Hi,
On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 3:17 AM, Legoktm <legoktm.wikipedia(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I think writing a book about open source software and soliciting
donations online are different from a trademark perspective but IANAL.
Someone else already let WMF legal know, so I'm sure they'll reach out
to you if there are any issues.
Great.
I'm mostly trying to understand what is the expected outcome of this.
* Will you/the org be contributing to MediaWiki core? Or will all
development take place in extensions?
* What kind of work do you expect to be taking on? Will the
planning/resource allocation process be public so interested developers
can help out (I'm thinking like Wikimedia's Community Wishlist)
* Will all the code be OSI licensed, preferably GPL v2+? Or will it be
private and owned by the member organizations that asked for it?
* Will the organization maintain the code it writes? Or will it just be
one-off projects of writing code and publishing it?
The short answer is that the money will be spent pretty much on whatever
member organizations want it to be spent on. Potentially that could involve
changes to MediaWiki core, yes - though that of course would require
coordinating with the relevant developers and community. (The same goes for
modifying any existing extension, though there coordination would be a much
easier task.) Potentially it could involve creating closed-source software
also, though I can't imagine a situation where that would happen - if a
company wanted to have its own proprietary MediaWiki software, it wouldn't
need to go through the EMC to do it. (Actually, I can think of one
potential case - an anti-spam system whose inner algorithm is deliberately
kept secret, in the manner of WordPress's Akismet.)
Long-term software maintenance will, I'd imagine, be the main focus of this
consortium - that's the main reason why I created it. Again, though, it's
not really up to me.
To be clear, I'm very excited that you are interested in working on this
(and have wanted someone to pick this up for a while now), but I'm
concerned about what seems like a lack of structure/transparency/etc.
for an organization that I would like to promote and ask companies to
donate to.
Alright. I hope you do! And I'm happy to answer any other questions.
-Yaron
-- Legoktm
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