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Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday his for-profit company, Wikia Inc., is ready to give away - entirely free - all the software, computing, storage and network access that website builders need to create community collaboration sites, asking only that the sites link back to Wales's site, which makes money from advertising.
Wikia, a commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, will moreover allow customers - bloggers or other publishers who meet its criteria for popular websites - to keep 100 percent of any advertising revenue from the sites they build, according to Reuters.

Started two years ago, Wikia aims to build on the anyone-can-edit success of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Using the same underlying software, called MediaWiki, Wikia hosts group-publishing sites, known as wikis, on topics from Star Wars to psychology to travel to iPods. The move will prove disruptive to business models of websites that provide free services to customers but require a cut of any resulting revenue in return.

The move also follows the announcement last week that Amazon.com had become Wikia's first corporate investor and is acting as the sole investor in Wikia's second round of funding. Terms were not disclosed.