On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Making the open source nature of our projects more easily discoverable is a Good Thing.
Indeed, but mixing public APIs with 1001 open source possibilities tends to make more happy the smaller circle of insiders and free software developers than the average developers just willing to build their great app or service. For instance, Twitter, Facebook etc are actually pushing open source projects themselves, but they don't mix those in their developer pages unless you dive deep and almost knowing what you are looking for.
In the same footer there is an icon "Powered by Mediawiki". For the sake of simplicity we could direct app developers to the API through the new "Developers" link and use the Mediawiki brand & homepage as an umbrella for all the open source collaboration, which is mostly what the Wikimedia/Mediawiki Developer Hubs are about. Did someone mention that there is also an initiative to revamp the mediawiki.org homepage?
Please consider that what seems obvious for you is not obvious at all for a newcomer in a hurry or someone thinking what will be her next app about. Grasping that "Wikimedia" is not a typo and understanding what it means is already a big step. And then getting the Mediawiki thing is another step further. We need to simplify all this, at least for newcomers. The risk of them thinking "uff, I'll have a better look another day" is pretty high.