Stephen Downes

In response to Britannica's recent announcement that it will start charging subscription fees again, this article describes a number of open source encyclopedia being developed on the internet. According to the author, "Britannica and other proprietary encyclopedias will be hopelessly obsolete within ten years--small, out-of-date, and generally irrelevant--by comparison with Nupedia, Wikipedia, and the many other non-proprietary reference works that are being and will be developed." By Larry Sanger, Kuro5hin, July 25, 2001.