Work on Enterprise, launch by 2021 Wikipedia in the future could ask for money from companies - not users - who draw on its services, including technology giants Apple, Amazon and Google.
According to Wired Usa, in fact, the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit foundation that manages the free encyclopedia which has just turned 20, is creating a new paid service called Enterprise and will be launched by 2021.
The details are not yet known, the service would be a kind of paid version of the Wikipedia 'Api', that is, those technological tools that are used to integrate pages and information within their services.
Such as, for example, the information boxes that appear when you search on Google and which refer to Wikipedia content, or the information extracted from the free encyclopedia that voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri give when you ask them about a theme.
But also those services that use Wikipedia as a source and verification to fight disinformation, some of which have offered donations in exchange for use, others instead have launched initiatives based on Wikipedia without involving the foundation.
"To withstand any storm and truly have the ability to maintain the vision conceived 20 years ago, we will need more resources, more partners and more allies," explains the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikipedia was born on January 15, 2001, is open to the contribution of volunteers and is still based only on the economic model of user donations.
Just in these days the campaign to ask users for donations in support of the free encyclopedia has restarted.