Larry Sanger

“ Who "had the idea" of a free encyclopedia open for development by the general public? Again, the idea and inspiration behind the project of a free encyclopedia comes from Jimmy Wales. By 1999 Jimmy had the idea for a "Nupedia," which would apply open source principles to the development of an encyclopedia. As I wrote in my memoir, "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine... ”

“ This is puzzling to me because I was more responsible than anyone else for insisting on and articulating Wikipedia's neutrality policy. Moreover, I always presented it as a way to "keep the peace," to enable people of widely divergent views to work together peacefully.
There is really little to debate about here; the simple fact of the matter is that from a very early stage in the project, Jimmy and I were very well agreed that Nupedia, and then Wikipedia, would aim to be neutral or unbiased in a certain sense that I think we both understood very well and in the same way. ”

“ But it depends on what you mean by "founded." If founders are restricted to the funders, then Bomis, Inc., is the founder of Wikipedia--and that includes Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and their partner. Of these, Jimmy is most important because he was CEO of Bomis and the most gung-ho about a free encyclopedia. If the founders of Wikipedia are the people who got it started, that would definitely include me, but also Jimmy and Tim Shell, and then (soon after) a lot of people from Nupedia and from the Internet at large. ”