GNUPedia (later renamed GNE) was a project to create a free content encyclopedia (licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License) under the auspices of the Free Software Foundation that has been discontinued. The project was initially proposed by Richard Stallman in 1999 and officially started in January 2001. The project was moderated by Héctor Facundo Arena. Free content is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content upon which no legal restriction has been placed that significantly interferes with peoples freedom to use, understand, redistribute, improve, and share the content. ... Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, 1902 An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia, also (rarely) encyclopædia,[1] is a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. ... GNU logo (similar in appearance to a gnu) The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. ... The Free Software Foundation logo The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (frequently abbreviated to RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is the founder of the free software movement, the GNU Project, and the Free Software Foundation. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...

Immediately upon its creation, GNUPedia was confronted by confusion with the similar-sounding Nupedia project led by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, and controversy over whether this constituted a fork of the efforts to produce a free encyclopedia. In addition, Wales already owned the gnupedia.org domain name. Nupedia was a Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. ... Jimmy Donal Jimbo Wales (born August 7, 1966 [1]) is the founder and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation[2], a non-profit corporation which operates Wikipedia and several other wiki projects. ... Larry Sanger Lawrence Mark Larry Sanger (born July 16, 1968) has been an organizer of various online encyclopedia projects, most notably, organizing Wikipedia as a free, open, and collaborative online encyclopedia and developing many Wikipedia policies. ... In software, a project fork or branch happens when a developer (or a group of them) takes code from a project and starts to develop independently of the rest. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Domain Name System. ...

GNUPedia participants frequently expressed concern about the amount of editorial control and bureaucracy involved in contributing to Nupedia. As GNUPedia wrestled with the issues regarding the level of moderation to apply for contributions to the encyclopedia, Wales invited contributors to look at Wikipedia, which had just been started as a side project of Nupedia. On Internet websites which invite users to post comments, a moderation system is the method the webmaster chooses to sort contributions which are irrelevant, obscene, illegal or insulting from contributions which are useful or informative. ... Wikipedia (IPA: , , or ) is a international Web-based cooperative free-content encyclopedia. ...

The new Wikipedia project received an enthusiastic reaction from some GNUPedia participants, and Wikipedia eventually overtook both of the original efforts. The GNUPedia project continued to exist, and addressed the naming controversy by changing its name to GNE (an abbreviation for "GNE is Not an Encyclopedia", a recursive acronym similar to that of the GNU project) and by redefining the project as a comprehensive "library of opinions" or "knowledge base". However, the name change failed to help the project gain traction, and it gradually went inactive. Stallman has since lent his support to Wikipedia. A recursive acronym is an acronym (or occasionally, a backronym) which refers to itself in the expression for which it stands, similar to a recursive abbreviation. ... GNU (pronounced ) is a free software operating system consisting of a kernel, libraries, system tools, compilers and many end-user applications. ... A knowledge base is a special kind of database for knowledge management and can be abbreviated KB, kb or Δ. Just as it has become standard practice to write database as one word it is increasingly common in computer science to write knowledgebase as one word (an interim approach was to...

External links

• Richard Stallman's initial proposal
• GNE website (inactive - random article retrieval returns blank page; search fails, with database error returned)
• Gnupedia/GNE mailing list discussions:
  • General information (inactive - only spam is being posted)
  • Technical discussions (inactive - only spam is being posted)