Hi Jasmine,
The set of extensions, and other software, that will be funded is entirely
up to the members of the Enterprise MediaWiki Consortium. I would guess
that the extensions chosen would be ones that are not only used heavily by
the members, but for which extra funding would have a big impact. So
extensions that are already maintained by Wikimedia probably wouldn't make
the cut. On the other hand, if there's some feature or improvement for,
say, VisualEditor that enterprise users want, and it fits in with the VE
developers' roadmap, then it's certainly possible that the EMC could
contribute some funding, or developer resources, for it. In that sense,
this organization is not that different from funding programs like the
Google Summer of Code.
I should note that it would also be possible for the Wikimedia Foundation
to become a member of the consortium itself, and to use this organization
to offload the maintenance of some extensions that it no longer wants to be
responsible for directly; but that's not my decision to make.
-Yaron
On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 12:41 AM, Jasmine Smith <jassmith55(a)outlook.com>
wrote:
Just reading the below gave me a though. Particularly
on:
EMC, it seems, is mainly looking for companies
which want to share
maintenance costs for popular extensions
If this is the case, which 'popular extensions' does this include? Most
ones are made popular because Wikimedia uses them (like checkuser) and are
updated when they need to be. Will the EMC now be covering the updates for
these rather than Wikimedia?
Another question is for popular sought after extensions which Wikimedia
provides no support for, like CentralAuth. Would the EMC be in charge of
this then? Make their own version? Or something else?
In terms of Mediawiki and it's extensions development, I'd love to see
things being developed so it's more towards the wider community use and not
just for Wikimedia own use, like SecurePoll and CentralAuth is right now.
I feel that having extensions like this - which so many other wikis would
love to have, but only geared towards Wikimedia's own use goes against
their own goal of sharing all human knowledge.
Jasmine.
On 25 May 2017, at 09:24 pm, "Markus
Glaser" <glaser(a)hallowelt.com>
wrote:
Hello everyone,
Following the announcement of an Enterprise MediaWiki Consortium (EMC)
by Yaron
Koren, Brian Wolff and others asked about the position of the
MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group (MWStake) with respect to this intiative. The
announced enterprise consortium seems to be a structured organisation led
by Yaron. MWStake is a user group and Wikimedia affiliation. We, MWStake,
care for and are open to all involved parties. Naturally, EMC is also a
stakeholder in the MediaWiki world and is of course always invited to join
us.
The stated goals of MWStake and the consortium are different - and
complementary.
MWStake is supportive of the existence of the consortium as
it is of the many other organizations that contribute software to the
MediaWiki ecosystem. We think Yaron's consortium can serve the purpose of
providing an aggregation of funding to support development projects that
might be too large for a single organization to fund themselves.
However, MWStake's vision is broader. Our approach is to work as a
community.
We aim to foster the MediaWiki community and integrate them with
concerted projects. We also seek to intensify the cooperation between
third-party users and the creator/owner of MediaWiki, the Wikimedia
Foundation. For that reason, the membership of MWStake consists of people
from both WMF and the third-party community. We discuss common problems on
a regular basis and work collaboratively towards integrative solutions and
standards - because we have enough one-off solutions and extensions that
reinvent the wheel. We'd like to focus on the challange of creating
coherent systems. Following that approach, we aim to make the MediaWiki
platform a first-class entity in the movement, as we see MediaWiki usage
outside of WMF projects as part and parcel of the WMF vison. Specifically,
"every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge" by
providing them with the means for independently sharing their own knowledge.
A word about institutionalisation: We plan to incorporate when the time
is right.
Presently, we think that this will be when we have finished some
projects and have created a sufficiently large network of organisations and
corporations that will join and contribute.
Some of our accomplishments so far: We regularly open common places and
communication channels for all stakeholders by organizing panels,
presentations and discussions at conferences and meetings (e.g. the
"Fantastic MediaWiki" track at the Hackathon in Vienna). Moreover, we are
making requirements by third-party users visible (e.g. the MediaWiki user
survey and feature wishlist). As individuals, we contribute to the
MediaWiki project over a wide range of developments, bugfixes, code
contributions and translations. These include PluggableAuth, HitCounters,
DisplayTitle, extension store discussion, and more. Increasingly, we
coordinate our concrete development efforts.
So what are our next steps? We are going to restart the LDAP extension
following
the concrete plan of action which was devised in a public meeting
at the Vienna Hackathon. We will improve extension documentation of
extensions maintained by members of MWStake (about 100) at
MediaWiki.org.
And we work on the visibilty of current MediaWiki developments to foster
the attractiveness of the platform.
We agree with Yaron's position that the organisations EMC and MWStake
actually
have different goals and strategies. EMC, it seems, is mainly
looking for companies which want to share maintenance costs for popular
extensions. Meanwhile, MWStake seeks to integrate and coordinate the
efforts around MediaWiki without requiring a monetary contribution. Any
cooperation with organizations like EMC is welcome.
We encourage MediaWiki users to work with Yaron and the EMC if that fits
their
needs, but we also welcome them to collaborate with the WMF and us to
make MediaWiki better for everyone.
This text was jointly written by
Mark Hershberger, Cindy Cicalese, Richard Heigl, Markus Glaser
MediaWiki Stakeholders Group
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: MediaWiki-l [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] Im
Auftrag von
Yaron Koren
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 25. Mai 2017 19:54
An: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list <
mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Betreff: Re: [MediaWiki-l] Announcing: the
Enterprise MediaWiki
Consortium
Hi Brian,
That's a reasonable question. Both this consortium and the MediaWiki
Stakeholders' Group have the general aim of making things better for
"enterprise" users of MediaWiki, but beyond that the two have surprisingly
different goals and approaches. The MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group, or
MWStake, has a large number of goals, but a big part of it, as I
understand, is working with the Wikimedia Foundation and core MediaWiki
developers to make sure that the needs and desires of enterprise users are
taken into account. That sort of advocacy is not what the EMC is concerned
with. On the other hand, MWStake also does some coordination on volunteer
efforts at software improvement, so in that sense the two are more similar.
I'm not familiar with a corporate sponsorship thing for MWStake, but
even if
that happens, the two are quite different in terms of their
decision-making approach. Anyone can join MWStake, and then decisions are
made (as I understand it) via discussion and consensus. With the EMC, you
have to pay to get in, and then there's a precise system of weighted voting
to allocate the funds.
It certainly could happen that the two organizations could coordinate,
yes.
And some companies could end up being members of
both. Nonetheless, I
see these as distinct organizations, and it seems like
there's a need for
both.
Thanks!
-Yaron
> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Wednesday, May 24, 2017, Yaron Koren
<yaron(a)wikiworks.com> wrote:
Hi,
I'm very excited to announce the launch of the Enterprise MediaWiki
Consortium (EMC), an organization devoted to supporting and
maintaining "enterprise MediaWiki" software.
As you may know, a lot of open-source software has some sort of
organization or foundation that is intended to pool money from users
of
the
software toward developers. MediaWiki is in an
unusual situation: it
is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation (and, to a lesser extent,
Wikimedia Deutschland and others), but those organizations' primary
allegiance is
to
software that runs on Wikimedia sites. That
leaves a lot of
MediaWiki-related software (extensions, skins, etc.) that is mostly
intended for use on non-Wikimedia sites, i.e. "enterprise" uses:
some of this software has significant usage, but very little of it
has institutional support.
That is where the Enterprise MediaWiki Consortium fits in. It is
intended to fund the development of extensions and other software
that otherwise
has
no funding source. The set of software being
funded is entirely up
to the membership of the EMC, and of course the amount of support
that can be provided depends on the amount of money that members
contribute - an
amount
that will hopefully grow over time.
If you belong to an organization, company or website that makes use
of MediaWiki - and specifically, of MediaWiki-related software not
used on Wikimedia sites - please consider joining the Enterprise
MediaWiki Consortium - to provide much-needed support for the
software you use, and to have a greater say in shaping its future.
You can read more about the EMC here:
http://enterprisemediawikiconsortium.org/
-Yaron
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Out of curiosity, what is the relation between this group and
MWStakeholders group. Im given to understand that MWStake was also
considering having a corporate sponsership thing too (I may bemistaken
on that though). Do you envision the two groups working together, or
do you see them as being entirely separate and independent?
Best of luck in this new venture,
--
Brian
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--
WikiWorks · MediaWiki Consulting ·
http://wikiworks.com
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