inak, ja som sa s jimbom stretol vo frankfurte, celkom v pohode typek. robil som s nim aj rozhovor pre pcrevue, tu je cast, zatial sme to nedokoncili.

> > Q: I met you in Graz in the discussion about independent people and
> > independent movements. The discussion moved slowly to some different
> > topic (communism vs. capitalism) because of other panelist. Most of the
> > panelist (and people from audience) talked about independence in terms
> > of society. I believe you were speaking about being independent from
> > inside.
> >
> > I felt it's a pity, because I believe you and Mr. Phil Zimmerman (the author of PGP)
> > had something more to say about the original topic. My take was, that for being
> > independent, we need people, who invent things like secure e-mail (in
> > Mr. Zimmerman's case) and publicly accessible knowledge universe like
> > you did.
> >
> > What's your opinion on independence?

Yes, I felt it was unfortunate in that case that the discussion turned
to communism vs. capitalism, but on the other hand, I think that we
absolutely must remember that communism is specifically about crushing
the independent mind. We have a century of experience and 100 million
dead to tell us the results.

There is a range of political opinion which is respectable and about
which reasonable people may argue, but it was shocking to me to see that
the keynote lecture at this conferenece was given by an actual Marxist
of the old school. I was so shocked that I feel that I did not react
appropriately: I should have refused to participate in the same way, and
for the same reasons, that I would refuse to participate in an
intellectual forum with a Nazi.

> > Q: The whole wikimedia foundation hosts lots of free information, from
> > Wikipedia, to multimedia, books, etc. How many servers do you have
> > currently and how much space does everything take?

We are currently running on over 100 servers, and 20 more have been
ordered and are being built. I expect that we will order another 50
more before the year is out.

> > Q: You built Wikipedia on open-source software. Were there any problems?
> > Was it only a matter of money?

Excellent question! No, it was not a matter of money at all. It was a
matter of freedom and of quality.

Free software is software that respects the user. Instead of waiting on
some big company to solve our problems (if we beg enough or pay enough
money), we are free to solve our problems ourselves. We use all free
software on the website (Apache, GNU/Linux, MySQL, PHP) primarily
because in this way we know that no software vendor can ever control us.

At the same time, this principled stand on software freedom is
practical. The proprietary alternatives are, quite simply, inferior
products. There is a reason why Apache is the leading webserver: it is
the best. We only use world-class software, and therefore, we only use
free software.

> > Q: Some time ago, it was difficult to convince people to contribute to a
> > project. This has changed -- people blog, podcast, do video blogging,
> > contribute to various social sites and wikipedia. What is the reason for
> > this shift from consumers to producers?

I think we are still very early in a cultural change which will have
profound impacts. Much of the debate surrounding the reform of
copyright laws has focussed on the idea that consumers are trying to get
something for free. The idea has been that copyright is on the side of
producers.

But it is turning out that producers, creative independent people, are
the ones who are having the most trouble with outdated and inflexible
copyright laws. This is why the work of Creative Commons, in trying to
establish licensing norms and standards to empower creative people to
work together effectively and fairly is so important.

> > Q: The internet is currently full of junk. There are spams, viruses,
> > invalid information, hacker attacks, banners, ads. It's a jungle. Do you
> > think, that Wikipedia is protected from malicious people? How do you
> > protect against bots and people with malicious intents?

We have a few problems with such things, but only a few. I think that
the main reason is that what Wikipedia is doing is very ethical. It is
hard to hate Wikipedia, all we are doing is sharing knowledge freely
with the world. :-)

At the same time, we have incredibly brilliant software developers and
system administrators who are constantly watching problems develop and
devising solutions to them in real time.

> > Q: What does Wikipedia do about various opinions on some topics? Who
> > wins, if there's some conflict about content of a particular article?

We have a strong neutrality policy which says that Wikipedia itself must
not take a side on any legitimately controversial issue. In general,
this policy works quite well, because even people who disagree about
some issue can usually find some peaceful way to present their disagreement.