On 8/13/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, This is what they call the "not invented here" syndrome... There are good reasons to make use of functionality that was developed elsewhere. For one, it works and it works now.
It still requires effort for us to work into the interface. And it's going (as far as I understand) to require users to go to a different site, when we could with not too much more difficulty implement much of the same functionality ourselves. Plus yes, we do indeed have a bias against using proprietary software with Wikipedia, if we can avoid it. In the case of databases of real-world information, the only good sources are in many cases commercial and proprietary (for now), so we don't have much of a choice. But for software, why should we settle for closed-source when we can without too much more difficulty use an open-source alternative?
Given that we have a problem in getting functionality life, important functionality like Single User Logon, it is not smart to think that we can do it all, should do it all. We have proven conclusively that we cannot do it.
Since Brion is the one working on SUL and no one's suggested that he work on this, that's a rather irrelevant example.
On 8/13/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
"We", Gerard? I don't see you developing any software.
The institutional "we", Rob. I don't plan on doing anything with this feature, but used "we" above, as in "we who are working (to whatever extent, and in whatever capacity) to make MediaWiki and Wikimedia projects better".