[Foundation-l] PediaPress

[Magnus Manske]

On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 8:56 AM, Robert S. Horning
<robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> On 11/12/2010 10:05 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:
>> Wikimedia policy is to use only free software, at least on the
>> "customer-facing" side. That includes the PDF-generation process,
>> which runs on our servers AFAIK.
>>
>> Requiring this from sites we (in essence) link to seems excessive. We
>> link to Google Maps via an intermediate page, similar to PediaPress,
>> and their code is not 100% open source either, last time I looked.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Magnus
>>
>>
>
> The link to Google Maps is certainly not exclusive and includes links to
> other mapping services including government mapping agencies and the
> Open Street Map Project, whose database and toolchain is 100% open
> source.  As a mater of fact, I was introduced to Open Street Map through
> Wikipedia and its link when I was trying to look up the geo coordinates
> on a couple of articles done with the Geotagging Wikiproject.

And if you can find some other publishing entity (printing, DVDs,
etc.) that could be used interchangeably for the PediaPress button,
and this entity is denied a button next to the PediaPress one, /then/
a moral uproar might be justified. So far, I do not believe any such
entity has stepped forward.

Web-only services, like Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap, can be sustained
cheaply enough to be free of charge for the user, which leads to many
alternatives in the "online maps" category. Producing and shipping
physical objects like books is still a business-only market, at least
until everyone has a universal 3D printer sitting on his desk. For
mass-printed books, there are lots of companies, which is why we have
lots of them on out ISBN special page. However, there are relatively
few print-on-demand businesses out there, and a total market of a few
thousand unique books per year is apparently of little interest to all
except one of them. If they want a share, let them have their own
button; otherwise, be glad there is at least one of them, for there
would likely be no PDF and OpenDocument (and soon OpenZIM) export
function without their initiative.

Cheers,
Magnus