On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 9:31 PM, Ori Livneh ori@wikimedia.org wrote:
On the leadership front, let me throw out a hypothetical: should we have MediaWiki 2.0, where we start with an empty repository and build up? If so, who makes that decision? If not, what is our alternative vision? Who is going to define it? Is what we have good enough?
Let's throw out that hypothetical, because it's too grotesque even as a conversation starter.
And for the record, I agree with this. Full rewrites suck.
The model I do think we should consider is Python 3. Python 3 did not jettison the Python 2 codebase. The intent behind the major version change was to open up a parallel development track in which it was permissible to break backward-compatibility in the name of making a substantial contribution to the coherence, elegance and utility of the language.
This is a more interesting model - especially if done in parallel with radical experiments creating new workspaces for content. Imagine 1) a version of MediaWiki where a lot of stuff is ripped out ruthlessly, and new features are added more quickly, 2) which powers a site which exists for creating, say, article drafts that can be imported into Wikipedia. That's the kind of thing I get very excited about.
Erik