there are some truly great people in this world

[miriam_e]

Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

These are the people who are doing Wikipedia. Now they also have:
Wiktionary -- online dictionary
Wikibooks - textbooks
Wikinews - world news
Wikiquote - collection of quotations
Commons - shared media repository
Wikisource - documents
Wikispecies - directory of species on Earth

...all free.