Wikipedia offers free web hosting - free as in free beer!

by Adam Turner

Wednesday, 13 December 2006

Wikipedia is offering free web hosting for community groups - that's free as in free beer - on the condition they don't charge for their services.

Called OpenServing, it will be run by Wikipedia's commercial arm, Wikia Inc. Even so, it builds on the open source philosophy and the hosting service will allow users to keep any advertising revenue. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales also asks that sites link back to Wikia.com.

"People are rapidly adopting new conventions for working together to do great things, and Wikia is a major beneficiary of that trend. OpenServing is the next phase of this experiment," said Wales.

"We don’t have all the business model answers, but we are confident – as we always have been – that the wisdom of our community will prevail."

To launch OpenServing, Wikia is offering technology from recently-acquired ArmchairGM.com as the first of "hundreds of freely licensed software packages to be hosted in the near future". The move follows last week's announcement that Amazon.com is Wikia's first corporate investor and the sole investor in Wikia's second round of funding.{moscomment}

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