On 07/04/2010 03:40 AM, Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
1. Decision-making processes for development. Many of
the large open
source projects have core teams consisting of both paid and volunteer
developers, and they typically have a decision-making process that is
independent of any single organization. For example, decisions on
Firefox are made by the Firefox core team, not by the Mozilla
Foundation. The Firefox core team happens to be mostly made up of
Mozilla Foundation developers, but that is not a structural
requirement. I believe the same holds true for MediaWiki, and if this
is the case, it's worth making explicit. Where there's ambiguity, it's
worth naming the ambiguity.
The point of the Firefox project is to create a web browser and the core
team has control over that. They cannot decide on the structural
conditions of their work environment, e.g. who is employed by the
Mozilla Foundation.
The point of Wikimedia projects is to create free works and the
community has control over that. They do not have control of the
structural conditions of their work environment, e.g. WMF servers and such.
You can't compare the developement of MediaWiki & the Wikimedia
community with the development of Firefox & the Firefox core team,
because MediaWiki is just a means for a different goal (free works),
whereas Firefox is the goal.
Regards,
Tobias (User:Church of emacs)