On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)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