At 17.04.2006, Ray Saintonge wrote:
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.
... 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.
Is that mostly a legal concern? (I.e. ambiguity of OSS licenses?)
I firmly believe that "commercial open-source software" won't fly in the long run; most companies won't reach escape velocity. (Commercial OSS defined here as software where a company keeps control over the software, e.g. MySQL's dual-license model. MySQL is a notable exception where it works because they got into the game early.)
What you need is an Eclipse Foundation like setup where large corporations/system integrators make money on complementary services and therefore can afford "altruistic" contributions to a real open-source project like MediaWiki. Well, not only "afford" but "have to". :-)
Dirk