Brion Vibber wrote:
Andreas wrote:
Hi, I tried to find some info about storing Java applets on the Wikimedia servers, and was not very successful. Maybe somebody here can help me out.
From what I understand, applet/jar files are not welcome on the servers, because there is no valid/convincing use case. However, thinking about an interactive "lab session" for Wikiversity, and seems to me a Java applet would be the best fit for what one would look for.
A few general questions:
- Where would such applets come from?
- Are there any licensing issues?
- How would they be distributed and used?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Here is what I envisaged as the applet authoring process and licensing for applets used at Wikiversity:
1) The Java source is authored under a compatible license by volunteers (eg. GPL) and could start with similarly licensed, already existing source; 2) An open and free source code version system is used to store the source and help with any possible package dependencies, eg something like SourceForge. This allows for any auditing necessary, and it is an easy way to make "the code" owned by the whole project; 3) Volunteers with some trust from the community (similar to admins?) would create JAR files from "released" versions of the Java code; 4) The generated files are placed at an appropriate place on the wikimedia servers, so that simple HTML sections in any wiki on Wikiversity can integrated the applet inside the course/lesson. No one else should be able to override those JAR files on the server, than those "curators"; 5) In the future, (if there are enough volunteers) a simple set of graphic tools could be provided as a standard JAR, which would make it easier for beginners to author new labs. This would also help any auditing somebody wants to do;
Would that make sense? Andreas =:-)