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).
Are there any examples or even defined processes (on meta?) that I could look up?
Thanks, Dirk
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
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
Dirk Riehle wrote:
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". :-)
As much as I support open source concepts I have to admit that most of it remains untested in the courts. Patents can be a bigger problem than copyrights because they cover the ideas rather than just the expression of the idea. The first person to the patent office has an advantage even over others who may have had the idea earlier.
Ec
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". :-)
As much as I support open source concepts I have to admit that most of it remains untested in the courts. Patents can be a bigger problem than copyrights because they cover the ideas rather than just the expression of the idea. The first person to the patent office has an advantage even over others who may have had the idea earlier.
That's why you need a proper setup. The Eclipse Foundation, for example, requires signing away any claims based on patents used in source code contributions before they get accepted. It should be the same for MediaWiki and related contributions.
Dirk
On Sun, 2006-16-04 at 15:52 +0200, Dirk Riehle wrote:
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.
As far as I know, there are 1-2 programmers working for Wikimedia and more people working at Wikia on MediaWiki. I just talked today with Jack Herrick of wikiHow who'd like to see their additions fed back to MediaWiki.
There are a lot of MW installations out there, and a lot of people hacking MW code for fun and profit.
But for that to work the MediaWiki community needs be accepting of (corporate) contributions (assuming they follow the licenses and community spirit).
I'm pretty sure that this isn't a problem whatsoever. To be sure, the main focus of MW has been and will always be Wikimedia's sites, but I know that the MW team has been very welcoming of patches and additions at least from Wikitravel in the past.
I think the most likely patches and changes to be accepted are going to be security and/or performance patches, or extensions that can be easily plugged and unplugged. Radical changes to the behaviour of the software, or stuff that's "unwiki", or stuff that is unstable or slows down the software, is probably not going to get accepted.
Are there any examples or even defined processes (on meta?) that I could look up?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_extensions
I think just adding a patch to a bug on bugzilla is the fastest way to get something added to the codebase.
~Evan
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