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.
Ec