At 17.04.2006, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Dirk Riehle wrote:
can
falter. Additionally, as the Mozilla note mentioned,
contributions that aren't part of the mainline will likely bitrot. (I
don't have a solution to this; just a cautionary note.)
Well, the main solution is to create an ecosystem where people get
hired to work (full-time) on providing such extensions (or additions
to the mainline) to MediaWiki. Only this setup can provide some continuity.
...
What could be more important is to ensure that anything done for free
stays free. It would be shameful to have volunteer efforts tied up by
someone else's patents.
Is that mostly a legal concern? (I.e. ambiguity of OSS licenses?)
I firmly believe that "commercial open-source software" won't fly in
the long run; most companies won't reach escape velocity. (Commercial
OSS defined here as software where a company keeps control over the
software, e.g. MySQL's dual-license model. MySQL is a notable
exception where it works because they got into the game early.)
What you need is an Eclipse Foundation like setup where large
corporations/system integrators make money on complementary services
and therefore can afford "altruistic" contributions to a real
open-source project like MediaWiki. Well, not only "afford" but "have
to". :-)
As much as I support open source concepts I have to admit that most of
it remains untested in the courts. Patents can be a bigger problem than
copyrights because they cover the ideas rather than just the expression
of the idea. The first person to the patent office has an advantage
even over others who may have had the idea earlier.
Ec