.
# Curriculum – Imagine: freely available curriculum in every language for kindergarten through university. Wikibooks, a collection of open-content textbooks, provides at least an excellent substrate.
# Music – A lot of “amazing” musical works are already in the public domain; the problem is that not many public domain recordings of those works exist. (Proper scores are often proprietary, derivative works). The idea is to fix this “problem” by obtaining or recording the scores for musical works that are already in the public domain.
# Art – Same as #4 above. Wales alludes to incorporating this into the context of the free encyclopedia (#1, above).
# File Formats – Proprietary file formats = bad (at least from the perspective of ease of accessibility that lends itself to making content freely accessible.
# Maps – “What could be more public domain than basic information about location on the planet?” - Stefan Magdalinksi. The idea is to free GIS software and geodata.
# Product Identifiers – Small producers increasingly have a global market. Freeing product identifiers provides such producers with the ability to compete in aggregators (comparative search engines, etc.). Standard, independent products IDs makes this easier, and is more desirable than the alternative: proprietary IDs maintained by the big players like ebay and Amazon.
# TV Listings – Useful in development of free software digital PVRs, etc.
# Communities – Consumers of web forum and wiki services should demand a free license. Wales proposed the notion of “Wikicities” (e.g., Wikia): for profit, free communities.
This is very exciting stuff, in that it bring us closer to the goal of making the sum of human knowledge freely available to all.
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Comments
Ray-
Very, very interesting points, there. Particularly, thanks for pointing out that nothing is really free (in the “free beer” sense), and that ultimately someone bears the cost—with the most desirable scenario being the dispersion of cost over an increasing number of people, such that it rapidly approaches zero.
Finally, I like your analogies relating to the relative costs of moving “atoms” versus “bits” and regarding “free” bringing us closer to “free.”
Wonderful insights!
Added by Charles O on Jan 19 at 10:16 AM
To paraphrase Richard Stallman: When we say “free”, we mean it as used in the context of “free speech”, not “free beer”. Everything has a cost. Smart entrepreneurs (even social entrepreneurs) will figure out how to spread that cost across the largest number of people. The result: Minimum burden, maximum benefit for everyone.
Thinking this way requires a huge paradigm shift for most of us. We’ve been taught to charge “whatever the market will bear” for our goods & services. But today it’s alot cheaper to move bits than atoms, and the cost of moving bits continues to drop. Free (as in speech) is bringing us closer to free (as in beer). Of course, as Jimmy Wales knows, nothing is completely free (http://tinyurl.com/8doex5).
Added by Raymond T. Hightower on Dec 23 at 08:33 AM