This announcement from Wikipedia seemed to spark some debate. I think it’s only good news. If a company is significantly benefiting from Wikipedia and is able to help offset hosting costs, they should.
From the announcement:
Tech companies that rely on Wikipedia content must use it responsibly and help sustain Wikipedia for the future. One key way to do this is through Wikimedia Enterprise. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise is a commercial product for large-scale reusers and distributors of content from Wikimedia projects.
It’s a little like supporting open source. Micro.blog has a recurring donation to the Hugo project. It’s honestly not very much money, but it’s a good habit and can increase as Micro.blog grows.
Molly White in a longer thread on Bluesky:
AI companies have ALWAYS been training their models on Wikipedia content, which under the free and open access model is available to anyone — including AI companies. Agreements like these require AI companies to limit and offset the strain they place on Wikimedia infrastructure.
AI using Wikipedia reminds me of the FAQ on setting up a Little Free Library:
I think someone is stealing books from my library and selling them, what do I do?
Remember that the purpose of a Little Free Library is to share books—you can’t really steal from it.
Wikipedia is an incredible resource. Even though I use AI chatbots all the time, I still find myself reading Wikipedia pages fairly often. There’s always going to be value in reading something longer that was researched and written by humans.
