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<title>GNUPedia Project Announcement - GNU Project - Free Software
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<h1>
GNUPedia - The free universal encyclopedia and learning resource</h1>
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<h4>
Table of Contents</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#announcement">Project Announcement</a></li>
<li>
<a href="index.html">Back to home page</a></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<h3>
<a NAME="announcement"></a>The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning
Resource</h3>
<h4>
By Richard Stallman</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h3>
An encyclopedia located everywhere.</h3>
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.
<p>The free encyclopedia will not be published in any one place.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.
<h3>
Who will write the encyclopedia?</h3>
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.
<h3>
Small steps will do the job.</h3>
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.
<p>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.
<h3>
Take the long view.</h3>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h3>
Evangelize.</h3>
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.
<h3>
What should the free encyclopedia contain?</h3>
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.
<p>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.)
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h3>
Criteria pages must meet.</h3>
To ensure this encyclopedia is indeed a free and universal encyclopedia,
we must set criteria of freeness for encyclopedia articles and courses
to meet.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Permit universal access.</h4>
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.
<h4>
Permit mirror sites.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Permit translation into other languages.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Permit quotation with attribution.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Permit modified versions of courses.</h4>
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.
<p>The GNU Free Documentation License would be a good license to use for
courses.
<h4>
Permit modified versions of pictures and videos, for courses.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Only free software in the encyclopedia.</h4>
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).
<h4>
No central control.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Encourage peer review and endorsements.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.)
<h4>
No catalogue, yet.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Making links to other pages.</h4>
The last and most important rule for pages in the encyclopedia is the
exclusionary
rule:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<h4>
Uphold the freedom to contribute.</h4>
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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>Resisting the selling of the university will not be easy. Professors
had better make use of any advantage they can find--especially moral advantages.
<p>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.
<h3>
Spread the word.</h3>
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.</blockquote>
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<p>Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place -
Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
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