On Feb 5, 2008 10:08 PM, River Tarnell river@wikimedia.org wrote:
because the purpose is not to discuss whether we should do it, but whether doing it would provide an advantage to users. if yes, then we can discuss whether it's possible and if we should do it or not. until then, such discussions are just a waste of time.
Alternatively, you can observe that if we're to conclude it's not acceptable for reasons other than advantage to users, it's a waste of time to ask if it would be an advantage to users. The most time-efficient manner of discussion would seem to be to discuss all concerns in parallel, possibly in different threads to avoid mutual disruption if so desired.
On Feb 5, 2008 10:29 PM, Dan Collins en.wp.st47@gmail.com wrote:
Also, don't we have something against running closed source software for this sort of thing? That was always the reason we use MySQL rather than oracle or something else (not that I know enough to say that it was a bad decision) so is a Windows server fitting with that?
That principle is generally observed for the main servers, where practical, but at present it's completely ignored for the toolserver. JIRA, for instance, is most definitely proprietary and closed-source, despite the existence of a large number of perfectly serviceable open-source alternatives, one of which is already used by Wikimedia. I believe the same is true of at least one other program run by the toolserver roots. And, of course, most of the software that users upload is probably not free, which is possibly a different issue and possibly not (I would say not).