[Foundation-l] Wikipedia vs Linux

[Todd Allen]

On Jan 30, 2008 9:29 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/01/2008, Husky <huskyr at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A very nice article, although it doesn't provide any new insights that
> > (i at least) haven't thought of before, except for #4. It might be a
> > good idea (i'm not sure if it hasn't been done before) to research
> > which (large) corporations are using Mediawiki software already and
> > have anyone employed on making new extensions or changes to the core,
> > and seeing if they might be interested on employing someone full-time
> > to work on Mediawiki and give back code to the main trunk.
>
> Corporate sponsorship of MediaWiki is quite different to corporate
> sponsorship of Wikipedia. The former ought to work well, for the same
> reasons it works well for the Linux kernel. The latter, however, has
> very different problems because of the market we're in - we deal with
> information and it's important we keep that information neutral. There
> is no real concept of neutrality for software, as long as the software
> does what it's intended to do, it's fine, you don't need to worry
> about companies advertising their products by adding bias patches to
> Linux.
>
> Two other comments I would make:
>
> About #1: The quote "check the discussion page for any controversial
> article and it will tend be an argument between half-a-dozen highly
> passionate people", while strictly speaking true, is irrelevant. He
> seems to miss the fact that it's a different half-a-dozen highly
> passionate people on each page. Individual parts of a project are
> always going to be done by individuals, that's obvious. It's the
> central organisation that mustn't rely on individuals.
>
> About #4: Since when has 17% been a majority?
>
>
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I think they mean "largest part" rather than "majority", but
"majority" is often (if inappropriately) used in that particular
sense. I agree though, it's fine for Linux to accept corporate
contributions, because no one's going to change the kernel to be more
"friendly" toward a donor, nor could any such donor really ask. (And
even if X Company has a suggestion for how the kernel can work more
easily with Y Product from them, great!) Wikipedia has other
considerations, such as NPOV, and just as importantly, the
-appearance- of NPOV. If someone is slipping us cash to advertise, we
cannot maintain any pretense that we can have a neutral article on
them.

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.