On Jan 22, 2015 6:43 PM, "Brian Wolff" <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote: WMF. Just because they hire the “best and the brightest” does not mean there are not people out there who are just as intelligent, if not more, but do not or cannot work for the WMF for whatever reason. Restricting Archcom to WMF employees is just about the stupidest thing you could do for an open source software project. It defeats the entire purpose of MediaWiki being open-source. I apologize, i didnt mean to imply non wmf employees are any less bright than wmf employees. What i more meant to say (which i didnt express very well) is that the arch comitte (essentially bdfl by comittee in my understanding. Not just about architecture but also "vision" for mediawiki) should be composed of leaders of the community who have been in the mediawiki community a long time, and have fairly universal respect due to demonstrating "wisdom" over the long term. I dont think arch comitte should be composed solely of wmf'ers, i think selection should be made entirely independent of affiliation (so working for wmf should not disqualify someone). It just happens that the people who i think are likely candidates all happen to currently work for the wmf/wm-de. This assumes of course that wmf wont force its employees to have certain opinions. I dont think they have any intention of doing so. After all, look at the current dev summit attendence list. How many people on that list: *has been fairly regularly active devs for at least 5 years *has demonstrated "wisdom" (however you define that) *does not currently work for wmf Otoh perhaps other people have a different conception of what the arch comitte should "be" or what the criteria for membership should be. --bawolff