On Jan 19, 2008 4:13 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
working with a company that wants to embrace open source & open standards as best they can.
"As best they can" still isn't free. Flash isn't free, so as long as Kaltura is flash-based, it will never /truly/ be free.
Chad
On Jan 19, 2008 4:13 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 1/19/08, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
My understanding is that Michael Dale was told that Wikimedia would be using Kaltura and that it might consider metavid some day 'in the future'.
We've made no firm commitment to using Kaltura anywhere. This is the problem with speculation about leaked presentations: They lack context & positioning. When we've talked about our technology roadmap to potential donors or partners, we've always made it clear that it's highly tentative & dependent on lots of factors. The Kaltura screenshots are pretty, that's why they are in there.
Many months ago I asked if I could travel to Australia (on my own dime, none the less) to attend FOMS for Wikimedia.
Whom did you ask?
Correct. Yet WMF is putting our press releases and calling for community help with one and not the other.
I'd be happy to have an open-ended discussion with Michael about ways we can drive open source interest in the project.
Being all things to all people is worthless if you are nothing to yourself. The world does not need another ocean, but it does need a collection of uncompromisingly free knowledge.
Wikimedia should always be accessible (including full participation) to people using only free software. That makes sense -- because otherwise, projects like OLPC would run into problems when they want to access our content. One of the ongoing discussions we've had is whether it's OK or not to make things easy & friendly for people using proprietary systems (i.e. the vast majority of web users). My position has been consistently that we should at the very least get a good evaluation of the cost of choosing not to support proprietary systems.
WMF is not the Free Software Foundation; our core mission isn't to promote free video & audio formats. The reason, in my view, that we're supporting them is to broaden access and participation, and to ensure long term sustainability. These are highly practical reasons that sync up with our mission statement. So does, in my opinion, making it easy for users of proprietary systems to access our content and to participate in its development. (I found it interesting, in this context, that Sue implemented Ogg Vorbis on the CBC website, for exactly the same reason: to give more people access to CBC content.)
In the last few discussions we've had about this issue, you've consistently taken the side of what I deem isolationism: against Creative Commons, against parallel distribution, and now against working with a company that wants to embrace open source & open standards as best they can. I don't think that's the majority view in our community, and I don't consider it the strategic stance that the Foundation should take. (Obviously, some of these parameters are ultimately for the Board to figure out and we'll live with whatever it decides.)
There's always going to be some tension between the extremes: Recall the recent discussion on this list about us not making sufficient use of fair use exemptions. I expect that the Foundation will get flak from both camps regularly, both of them making apocalyptic predictions of our future. It's like Wikipedia itself -- as long as it's seen as both a vast right wing conspiracy and a bunch of liberal treehuggers, we're probably doing okay. :-) -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
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