On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
I don't think there's any question that we are committed to making sure that every piece of user-facing content, including interactivity, can be accessed using 100% open source software. That's an important consensus. The primary issue is the question of parallel distribution, which is one on which reasonable people can disagree. We should collect as much data as possible to help the Board reach a decision on that question.
Simply because your first statement is in fact totally inaccurate, it is clearly a very useful clarification, coming as it does, from someone in your position.
:-)
Nevertheless, the statement is not in any shape or form relevant to the discussion about document formats. (For those joining the discussion late, software and document formats are quite separate things, only very tangentially and rarely significantly meeting - ...
Mixing the two compounds the confusion.
I think the brouhaha about Lempel-Ziv buried that question for a while)
I'll bite...
Lempel-Ziv brouhaha ?
I don't think suggesting that nailing down that we are committed to software being 100% open source, but "flexible" on formats, is a useful contribution to the discussion on that front, but more akin to a red herring. I think I have said this before. And I think I will continue to repeat this whenever given the chance, "ceterum censeo".
When each is discussed separately, it becomes harder to justify a soft approach.
Do we want WMF to only use open source software?
Do we want WMF to only support unencumbered formats?
Many would answer "Yes" to both questions.
If a hardware provider wants Wikimedia content transcoded into a different format for use on their new wizbang device, they should develop their own technology to achieve this, or pay WMF bucketloads of money to help them.
-- John Vandenberg