links provided by Raph An essay regarding the elusive nature of beauty. Is it intrinsic to timeless design? Informed by iteration through illustrative examples that are ocassionally recursive, one is swiftly yet delicately invited to ponder the universe.
Additional Design Aesthetics Links courtesy of: osullivy jakd
On free models
A few misgivings on wikipedia.com. I need to browse around nupedia.com a bit to see how they are organized. Nonprofit, vc, corp, sole proprietor, etc.
I would hate to contribute a lot of effort to a "free" project only to find that it is/was merely an instrument for a commercial entity to hit critical mass.
While interested in the possibilities of using collaborative effort to initiate low cash commercial, nonprofit, and private start ups ..... I have no interest in duping people or being duped.
Perhaps projects that know they are going to get large (wikipedia has the stated goal of becoming a very high quality free online encyclopedia) and (if successful) will need lots of resources (bandwidth, servers, etc .) would grow faster if they organized a charter up front that clarified what is intended. Fair play is important in growing projects, teams, institutions, or organizations.
I will go soon (perhaps tomorrow ..... a good book and early to bed sound pretty good at the moment) to the wikipedia FAQ to ask if there is a financial or business plan to sustain the project long term should it succeed wildly. Should they inform me this is none of my business or excommunicate me .... then clearly it is none of my business and my contributions there are done.