On 2015-01-27 11:04 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:
One thing that comes to mind though is something Gabriel mentioned about wanting stateless services for things like image manipulation and citation parsing and whatnot -- in principle many services like this could be opened up to public use.
For instance, a random MediaWiki instance could use a Wikimedia-hosted image scaler or graph rasterizer.
This!
This is something I've thought about too but never got around to writing about.
I found one of Automattic's models rather interesting.
Everyone knows about WordPress.com where they have full free and premium hosting of WordPress (with limits on plugins, etc...).
But another one of their projects is the Jetpack plugin.
The plugin has multiple features that can be enabled and disabled. - Some of them are simple small WordPress plugins that add local features. - Others integrate with services hosted on WordPress.com offering a 3rd-party installation features like WordPress.com hosted stats, use of Automattic's CDN, WordPress.com login, and warnings when your site is offline. - And then there are a few hosted premium features like video hosting and an automated backup service.
Simple extension(s) that quick and easily allow a hosted service to enhance a locally installed MediaWiki installation could be a useful addition to the MediaWiki ecosystem.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]