On 08/31/2012 05:02 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote:
Sam would be the one to publish the tarball, but anyone can generate an unofficial alpha tarball, and I'd encourage that.
We can already use the code to create a tarball, we already have nightlies (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Nightlies), and we already have the GPL license to distribute the code, so how do you see this working?
How would unofficial alpha tarballs carry any weight with anyone if there isn't a direct path from alpha to release? It seems like that is just encouraging forking, something that I'm trying to avoid.
Is this a quality or security concern? If so, could you clarify the risks you see?
I like Sam and think he is very responsive to the community, but this sounds like the Foundation is treating the tarball as a /direct/ interest when its interest in the tarball is an indirect one as you've said before in http://hexm.de/la (gmane link):
I've lobbed the idea out there of MediaWiki-focused fundraising to WMF people outside of WMF Engineering, to somewhat lukewarm response in the past.
The Foundation already accepts code contributions and allows code re-use through its source repository and the GPL license, so remaining the tarball gatekeeper seems unnecessary.
Why not allow the community to make a tarball release if the community cannot give money to support the tarball?
Mark.