Note that this is not licensing the content (the content is already licensed to all of humanity, there is no royalty to be paid), this is simply them paying for a big data pipe to access the data, so that the consumer API endpoints are not overwhelmed. They will give this type of access to anyone who asks and is willing to fund the bandwidth usage.
Unlike for example Reddit, they don't actually make any attempt to block scraping other than ordinary rate limits. They just kindly request that you go the proper route instead, which in theory will be beneficial for both parties.
Note that this is not licensing the content (the content is already licensed to all of humanity, there is no royalty to be paid), this is simply them paying for a big data pipe to access the data, so that the consumer API endpoints are not overwhelmed. They will give this type of access to anyone who asks and is willing to fund the bandwidth usage.
Unlike for example Reddit, they don't actually make any attempt to block scraping other than ordinary rate limits. They just kindly request that you go the proper route instead, which in theory will be beneficial for both parties.
Those companies are going to scrape anyway might as well make them pay.
Our LLMs will as us for donations in December going forward..
Oh trust me, we will pay for all those billions they're investing now, one way or another :(
Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/01/15/wikipedia-ce...
Related:
25 Year of Wikipedia
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632023