User:PeterSymonds/request

Wikipedia DVD for Linux released
updated DVD based on free software

Wikimedia CH has released a new edition of the German Wikipedia DVD on LinuxTag 2009 from 24th to 27th of June, in collaboration with openZIM. The DVD contains more than 900,000 German Wikipedia articles and a full text search index for phrasal search. The openZIM project develops a file format called "ZIM" to store hypertexts like Wikipedia, or other websites, with search indizes and images in the most efficient way. The data is highly compressed; the Wikipedia articles only take up 1.4 GB on the DVD.

Using the free software on the DVD ZIM files can be read and also be created. A library with all necessary features enables software developers and publishers to integrate the ZIM format in their own products. As the software is still in testing, Wikimedia CH has, at first, produced 500 Wikipedia DVDs which will be given away for free at LinuxTag in Berlin. Manuel Schneider, project lead of openZIM and member of Wikimedia CH, says: "Even though we are still testing this first release is very important for us, we are always happy about help. Reporting bugs and problems with our software is part of that."

Since April 2009 there has been a collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia based in San Fransisco/USA. Software developers of the Wikimedia Foundation are working on integrating the ZIM format into the regular exporting process, which will provide ZIM files of all Wikimedia projects in all languages in the future. Furthermore, it is planned to build a similar feature into MediaWiki, the wiki software behind Wikipedia and countless other wikis. A new edition of the Wikipedia DVD, in Spanish, is planned for the Wikimania conference from August 26th to 28th of 2009 in Buenos Aires.

The openZIM project has existed since February 2009. The ancestor was the TntReader project, which followed a call by Directmedia to develop an open source reader application for the Zeno file format. Directmedia defined this format to publish Wikipedia on a DVD. The last DVD of 2007/2008, published by Directmedia, contained the proprietary reader for Windows for the first time, with the TntReader, as open source software which ran on Linux and Mac OS X. As Directmedia does not publish Wikipedia on DVD any more, the openZIM project expanded and published the Zeno file format as the ZIM (Zeno IMproved) file format. All necessary software and documentation which was made by openZIM is released under GPL.
 * Further information about the openZIM project:

The openZIM is present at LinuxTag from June 24th to 27th in Berlin on booth 113a (hall 7.2a). More information at: http://openzim.org/ or http://www.linuxtag.de/.

Wikimedia CH is a national association, approved by the Wikimedia Foundation and supporting free content creating projects. Its main focus is the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, the biggest one being Wikipedia. Since its beginning, more than 900,000 articles in the German language have been written and are available online. That is the German version, the second largest after the English Wikipedia.
 * Further information about Wikimedia CH

The association was established in 2006 to support the creation, collection and distribution of free content in a charitable way. This ensures equal opportunities for everyone to obtain knowledge and education.