My two cents based on two decades of experience in open source and growing adoption and contributions in India:
Mediawiki is an open source project which has community members contributing to it globally. Having a technical Mediawiki user group with developers gathering together for face-to-face technical discussions or coding is a well established norm on all open source projects. Having a local user group mailing list is also fine. The most important component to maintain a successful technical user group is to have active members who find the group useful for learning best practices in open source software development, contributing code, localizing software interfaces and be active contributors to the larger global code base.
It is irrelevant whether WMF or some staff member or some local chapter member blesses this. Open source does not work on the basis of needing someone's consent. It works when you have a local problem, bug or feature you would like to develop and improve the software (Mediawiki in this case) you use or want to improve. And you have more than 2 active developers locally :-) The idea is to code not just think and talk about it.
Harsh - if you have more than 3 developers who are serious, local and want to learn more about Mediawiki, form your own user group informally. It doesn't have to be a formal group (locally registered society) unless you start collecting money. Keep the barriers to coding and real work as low as possible. I will be happy to help if you need it.
Hope this helps. Best, Alolita
On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see the bunch of coders representing their case over on this list. I see Harsh as an active volunteer, who else is active?
On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 12:10 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.com wrote:
Let me (take the effort) to skip through the many lines of diplomacy. What I understand:
Bunch of coders want to form their own group so that the coders can focus on.. coding and not going through endless email threads like this one.
I support!
PS: I'm no longer with WMF. But if there's one thing I learnt, creating things is faster and more fun than trying to get consensus. And we desperately need more people who can develop, minus the bullshit, or we are never getting out of this well.
-- Arun Ganesh (planemad)
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