Wikimedia Foundation announces offering paid 'enterprise API'


by

Noj Han

The Wikimedia Foundation , a non-profit organization that runs the world's largest Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has announced that it will provide an 'enterprise API ' for companies that make heavy use of Wikipedia's data.

Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API – Diff
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/03/16/introducing-the-wikimedia-enterprise-api/

Wikimedia Enterprise / Essay --Meta
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Essay

Wikimedia will launch a paid service for big tech companies --The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/16/22334276/wikimedia-enterprise-api-service-big-tech-knowledge-boxes



Founded in 2001, Wikipedia has grown significantly over the last two decades and is now being incorporated into products and services developed by businesses as well as billions of consumers. For example, the snippet and knowledge panel displayed on the search result screen of Google etc. use the description of Wikipedia, the voice assistant such as Siri and Alexa answers the user's question with the description of Wikipedia, and the car navigation system and map application Wikipedia Extended information of origin is displayed.

However, despite being a huge knowledge resource used by many commercial services, Wikipedia operates as a non-profit project funded by people's donations. Wikipedia, which sometimes publishes big donation ads, has announced that it will offer a new 'enterprise API.'

Wikipedia's enterprise version API is a service for companies that use a large amount of Wikipedia data for commercial purposes, and it will provide packaged data in a form that is easy to reuse. Existing tools for reusing Wikipedia data are not intended for large-scale use in commercial services, but the enterprise version API makes the system more reliable for large-scale use and updates the article content. It will be immediately reflected in commercial services.


by

Giulia Forsythe

The Wikimedia Foundation has established a limited liability company (LLC) in the United States to provide enterprise APIs. It is expected that the enterprise version API will be available through LLC in the latter half of 2021, and discussions with technology companies are already underway. It is said that they are looking for pricing, but rather than setting a flat rate for all companies, we will investigate factors such as the amount of content reuse and the availability of technical support, and each customer The Wikimedia Foundation states that it may offer a reasonable price to.

While the Wikimedia Foundation is ambitious to meet the demands of companies that make heavy use of Wikipedia's data, there is also the problem of developing tools that meet the needs of companies with people's donations. Therefore, by collecting the fee for the enterprise version API from the company, it is possible to solve this problem and at the same time develop a new source of funds to maintain Wikipedia's independence.

The enterprise API announced this time is an opt-in product, and companies that use Wikipedia data for their products using existing tools can continue to use the tools for free. Wikipedia itself will continue to be provided free of charge, and general users can still browse Wikipedia and editors can modify the description.



in Web Service, Posted by log1h_ik