2010/1/7 Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com>om>:
The historical position has been that absolutely
nothing goes into the
WMF software pool unless it is open source. As I recall, the only
recognized exception was the closed source firmware running the
routers at the server farm. By that standard, even a freebie is not
good enough if the system is closed source.
However, my recollection is based on discussions years ago. On
searching, I couldn't find any policy forbidding closed source
software (is there one?). So, it is possible that closed source might
be looked on as a more acceptable possibility for some functions now
(though I wouldn't bet on it).
The reasoning is that having the data be free content is not enough -
the systems you need to use the data need to be free software as well.
Lucene is free software, but was out for a while as Java wasn't free
software then. I believe we used a rewritten version in C# for a
while, in fact. A Java version of Lucene started being used again when
Java was in the process of being freed up, I think we were using it
before there was an entirely free software Java.
(corrections welcomed!)
- d.