On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 2:12 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 22 January 2012 23:50, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
So we will put a few fallback datacenters
elsewhere, just so our
various communities and chapters realize we aren't going to be
bullied by US jurisdiction.
AIUI setting up the new Virginia datacentre took considerable effort
and planning, so it's not a trivial task. And the key, of course, is
not "do we have a few hundred squids?" but "where does the really
pretty centralised MySQL database for that particular wiki live?" But
this suggests a significant part of the hard thinking on this issue
has been done.
"You might very well think so, I couldn't possibly comment. (for one,
not to embarrass your view of your own acumen)" :-D
This ties into the question (which should be easier to raise now) of
"how forkable is Wikipedia in practice?" Not for purposes of forking
with rancor, but for basic backup hygiene: given the available data,
software and configuration information, is it actually feasible to
create a working backup of Wikipedia, if the WMF is hit by a legal
meteor?
Just for my own purposes, I do have to profess and and proclaim;
if I ever did talk about forking in rancour, I did say I would bankroll
their way, not join them out from the ship. And keep the money
reins tight so they didn't ever turn hostile in earnest.
But the last point is cogent. OPEN is a Pandoras Box. It isn't a legal
meteor, it is a hangmans noose around the whole Internet. And as
such, it would pretty much force a thousand Baidu Baidus around
the world to bloom, which is why Google is not waiting, but is acting
right now. And sadly wikipedia is still not living in the real world on this.
This is getting towards a wikitech-l discussion ... but your basic
concept is sound: as digital natives, we understand instinctively that
the way to preserve something is to spread *lots* of copies of it
around. Even if doing so is quite difficult and unwieldy.
While I would love the wikitech people to be on the ball and do some
hardcore contingency planning, the real issue is strategic, and entails
moslty that we show ability and willingness no make a stand, not just
for one day, but for all time.
--
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]