[OSM-talk] Are there any other projects in a similar fork situation? (Slightly OT)

Steve Bennett stevagewp at gmail.com
Sat Oct 2 15:23:05 BST 2010


On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 7:46 PM, Katie Filbert <filbertk at gmail.com> wrote:
> In 2002, the Spanish Wikipedia forked and people went to the other project.
> The fork had to do with differences of project policies not license, the
> fork died few years later.  Spanish Wikipedia grew more slowly as a result

This is an important case study. The fork was basically triggered by
the possibility of future advertising on Wikipedia not being ruled
out. No plans had been made, and as we have seen, no advertising on
Wikipedia ever happened. Yet the fear was enough to make a sizeable
chunk of the whole Spanish Wikipedia community jump ship. End result:
the Spanish Wikipedia was severely damaged, and even years later,
remains well behind where it ought to be: only 650k articles, less
than even Japanese and Polish, despite vastly greater numbers of
Spanish speakers.

It seems an apt comparison because the fundamental issues here seem to
do with process, and possible future eventualities - rather than some
current impassible stumbling block.

Steve



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