Casing Citizendium

Citizendium, Larry Sanger's Wikipedia fork, is opening its doors, albeit in a very controlled sort of way, as a private alpha. At least the press release - characteristically lengthy - sketches in some of the details as to who is doing what with this interesting project. I'll be writing more about this in due course.

Doing the Joomla Mambo

Forks are a particularly intense moment for free software projects, and examining the reasons for and result of a fork throws fascinating light on the dynamics of the open source world.

One of the most famous recent forks is in the world of content management systems, when Joomla split off from Mambo. There's a fascinating - and impressively full - history of how and why that happened. It all seems to have turned out rather well, with both projects flourishing - a textbook case of how to manage a fork.

Forking Wikipedia

At the end of last year, I asked whether Wikipedia might fork.

The answer is "yes".

Update 1: Here's Clay Shirky on why he thinks it's doomed to fail.

Update 2: And here's Larry Sanger's response to those points.

Will Wikipedia Fork?

That's the first thought that sprung to my mind when I read that something called rather grandly Digital Universe is to be launched early next year.

Digital Universe is of interest for two reasons. First, it seems to be a kind Wikipedia plus vetting - precisely the kind of thing many have been calling for in the wake of Wikipedia's recent contretemps. The other reason the move is worth noting is that one of the people behind Digital Universe is Larry Sanger, who is usually described as the co-founder of Wikipedia, though the other co-founder, Jimmy Wales, seems to dispute this.

Sanger left Wikipedia in part, apparently, because he was unhappy with the wiki way of working and its results. Digital Universe is not a wiki, so from next year it should be possible to compare two very different approaches to generating large-scale bodies of knowledge from public input.

This is what made me wonder about whether we might see some kind of Wikipedia fork - which is where software development splits into two camps that go their separate ways. There must be many within the Wikipedia community who would prefer something a little more structured than the current Wikipedia: the question is, Will they now jump ship and help build up Digital Universe, or will the latter simply recapitulate the history of Nupedia, Wikipedia's long-forgotten predecessor?