France's Larousse publishing house on Tuesday launched an online French-language encyclopaedia offering free access to its dictionary and inviting users to contribute content, aiming to rival Wikipedia.
Larousse.fr however said that it would keep the two reference pages separate and that users making contributions will be identified, unlike the popular user-generated Wikipedia, which has anonymous authors.
Several other companies have moved to rival Wikipedia with online encyclopedias including Google's Knol, which also has identified authors.