hi,
My only contribution to this shall be this. I am irritated at a PoV being pushed on the list sometimes that FOSS is the best way of doing things. People who edit Wikipedia comes from various backgrounds and FOSS advocates on this list have pushed me towards Microsoft products and I've found that some of their products are better than FOSS alternatives. Eg. MS Office.
The outburst above is irrational.
MediaWiki is FOSS. Perhaps, some technological under-pinnings (server, bots etc) are FOSS. What makes Wikipedia, and the important content is contribution by the people. They come from various backgrounds and belief systems. Not everyone supports FOSS and I am comfortable with this. We only share a need to share our knowledge and while open stuff enables it, we're not tied down by it. I do not see the need to bring time and again, the contributions of FOSS to Wikipedia on several threads. We acknowledge their contribution, that is all they ask for when they provide the user with the software. When we took their software, we did not know that we had to follow their methodologies to implement Wikipedia as well.
Pradeep User:Prad2609
Handheld
On 04/01/2012, wheredevelsdare@hotmail.com wheredevelsdare@hotmail.com wrote:
I was not attacking anyone, with reference to the link forwarded, pointing to this statement:
I think that almost any argument, on any topic, which has premises beginning with "Jimbo said..." is a pretty weak argument. Surely the merits of the proposal should be primary, not what I happen to think.
- Jimmy Wales
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 14:32:32 +0530 From: gautam@prathambooks.org To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] FOSS and Wikipedia
Please attack the argument on merit. Not the person articulating them. Thank you. Best, Gautam
(handheld) On Jan 4, 2012 2:16 PM, wheredevelsdare@hotmail.com wrote:
Refer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Argumentum_ad_Jimbonem
From: anivar.aravind@gmail.com
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 14:06:47 +0530 To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] FOSS and Wikipedia
On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Gautam John gautam@prathambooks.org wrote:
On 4 January 2012 13:38, Srikanth Ramakrishnan rsrikanth05@gmail.com wrote:
list and off the list. Wikipedia so't wholely reliant on FOSS, and
will never be. I don't mean to offend anyone but this is it. Please
comment.
Wikipedia relies on three kinds of openness.
- The technical openness that makes the platform possible. Mediawiki is
FOSS.
- The openness of content that makes participatory content creation
possible. CC-BY-SA is one of the two definitive 'open' licenses.
- The collaboration that is core to Wikipedia is an attribute of most
FOSS projects.
Wikipedia isn't FOSS but it certainly is FOS, at the very least. And
it's important to remember that Wikipedia does not and cannot exist in
a vacuum.
So for the love of Wikipedia, can you guys please stop sniping about
what is and what is not FOSS.
Pointing an old relevant article by Jimmy
http://jimmywales.com/2004/10/21/free-knowledge-requires-free-software-and-f...
-- "[It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and 'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information." - Donald Knuth
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