On 6/28/07, Michael Daly michaeldaly@kayakwiki.org wrote:
Dave Sigafoos wrote:
a location where problems that have come up trying to do 'business' things with MW are addressed. As mentioned in my original post, these are things that will probably never fit into the MW/WP world. As you mentioned 'access restriction', different reporting/special pages. Processes that 'implementors' (probably better than business?) might need that WikiWorld wont.
This will sound more negative than I intend, but bear with me - I'll use a bit of hyperbole to make a point.
The business community has been getting a free ride on Internet stuff for a long time now. They have done little to contribute to the development of the Internet, WWW or much of anything else (network and software- or hardware-specific companies excepted). Yet they have been quick to grab onto whatever they can and warp it into something it was not intended to be (e.g - the WWW, a document publishing mechanism became a transaction processing system with kludges to HTML etc to support retail operations).
If the business community really needs something on the Internet, maybe they should put their money where their mouth is and make substantial contributions to the whole effort instead of taking stuff for free and expecting it to be modified to their wants.
I see a lot of demand for the kind of secure/restricted/whatever versions of wikis for business. I think that the business community should get together and _pay_ for such a system and then sell it to other businesses. Leave the wikis to the wiki users and create a lightweight document management system for businesses if that's what they really want.
Mike
You have the usual software development process backwards.
More often, someone thinks there's a demand, and forms a company to fill the demand.
It's hard to make money enhancing GPLed code, however. One can sell support, and one can sell the improved code, but it remains GPLed and you also have to give it away. There are exceptions - the former Cygnus Support, RedHat and the other Linux companies, MySQL AG. But those are the exceptions.
You're setting up a false dichotomy here, too. You're suggesting that the needs that business users have are incompatible with, or detrimental to, the open use of MediaWiki by projects like WP (among others). I have to disagree. Some business features might never get turned on or used on a Wikipedia type project, but I don't think they'd detract at all. Having a single, common toolbase which everyone could base projects off of would be good for a lot of things. MediaWiki has redefined the Wiki markup language and set performance standards which stand head and shoulders above the competition, except in a few business support areas. Telling us to go do another program, or the implied alternative (fork MW or something silly like that) doesn't make any sense. MW is an excellent tool in the sweet spot for a lot of commercial use as well as community use.
Perhaps a new next-generation wiki tool will do better for everyone, but as far as I know nobody's working on one.