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.
I'm working on getting projects setup to do exactly that. (I mentioned this in a private note.) But for that to work the MediaWiki community needs be accepting of (corporate) contributions (assuming they follow the licenses and community spirit).
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.
The question of who should benefit from online work is very much an unsettled area with broad societal implications. Many of us do feel a sense of being net contributors to society when we altruistically spend many hours in Wiktasks. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, it does not put bread on the table, and it does not pay for our hardware. It is difficult, however, to imagine a working economic model that would insure that the benefits of our efforts are shared equitably.
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