Classroom Companion: Business

7.2 · Basic Production Methods

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distributed with the GNU General Public License. GNU Free Documentation License 
(GFDL) is a similar license for free documentation (e.g., textbooks and manuals) allow-
ing users the right to copy, modify, and distribute the text. New software or texts pro-
duced and submitted under GGPL or GFDL should also be freely available subject to 
copyleft conditions.
The production of the content of Wikipedia is a result of peer production over the 
Internet.
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► Example 7.2 Wikipedia
Anyone may contribute to the content of the encyclopedia by producing new articles, 
adding new material to existing articles, and deleting, modifying, or correcting existing 
articles. The Wikipedia Foundation is not a licensing organization itself but a platform 
on which contributors can publish their work. The content of Wikipedia is licensed 
using the Creative Commons (CC) license. This license is similar to GFDL but contains 
rules by which otherwise copyrighted material (e.g., pictures) can be used in other con-
texts. The rules may be different in the various language editions.
By the end of 2020, the English Wikipedia contained about 6.2 million articles and 
is among the 15 most visited website on the Internet (See 
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https://stats. wikimedia. org/
EN/TablesWikipediaEN. htm
).
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► Example 7.3 Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders
Project Gutenberg is digitizing public domain books and other texts for free public 
access as e-books. Public domain books are books where the intellectual property rights 
have expired or otherwise not applicable.
As of 2019, the project has digitized about 60,000 books. The scanning and prepa-
ration of the books were first done by the founder of the project, Michal Hart, alone, 
but the project attracted soon several volunteers scanning and preparing books and 
other texts for the project. Since Hart died in 2011, the project is run entirely by vol-
unteers.
When scanning the books, it is likely that errors occur because the scanner may mis-
interpret a letter or a group of letters. Proofreading is required to correct these errors. In 
2000, Charles Franks opened the website Distributed Proofreaders where volunteers 
could proofread the texts produced by the Gutenberg Project. Several thousand volun-
teers have since joined the project. Distributed Proofreaders have prepared about 40,000 
texts for Project Gutenberg.
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