On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 02:21:03PM -0400, Derric Atzrott wrote:
As mentioned before, we can't use github enterprise at all, since it
doesn't allow for hosting public repos. Let's ignore that it even exists.
I feel like as Wikipedia is one of the top 10 most visited sites on the Internet we might be able to work out something special with them though right? I'm not saying we have to go down that route, nor have I even examined all the advantages and disadvantages of the idea. I feel though that the possibility exists though and should be looked into.
If I was GitHub and the WMF approached me about potentially using GitHub Enterprise for MediaWiki and MediaWiki extensions and NOT for creating a competition service to GitHub, then I would likely entertain the idea of crafting a special set of terms for them. Furthermore, I personally might even charge them differently given that that charging per developer would be crippling to an open-source project. Of course, I am not GitHub, nor can I anticipate what they might do, nor their internal policies, but I can speak for myself and how I would run a FOSS focused company.
I think the BitKeeper story is relevant here: BitKeeper was one of the first DVCSes. It was (is?) a proprietary for-profit tool that gave special free licenses to certain free/open-source software projects, like Linux. Linux was using it for years, due to having some unique at the time features (and Linus liking it), although it was a controversial choice in the community.
At one point, due to some "reverse engineering" (basically typing "help" at its server and showing that in a talk) by some community members, the company behind BitKeeper decided to revoke this free (as in beer) license from the community members, effectively halting Linux development. Git was first published a week after that.
Now, the situation is a bit different here. But I can certainly imagine getting this "special" license exception revoked, GitHub Enterprise discontinued as a product or whatever else. Can you imagine the disruption that would cause to our development and operations?
Regars, Faidon