On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 6:44 PM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote:
On 2016-03-21 6:15 PM, James Salsman wrote:
Is there a list of equipment that WMF uses without viable FLOSS
alternatives, please?
The switches and routers for one; as far as I know, high-end networking
hardware is not available with Libre OSes, nor would the supplier support
one flashed with a non-proprietary OS (as one can do with some mid-range
gear).
And there is a fuzzy line about being "all-FLOSS". Do you use servers with
only open source BIOS and firmware on all attached hardware? At best, that
severely crimps your options and I'm not sure there exists viable
alternative for /all/ required hardware.
The *important* thing is that anyone can grab Mediawiki, the dumps, and a
Libre OS supporting LAMP and make the projects run. Beyond that, best
effort to always favour FLOSS when it gets the job done is a solid
philosophical stance that is universally applied. But, like most
principles, it cannot be a suicide pact. We cannot, as a movement, refuse
to get the job done unless we reinvent every proprietary wheel - this way
lies both madness and a tremendous waste of donors' money[1].
-- Coren / Marc
[1] For instance, a common thing that is surfaced is to home-spin software
when the only FLOSS alternatives require either serious customization or
maintenance; we *could* hypothetically hire enough engineers to maintain
every bit of needed software - or even write the bits that don't exist - but
that's not what we *do* (nor should it be).
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Tilman Bayer
Senior Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB