Wikipedia information is used in various places on the iPhone, iPad and Mac and contains a lot of data fed by Siri’s virtual assistant. There is currently no financial relationship between Wikipedia and Apple for this information, but this may change soon.
A new report from Wired today explains that the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and related projects, has launched a new commercial project, Wikimedia Enterprise. This new initiative will start later in 2021:
Wikimedia Enterprise is a new product of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that runs Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Enterprise provides paid developer tools and services that make it easier for businesses and organizations to consume and reuse Wikimedia data.
According to the report, talks between the new subsidiary and large technology companies are “already underway” and agreements can be reached as early as June. The report does not specify whether Apple is one of the companies discussing a partnership with Wikipedia.
“This is the first time the foundation has realized that commercial users are users of our service,” said Lane Becker, a senior director of the foundation, who co-founded the Enterprise project with a small team. “We knew they were there, but never really treated it as a user base.”
The report also points out that the free option currently used by large technology companies will remain in one form or another, but it is ineffective for many. It may make even more financial sense to switch over to the paid business project.
“They all have teams dedicated to Wikipedia management – great,” Becker said, adding that the fact that the different content speaks to each other “requires a lot of low-level work – cleaning and management – which is very expensive. ‘
The launch of Wikimedia Enterprise follows after Wikipedia chief executive Lisa Seitz-Gruwell criticized Apple in a 2018 interview for using Wikipedia without giving back. Whether Apple and Wikipedia should finally reach an agreement remains to be seen, however.
The full report on Wired is worth reading and can be found here.
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