(Adding a couple of mailing lists so others can weigh in. Changing subject so those added aren't completely lost.)

On 02/21/2013 11:55 AM, Quim Gil wrote:

Ok, just a question as humble 3rd party MediaWiki user and technical volunteer coordinator at the WMF: is there a possibility to consider having a regular free software release process?

master/unstable ---> (testing releases?) ---> stable releases

...

I think the current process is ok-ish in the short term: non-WMF contributors are getting +2 and 3rd parties are getting tarballs.

As you say, I think the current process is Ok(ish) for now. We need to get others in the MediaWiki "ecosystem" involved in core before this becomes something we really need to do.

It would be great to have developers from other significant MediaWiki sites (like Referata, Wikia, Citizendium, etc) become more involved and start introducing features or hooks that they use into core or making the extensions available. Of course, some of those developers have already been involved.

But right now, I don't sense a huge amount of friction between the WMF's needs and the non-WMF MediaWiki-using community. The most that can be said is that the WMF is focused on its sites and doesn't make third party use a priority. This doesn't stop support for other databases, though: Oracle, MS SQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, or even my recent changes to separate out DB schema changes in MySQL.

That said, I'm very interested in this conversation. As MZ will remind you, I did advocate for the formation of the MediaWiki Foundation.

Mark.