The London Times just published an interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in which he entertains the 
idea of carrying ads. This mention is likely to generate an avalanche of discussion about the commercialization of open-source resources. While i would love to see Wikipedia stay out of the commercial realm, it’s just not likely. Yahoo, Google and other big companies are going to commercialize Wikipedia anyway so taking ads is likely to end up a no-brainer. As i mentioned in my comment on Lisa’s earlier post, this is going to happen as long as the overall context is defined by capitalist relations. Presuming that the web can be developed in a cooperative, non-capitalist way without fierce competition and push-back from the corporations who control the web’s infrastructure seems naive to me.
if:book
A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book
A relevant historic example is too look at the Internet Movie Database. In fact, wikipedia has an insightful entry on it. IMDB, which has complete lists of the cast and crew of movies and television shows, started out as a volunteer supplied resource on usenet and then shifted to the web in the early 90s. By 1998, the site grew beyond the capacity of the founders and volunteers of IMDB, and they eventually sold it to Amazon.com, with the caveat that the resource would remain free. As an avid user of IMDB since 1995, and I was wary when its purchase was announced. Since then, IMDB has of course more ads and links to amazon, and I just ignore the extra clutter in the same way as I do when I read my gmail. However, the resource remains free and useful. With proper governance, I hope wikipedia can manage to stay the course as well.