After 18 months of MediaWiki release management handled externally by
Markus Glaser and Mark Hershberger, we have agreed to bring the
MediaWiki release work back to the Wikimedia Foundation. From now on,
the Release Engineering team coordinated by Greg Grossmeier, which is
responsible for the WMF weekly releases, will be also in charge of the
MediaWiki releases for third parties. This will be a hit on the WMF
Release Engineering team initially, but we plan to make future
announcements related to that.
About two years ago we explored the outsourcing of MediaWiki releases
under the assumption that an external team not conditioned to the
Wikimedia priorities would be in a better spot to satisfy the needs of
third party MediaWiki users. Over time, this assumption has been
overshadowed by the overhead required to keep both release teams in
sync, and the difficulties that Mark y Markus have run into when trying
to follow the weekly release train. We believe that the situation would
be similar with any other external team, so we have decided to go back
to in-house releases.
Another lesson learned by all of us is that managing MediaWiki releases
and promoting a MediaWiki ecosystem are very different specialized
tasks, and it is hard to be the individuals in charge of both. Both Mark
and Markus were active in the MediaWiki community well before managing
MediaWiki releases, and will continue to be active now in the context of
the MediaWiki Stakeholders Group, as volunteers and with their own
stakeholders' hats. The Engineering Community team, coordinated by Quim
Gil, will offer their help in consolidating the Group and aligning their
interests with the WMF plans.
The Wikimedia Foundation thanks Mark, Markus, and Alexis for the work
done releasing MediaWiki and coordinating several community activities
in the context of the MediaWiki Stakeholders Group. While we are aware
of the disruption that this change of strategy might bring, we believe
that the new situation puts us all in a better position to support the
needs of the MediaWiki community.
This change of course is also a good chance to discuss what is the best
mid-term scenario for MediaWiki outside of Wikimedia, and what should we
all do in order to get there. The MediaWiki Developer Summit in San
Francisco next week is a good place to have this conversation, in
addition of our usual online channels, of course.
Markus Glaser, Mark Hershberger, Alexis T. Hershberger, Greg Grossmeier,
Quim Gil