History of Wikipedia on developing it." On Wednesday 17 January 2001, two days after the founding of Wikipedia, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) GNUPedia project went online, competing with Nupedia, but today the FSF encourages people "to visit and contribute to [Wikipedia]". Wikipedia was initially conceived as a feeder project for the Wales-founded Nupedia, an earlier project to produce a free online encyclopedia, volunteered by Bomis, a web-advertising firm owned by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell and Michael E. Davis. Nupedia was founded upon the use of highly qualified volunteer contributors and an elaborate multi-step peer review process. Despite its mailing list of interested
Jimmy Wales his developmental work on the Wikipedia project. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating that the idea of "participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me". On December 11, 2007, Wales testified before to the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He also submitted written testimony to the Senate Committee entitled "E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration and Access". Senator Joseph Lieberman introduced Wales by stating: Wales's testimony is