"Social change has accelerated beyond the original Wikipedia concept of six years ago," said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (pictured) today as OpenServing, in what he called 'the next phase of this experiment,' was made free. 'We don't have all the business model answers, but we are confident - as we always have been - that the wisdom of our community will prevail," said Wales.

Through a simple sign-up process on www.OpenServing.com, users can request their own collaborative blogging site on any topic, to be hosted for free by Wikia.

Wikia’s OpenServing extends the essence of the open source model – free software and content – to all aspects of web-based computing. The six pillars of Wikia’s OpenServing offering are: FREE software, FREE bandwidth, FREE storage, FREE computing power, FREE content over the Internet, and GIVING AWAY 100% of the ad inventory and revenue to bloggers and website owners who partner with Wikia. By tapping Wikia’s OpenServing utility, anyone can set up and maintain their own collaborative content project for news and opinions for free.

To launch OpenServing, Wikia is offering-up the powerful, user-friendly technology from recently-acquired ArmchairGM.com as the first of hundreds of freely licensed software packages to be hosted in the near future.

“OpenServing is a call-to-action for developers that want to take open source to the next level and we are looking for volunteers to help us install and maintain other open-source software at OpenServing.com,” said Gil Penchina, Wikia’s CEO. “We’ve already witnessed the power of these ideas in action by the thousands of dedicated people contributing to Wikia on a daily basis. We look forward to helping the next wave of brilliant and passionate people get their great ideas off the ground.”

Wikia supports the development of the open source software that runs both Wikipedia and Wikia, as well as thousands of other wiki sites. Among other contributions, Wikia plans to enhance the software with improved usability, spam prevention, and community management.