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.