I'd like to reopen the discussion about whether we officially consider MediaWiki a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Currently, the position of the Foundation on this issue appears somewhat ambiguous. While we run the Subversion repository, the website, the mailing lists, and pay the two lead developers, MediaWiki is listed, for example, on: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects
not as a Wikimedia project, but as a "related project." It is also not part of our usual list of projects. On the other hand, mediawiki.org carries the "A Wikimedia Project" button.
My view is that we should make this the consistent, official view and consistently promote and list MediaWiki as a Wikimedia Foundation project wherever other Wikimedia projects are listed. My hope is that, in doing so, we will make MediaWiki more prominent and attract more volunteers to work on it, just as on other Wikimedia Foundation projects. I also believe that this will help in making MediaWiki strategy a key part of the Foundation's general project strategy.
What are other people's thoughts? The only downside I can see is that this might be seen as a move to exercise additional control over the direction of development. But already, all major code changes to the core have to be approved by Brion, who is a Foundation employee. I actually think it will be easier to identify our responsibility towards outside users if we consider MediaWiki to be a key part of the free culture movement that the Wikimedia Foundation must support.
On 06/01/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
While we run the Subversion repository
You don't, it's on leuksman.com, which is Brion's personal server. svn.wikimedia.org resolves to leuksman through DNS.
My view is that we should make this the consistent, official view and consistently promote and list MediaWiki as a Wikimedia Foundation project wherever other Wikimedia projects are listed. My hope is that, in doing so, we will make MediaWiki more prominent and attract more volunteers to work on it, just as on other Wikimedia Foundation projects. I also believe that this will help in making MediaWiki strategy a key part of the Foundation's general project strategy.
Legally, the Foundation has "MediaWiki" as a registered trademark.
What are other people's thoughts? The only downside I can see is that this might be seen as a move to exercise additional control over the direction of development. But already, all major code changes to the core have to be approved by Brion, who is a Foundation employee. I actually think it will be easier to identify our responsibility towards outside users if we consider MediaWiki to be a key part of the free culture movement that the Wikimedia Foundation must support.
Well, of course it's going to be seen as a "move to exercise additional control over the direction of development", because it is. You wouldn't have wanted to consolidate MediaWiki as 100% under the Wikimedia brand unless you were about to start ordering us to put things in it.
Personally, I don't care; I'm not on the Foundation's payroll, and I don't intend to start taking orders from users or Board members over what I put in the code I voluntarily contribute to an open source project. The only people I've ever directly deferred to are Brion, who is our Benevolent Dictator, and Tim, who is an experienced and senior developer.
Rob Church
On 1/6/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Well, of course it's going to be seen as a "move to exercise additional control over the direction of development", because it is. You wouldn't have wanted to consolidate MediaWiki as 100% under the Wikimedia brand unless you were about to start ordering us to put things in it.
I think that's overly cynical, Rob.
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Rob Church wrote:
On 06/01/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
While we run the Subversion repository
You don't, it's on leuksman.com, which is Brion's personal server. svn.wikimedia.org resolves to leuksman through DNS.
This is as much just to isolate it as anything else, though. More people have SSH access for committing (though with a restricted shell), and the machine automatically runs the updated parser tests, so I'm leery of putting that in our core cluster.
If a MediaWiki committer (or someone who gets into one of their computers or SSH keys) abuses that, they can only really use it try to hack into my blog.
In theory we could isolate some of that better and go ahead and host it in the main cluster, or move it elsewhere.
My view is that we should make this the consistent, official view and consistently promote and list MediaWiki as a Wikimedia Foundation project wherever other Wikimedia projects are listed. My hope is that, in doing so, we will make MediaWiki more prominent and attract more volunteers to work on it, just as on other Wikimedia Foundation projects. I also believe that this will help in making MediaWiki strategy a key part of the Foundation's general project strategy.
Legally, the Foundation has "MediaWiki" as a registered trademark.
There was some controversy over this, primarily in that it was a surprise to those of us who worked on the software at the time.
The position I took then was that Wikimedia is MediaWiki's number one _customer_, but not necessarily _owner_.
We never really got around to figuring out a compromise or alternate ownership of the name that I know of, and now Tim and I are on the foundation's payroll, so I don't know whether or not we care about making a distinction like that anymore.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
On 07/01/07, Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen@gatech.edu wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
More people have SSH access for committing (though with a restricted shell)
Why can't they use svn commit?
We do; we use svn+ssh as our protocol. However, to stop us running riot and storing p0rn on brion's server, we're a little bit locked down. :)
Rob Church
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Rob Church wrote:
On 07/01/07, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
More people have SSH access for committing (though with a restricted shell)
Why can't they use svn commit?
We do; we use svn+ssh as our protocol. However, to stop us running riot and storing p0rn on brion's server, we're a little bit locked down. :)
To flesh this out a little:
Subversion can run over a couple of different transport protocol layers. The most common for read-only anonymous access is HTTP, using the WebDAV extensions.
HTTP isn't necessarily as attractive for read-write scenarios, though. Unencrypted HTTP is not a great idea, and even if you use encrypted HTTPS you still have to worry about how to set up good account and password management.
Tunneling Subversion over the SSH secure shell protocol allows accounts to be managed on the operating system in a relatively standard way, and the issue of password management can be pleasantly left on the client side.
That is, as server manager I never ever have to touch your password. I don't have to see one, set one, e-mail you a default, nothing. You send me a public key, and the private key on your computer is the only way that the account can be logged in to. Any password you put on it is managed by you on your computer; you can change the password, use a password keychain tool for convenience, whatever.
This means for instance that no one can get your SVN password by getting 10 seconds at your G-mail account and searching for "password" when your back is turned. ;)
If we provided shell service for developers on the same host, this would be even more convenient -- you'd login with the same key -- but we don't for now and so the accounts except for me and Tim use a restricted shell which allows only Subversion to be accessed.
This combination of http:// for anonymous access and svn+ssh:// for developer access is pretty common, though I've occasionally seen projects using https:// with password authentication. (yech!)
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
On 07/01/07, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
More people have SSH access for committing (though with a restricted shell)
Why can't they use svn commit?
We do; we use svn+ssh as our protocol. However, to stop us running riot and storing p0rn on brion's server, we're a little bit locked down. :)
To flesh this out a little:
Thanks. Your explanation made sense. I never really thought about what svn+ssh really meant...
Matthew Flaschen
Hoi, When the Wikimedia Foundation wants to make MediaWiki an official project, it has the potential to make this change happen. With this change, the WMF however assumes responsibilities that it currently does not have. It currently does not take responsibility for the way Brion has too much on his plate to finish the many things he did not finish. It can at this moment selfishly urge Brion to do whatever because of WMF priorities.
When the WMF takes responsibility for MediaWiki, it should take much more notice of all the other organisations that use MediaWiki and have developed their own changes to accommodate needs that the WMF does not feel for its projects. Doing this will bring the power of all the people who also developing MW, and it will bring the need for integration and support that has not really been addressed up to now.
If this move is intended to bring more volunteer developers to MediaWiki I am afraid that it is just window dressing. It will not make much of a difference because people come and stay as they like. If you TRULY want more developers, having someone dedicated to coaching the people who are new to the MediaWiki code would make much more of a difference. Having someone coach people who are doing projects and stuff in Universities would really help.
Sure, MediaWiki is strategic to the Wikimedia Foundation. It is not only strategic to the WMF. In order to take the role of "owning" the project, it is important that the WMF considers how this new role gives responsibilities and if the WMF wants to take up this burden.
Thanks, GerardM
On 1/6/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd like to reopen the discussion about whether we officially consider MediaWiki a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Currently, the position of the Foundation on this issue appears somewhat ambiguous. While we run the Subversion repository, the website, the mailing lists, and pay the two lead developers, MediaWiki is listed, for example, on: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects
not as a Wikimedia project, but as a "related project." It is also not part of our usual list of projects. On the other hand, mediawiki.org carries the "A Wikimedia Project" button.
My view is that we should make this the consistent, official view and consistently promote and list MediaWiki as a Wikimedia Foundation project wherever other Wikimedia projects are listed. My hope is that, in doing so, we will make MediaWiki more prominent and attract more volunteers to work on it, just as on other Wikimedia Foundation projects. I also believe that this will help in making MediaWiki strategy a key part of the Foundation's general project strategy.
What are other people's thoughts? The only downside I can see is that this might be seen as a move to exercise additional control over the direction of development. But already, all major code changes to the core have to be approved by Brion, who is a Foundation employee. I actually think it will be easier to identify our responsibility towards outside users if we consider MediaWiki to be a key part of the free culture movement that the Wikimedia Foundation must support.
-- Peace & Love, Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 07/01/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When the Wikimedia Foundation wants to make MediaWiki an official project, it has the potential to make this change happen. With this change, the WMF however assumes responsibilities that it currently does not have. It currently does not take responsibility for the way Brion has too much on his plate to finish the many things he did not finish. It can at this moment selfishly urge Brion to do whatever because of WMF priorities.
I agree that it is unfair that Brion's stack gets piled high (I should point out that Tim isn't exactly stuck for things to do most of the time, either) with projects that someone "official" promises at Wikimania, but then bitches about when their arbitrary deadline is not met.
When the WMF takes responsibility for MediaWiki, it should take much more notice of all the other organisations that use MediaWiki and have developed their own changes to accommodate needs that the WMF does not feel for its projects. Doing this will bring the power of all the people who also developing MW, and it will bring the need for integration and support that has not really been addressed up to now.
Agreed; if Wikimedia is really serious about pushing wiki, then it should continue to support MediaWiki in other environments, not just its own. It is reasonable for us to keep the focus of the software, of course - MediaWiki is a wiki engine - but it would be unreasonable to turn around and deprive existing third parties of much of the support and general community that's sprung up around MediaWiki itself.
I don't think, however, there's any danger of this not happening.
If this move is intended to bring more volunteer developers to MediaWiki I am afraid that it is just window dressing. It will not make much of a difference because people come and stay as they like. If you TRULY want more developers, having someone dedicated to coaching the people who are new to the MediaWiki code would make much more of a difference. Having someone coach people who are doing projects and stuff in Universities would really help.
Absolutely! New developers come in all very excited about the thing - they've submitted a few patches, we've generally used those to help mould them into shape, and we've got a feel for them - but they're still very "green" - I certainly was. It would make excellent sense if a more experienced developer was assigned to "mentor" newbies, and I don't mean that in the sense of being up their noses - I mean that in a sense of giving their changes a quick eyeball, and being available to answer the odd email about how something should be done.
Of course, we don't want to abandon eyeballing everyone else's work, either...
Rob Church
Rob Church wrote:
On 07/01/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
If this move is intended to bring more volunteer developers to MediaWiki I am afraid that it is just window dressing. It will not make much of a difference because people come and stay as they like. If you TRULY want more developers, having someone dedicated to coaching the people who are new to the MediaWiki code would make much more of a difference. Having someone coach people who are doing projects and stuff in Universities would really help.
Absolutely! New developers come in all very excited about the thing - they've submitted a few patches, we've generally used those to help mould them into shape, and we've got a feel for them - but they're still very "green" - I certainly was. It would make excellent sense if a more experienced developer was assigned to "mentor" newbies, and I don't mean that in the sense of being up their noses - I mean that in a sense of giving their changes a quick eyeball, and being available to answer the odd email about how something should be done.
Interestingly, given the stink being raised in certain on-wiki circles about IRC and off-wiki communication, it is evident from lurking on the appropriate channels that this is already being done spectacularly well by Brion and Rob, not to mention the other devs who are there from time to time.
I just wanted to make it absolutely clear that the "mentoring" process is already ongoing, if not necessarily officially or under that precise name, and seems to be working very well indeed.
HTH HAND
Phil Boswell schreef:
Rob Church wrote:
On 07/01/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
If this move is intended to bring more volunteer developers to MediaWiki I am afraid that it is just window dressing. It will not make much of a difference because people come and stay as they like. If you TRULY want more developers, having someone dedicated to coaching the people who are new to the MediaWiki code would make much more of a difference. Having someone coach people who are doing projects and stuff in Universities would really help.
Absolutely! New developers come in all very excited about the thing - they've submitted a few patches, we've generally used those to help mould them into shape, and we've got a feel for them - but they're still very "green" - I certainly was. It would make excellent sense if a more experienced developer was assigned to "mentor" newbies, and I don't mean that in the sense of being up their noses - I mean that in a sense of giving their changes a quick eyeball, and being available to answer the odd email about how something should be done.
Interestingly, given the stink being raised in certain on-wiki circles about IRC and off-wiki communication, it is evident from lurking on the appropriate channels that this is already being done spectacularly well by Brion and Rob, not to mention the other devs who are there from time to time.
I just wanted to make it absolutely clear that the "mentoring" process is already ongoing, if not necessarily officially or under that precise name, and seems to be working very well indeed.
HTH HAND
Hoi, There are two ways in which you can read a proposal for change. You can read it as a criticism and you can read it as a possible road forward that intents to allow us to do even better in the future. With a person that would be tasked to support people new to MediaWiki, it is not at all a good idea to have this person be the only person that these new people are exposed to. Development is done best when there is a community of people working together. This will not change, what would change is the scale of the influx of people. You may already notice that the amount of people working on the MediaWiki code is increasing. You may have noticed that some aspects of the MediaWiki code are actively developed but are of no relevance to other groups that do not have an interest. This means that we now have several sub communities of developers all involved in MediaWiki all being part of the MediaWiki ecology.
My feeling is that as the use of MediaWiki is increasing, the scope of what people work on will increase at the same time. This is to be expected to have a direct impact on the scope developers work on as well. Consequently, it will be of an increasing importance to both maintain the architectural integrity of MediaWiki and allow for the growth of the developer community at the same time.
Thanks, GerardM
On 13/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
There are two ways in which you can read a proposal for change. You can read it as a criticism and you can read it as a possible road forward that intents to allow us to do even better in the future. With a person that would be tasked to support people new to MediaWiki, it is not at all a good idea to have this person be the only person that these new people are exposed to. Development is done best when there is a community of people working together. This will not change, what would change is the scale of the influx of people. You may already notice that the amount of people working on the MediaWiki code is increasing. You may have noticed that some aspects of the MediaWiki code are actively developed but are of no relevance to other groups that do not have an interest. This means that we now have several sub communities of developers all involved in MediaWiki all being part of the MediaWiki ecology.
[snip the rest]
What part of Phil's post, or my post, was in any way counter to this general feeling that "more developers == good"?
Rob Church
Rob Church schreef:
On 13/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
There are two ways in which you can read a proposal for change. You can read it as a criticism and you can read it as a possible road forward that intents to allow us to do even better in the future. With a person that would be tasked to support people new to MediaWiki, it is not at all a good idea to have this person be the only person that these new people are exposed to. Development is done best when there is a community of people working together. This will not change, what would change is the scale of the influx of people. You may already notice that the amount of people working on the MediaWiki code is increasing. You may have noticed that some aspects of the MediaWiki code are actively developed but are of no relevance to other groups that do not have an interest. This means that we now have several sub communities of developers all involved in MediaWiki all being part of the MediaWiki ecology.
[snip the rest]
What part of Phil's post, or my post, was in any way counter to this general feeling that "more developers == good"?
Rob Church
Hoi, Not necessarily anything. I do agree with Phil that a good job is being done. I also think that as the amount of developers grow, as there are more Wikis deployed, it becomes increasingly important to maintain coherence. We need unity in diversity. Thanks, GerardM
On 1/7/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When the Wikimedia Foundation wants to make MediaWiki an official project, it has the potential to make this change happen. With this change, the WMF however assumes responsibilities that it currently does not have. It currently does not take responsibility for the way Brion has too much on his plate to finish the many things he did not finish. It can at this moment selfishly urge Brion to do whatever because of WMF priorities.
Well, Brion has been the release manager for MediaWiki for years. Since he's on the payroll of WMF, I don't think we're assuming any _new_ responsibilities, but merely clarifying existing responsibilities. And I definitely do agree that the WMF should do a better job at soliciting and coordinating external contributions to MW, but this, like many other things the WMF _should_ be doing, is greatly limited by our ability to spend money on doing so.
On 10/01/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Well, Brion has been the release manager for MediaWiki for years. Since he's on the payroll of WMF, I don't think we're assuming any _new_ responsibilities, but merely clarifying existing responsibilities. And I definitely do agree that the WMF should do a better job at soliciting and coordinating external contributions to MW, but this, like many other things the WMF _should_ be doing, is greatly limited by our ability to spend money on doing so.
OK - what does officially putting MediaWiki under the umbrella of the WMF do for MediaWiki that is an improvement on the present situation? List with + and -.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 10/01/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Well, Brion has been the release manager for MediaWiki for years. Since he's on the payroll of WMF, I don't think we're assuming any _new_ responsibilities, but merely clarifying existing responsibilities. And I definitely do agree that the WMF should do a better job at soliciting and coordinating external contributions to MW, but this, like many other things the WMF _should_ be doing, is greatly limited by our ability to spend money on doing so.
For the record, Erik proposed to the board that MediaWiki becomes a wikimedia project some weeks ago, and I indicated I was not overly supportive of the idea and asked that he asks their opinion to developers.
I am not very happy with the idea, because to the difference of the wikimedia project, Mediawiki is directly used by and developed for the benefit of many other projects.
Examples: right now, no organisation is "authorized" to host a bit of the projects. No organisation is "authorized" to put an advertisement on the project sites. And to take the example of OmegaWiki, no organisation is authorized to add itself as a "sponsor" or whatever of any of our projects. Because practically, the projects are financially supported at 99% by the Foundation.
Do you really want that for MediaWiki ?
I agree the term "related" does not describe the current relationship between MediaWiki and the Foundation. I think Brion gets it right in saying "Wikimedia projects are the primary customers of the MediaWiki".
I would prefer to make it clear the relation between software and foundation, but not to qualify it under the same terms than the relation with the projects.
OK - what does officially putting MediaWiki under the umbrella of the WMF do for MediaWiki that is an improvement on the present situation? List with + and -.
I saw no answer to this part. Unless I really missed it entirely. I would like to see arguments.
The main argument given by Erik was the techsummit. We are planning to have in the future a big bunch of days dedicated only to mediawiki development... for its primary customer. It seems a bit odd for an organisation to give so much to a project that is not even recognise as one of its project. Hence the suggestion to officially announce mediawiki as a Foundation project.
Meanwhile, I would like to see a list of pro and con developped before letting the board participate to such a decision ;-)
ant
- d.
On 19/01/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I agree the term "related" does not describe the current relationship between MediaWiki and the Foundation. I think Brion gets it right in saying "Wikimedia projects are the primary customers of the MediaWiki".
This being the case, we generally develop functionality with a semi-defined project scope in mind for MediaWiki; it's a wiki engine, mostly driven by the Wikimedia interpretation of a wiki.
A *lot* of what goes into MediaWiki (aside from bug fixes) is new functionality developed *for* use on Wikimedia wikis; a lot of extensions are developed to facilitate extras for Wikimedia. Having said that, there *are* things going into development which Wikimedia might never make use of, but which fall under the general scope of what MediaWiki is supposed to function as; a lot of additional extensions and plugins, for instance - stuff like LDAP authentication and other corporate/academic-used features.
I don't see any real problem with the current interpretation of things. MediaWiki is as open as Wikipedia - the code is licenced under the GNU GPL and anyone who really feels strongly about it can fork it quite happily at any time.
A huge number of organisations can and do take a vested interest in developing the software to its fullest potential. The superb effort going into things like Semantic MediaWiki and WiktionaryZ may never have been on the agenda in 2003, and may not be completely adopted in all Wikimedia projects, but they're very much in tune with what MediaWiki is.
What is MediaWiki? It's a free form wiki engine which has a purpose. That purpose is to make sharing of ideas, information and content easy for anyone.
How is that counter to any Wikimedia ideology? It's not. I think MediaWiki development works better when everyone feels they're in a comfortable environment where they're free to work on their own portions that interest them. Sure, they have to put up with me swearing every so often...sure, they have to be careful. But I personally, and I suspect others, have a nice comfortable feeling of not having to be accountable to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. I like that; I can view all my users as equals.
In case it's not clear; I support the current status quo.
Rob Church
Hoi, Anthere made comments about the OmegaWiki project. I want to make quiet clear; no organisation is authorised to add itself as a partner to OmegaWiki. OmegaWiki does have a commission and this commission selects up to 15 organisations every half year that have proven themselves to be a partner to the aims of the project.
There is a current list of three organisations:
* Kennisnet is an organisation that has proven to be a boon to both OmegaWiki and the Wikimedia Foundation. * University Bamberg does have an active interest and application and as a consequence is paying both for development and content for OmegaWiki. * Knewco is an organisation that has spend probably as much in 2006 on the development of MediaWiki software as the Wikimedia Foundation. I know that more of the added value of Knewco will become visible in the near future
From my point of view as all three organisations are actively involved in line with the aims are of the OmegaWiki project, and arguably the aims of the WMF, they deserve to be acknowledged as such. OmegaWiki is happy to acknowledge this collaboration. The notion that 99% of all MediaWiki software development has been paid by the Wikimedia Foundation is not based on facts. Much of the activity on OmegaWiki has not been really visible yet. The inward focus of the WMF has not helped in the current appreciation in what happens in projects outside of the WMF. OmegaWiki is one project outside of the WMF, there are several more.
MediaWiki is more than what happens inside the WMF.
Thanks, GerardM
Erik Moeller wrote:
I'd like to reopen the discussion about whether we officially consider MediaWiki a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Currently, the position of the Foundation on this issue appears somewhat ambiguous. While we run the Subversion repository, the website, the mailing lists, and pay the two lead developers, MediaWiki is listed, for example, on: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects
not as a Wikimedia project, but as a "related project." It is also not part of our usual list of projects. On the other hand, mediawiki.org carries the "A Wikimedia Project" button.
It doesn't bother me. Change the websites if you like, I can't see it making one bit of difference to the management of the project. We all know that you have to use a light touch when you're managing volunteers. Maybe the Foundation could help with recruitment of developers, but I can't see why the wording on the webpage should influence that activity.
I don't mean to start an argument. Erik, if you think it's important, then I have no issue with that.
Nobody can deny the close relationship between Wikimedia and MediaWiki. Some might worry about Wikimedia taking control of MediaWiki, which is amusing considering the amount of influence MediaWiki developers have over Wikimedia affairs. They have as much to fear from us as we do from them ;)
-- Tim Starling
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Tim Starling wrote:
Some might worry about Wikimedia taking control of MediaWiki, which is amusing considering the amount of influence MediaWiki developers have over Wikimedia affairs. They have as much to fear from us as we do from them ;)
I believe the term is "mutually assured destruction" ;)
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
On 08/01/07, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
I believe the term is "mutually assured destruction" ;)
That's just begging for a "somebody set us up the bomb" type response.
Rob Church
On 1/7/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
That's just begging for a "somebody set us up the bomb" type response.
We get signal.
On 1/7/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/7/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
That's just begging for a "somebody set us up the bomb" type response.
We get signal.
Commit now.
For great justice.
On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 11:48:05PM -0800, George Herbert wrote:
On 1/7/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/7/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
That's just begging for a "somebody set us up the bomb" type response.
We get signal.
Commit now.
For great justice.
And I guess it's left up to me...
All your software are belong to us.
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth schreef:
On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 11:48:05PM -0800, George Herbert wrote:
On 1/7/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/7/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
That's just begging for a "somebody set us up the bomb" type response.
We get signal.
Commit now.
For great justice.
And I guess it's left up to me...
All your software are belong to us.
And to "us"
Thanks, GerardM
On 08/01/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Nobody can deny the close relationship between Wikimedia and MediaWiki. Some might worry about Wikimedia taking control of MediaWiki,
Well, that's pretty much the de facto condition - it's software written and actively developed almost entirely for one organisation, that just happens to be open source and useful to lots of other people.
OTOH, it's only good sense that getting outside users involved in development will make for a better and more robust application. Actively recruiting outside developers doing interesting stuff will mean the weird and wonderful ideas can go in as extensions rather than being separate forks.
(Remember the chitchat about "distributed MediaWiki"? Seen http://www.wikileaks.org/ ? I've already written a note to one of the devs strongly suggesting they participate in the mainstream of MediaWiki development.)
[Mind you, I was sure this would be the case with Slash, which is of industrial robustness ... but an exercise in pain to sysadmin. I want to hurt it. Real bad. In the face.]
So the question becomes: What would or could Wikimedia being the official (not just de facto) organisational umbrella do to or for MediaWiki? Assuming things aren't actually broken right now, which it appears from this thread is the case.
+ Legal backup in case of attacks from the querulous? Lots of prominent free software has a legal backup these days. Though most of the legal concern for Wikimedia is our content. - Too many eggs in one basket + Express task of recruiting outside devs - ... who then have to be herded by current devs
Please add more.
which is amusing considering the amount of influence MediaWiki developers have over Wikimedia affairs. They have as much to fear from us as we do from them ;)
The cure for en:wp admin politics is to point out the devs have all the REAL power ;-D
- d.
Hoi, The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF developed functionality is.
As to distributed MediaWiki, as you may remember the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (Andrew Tannenbaum's department) is actively working on a distributed Mediawiki and is particularly interested in the distributed network functionality that is required. This includes things like making sure the content is near to where it is requested.
The WMF could provide a meeting place for organisations that use MediaWiki stimulate cooperation. The WMF can provide a developer that has as his task to mentor new developers, particularly students from Universities that want to be technically involved in MediaWiki projects. My expectation is that it will be possible to do some 50 projects in a half year (only the MW support .. not supporting the content part of the project) this is likely to lead to a retention of developers of in between five to ten percent and will as a consequence be a good investment. The organisations that develop MediaWiki may also need support to build extensions so that their code can be part of the main MediaWiki code. This can be a paid for service. When it is not the WMF who does this, another organisation may be willing to provide this service ...
I am sure there are more things that can be done when MediaWiki has its organisational part developed it may even generate money for the Foundation.
Thanks, GerardM
David Gerard schreef:
On 08/01/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Nobody can deny the close relationship between Wikimedia and MediaWiki. Some might worry about Wikimedia taking control of MediaWiki,
Well, that's pretty much the de facto condition - it's software written and actively developed almost entirely for one organisation, that just happens to be open source and useful to lots of other people.
OTOH, it's only good sense that getting outside users involved in development will make for a better and more robust application. Actively recruiting outside developers doing interesting stuff will mean the weird and wonderful ideas can go in as extensions rather than being separate forks.
(Remember the chitchat about "distributed MediaWiki"? Seen http://www.wikileaks.org/ ? I've already written a note to one of the devs strongly suggesting they participate in the mainstream of MediaWiki development.)
[Mind you, I was sure this would be the case with Slash, which is of industrial robustness ... but an exercise in pain to sysadmin. I want to hurt it. Real bad. In the face.]
So the question becomes: What would or could Wikimedia being the official (not just de facto) organisational umbrella do to or for MediaWiki? Assuming things aren't actually broken right now, which it appears from this thread is the case.
- Legal backup in case of attacks from the querulous? Lots of
prominent free software has a legal backup these days. Though most of the legal concern for Wikimedia is our content.
- Too many eggs in one basket
- Express task of recruiting outside devs
- ... who then have to be herded by current devs
Please add more.
which is amusing considering the amount of influence MediaWiki developers have over Wikimedia affairs. They have as much to fear from us as we do from them ;)
The cure for en:wp admin politics is to point out the devs have all the REAL power ;-D
- d.
On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 12:20:22AM +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF developed functionality is.
Well, let's be clear here: do we measure in site installations?
Or terabytes a month of traffic? :-)
Cheers, -- jra
On 08/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF developed functionality is.
I stand corrected :-) Is as much of this as possible in the main line of development, or regularly merged?
As to distributed MediaWiki, as you may remember the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (Andrew Tannenbaum's department) is actively working on a distributed Mediawiki and is particularly interested in the distributed network functionality that is required. This includes things like making sure the content is near to where it is requested.
Excellent!
The WMF could provide a meeting place for organisations that use MediaWiki stimulate cooperation. The WMF can provide a developer that has as his task to mentor new developers, particularly students from Universities that want to be technically involved in MediaWiki projects.
That's the sort of thing I mentioned. Trouble being that would take an experienced MW coder who wants to do that and can do that as well as code.
My expectation is that it will be possible to do some 50 projects in a half year (only the MW support .. not supporting the content part of the project) this is likely to lead to a retention of developers of in between five to ten percent and will as a consequence be a good investment.
Yep.
The organisations that develop MediaWiki may also need support to build extensions so that their code can be part of the main MediaWiki code. This can be a paid for service. When it is not the WMF who does this, another organisation may be willing to provide this service ... I am sure there are more things that can be done when MediaWiki has its organisational part developed it may even generate money for the Foundation.
I wonder if there's any money in MediaWiki programming consultancy as yet.
- d.
David Gerard schreef:
On 08/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF developed functionality is.
I stand corrected :-) Is as much of this as possible in the main line of development, or regularly merged?
OmegaWiki makes use of the MediaWiki SVN. The code is therefore first entered in SVN before it is applied to our environments. (Yes, we have some test environments, and one production environment). The software is in its own SVN branch. I understand that the software will be merged with the cutting edge release as used by the WMF but you have to ask Erik about the precise details.
As to distributed MediaWiki, as you may remember the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (Andrew Tannenbaum's department) is actively working on a distributed Mediawiki and is particularly interested in the distributed network functionality that is required. This includes things like making sure the content is near to where it is requested.
Excellent!
The WMF could provide a meeting place for organisations that use MediaWiki stimulate cooperation. The WMF can provide a developer that has as his task to mentor new developers, particularly students from Universities that want to be technically involved in MediaWiki projects.
That's the sort of thing I mentioned. Trouble being that would take an experienced MW coder who wants to do that and can do that as well as code.
Well, this is an investment. First you invest, then you profit. It takes money to realise this. The profit is in the expanded base of coders.
My expectation is that it will be possible to do some 50 projects in a half year (only the MW support .. not supporting the content part of the project) this is likely to lead to a retention of developers of in between five to ten percent and will as a consequence be a good investment.
Yep.
The organisations that develop MediaWiki may also need support to build extensions so that their code can be part of the main MediaWiki code. This can be a paid for service. When it is not the WMF who does this, another organisation may be willing to provide this service ... I am sure there are more things that can be done when MediaWiki has its organisational part developed it may even generate money for the Foundation.
I wonder if there's any money in MediaWiki programming consultancy as yet.
- d.
ABSOLUTELY .. There are regularly tasks that need coding .. Experienced developers have a distinct advantage. For OmegaWiki we have introduced several people both professionals and "amateur" developers into the vagaries of both MediaWiki and Relational MediaWiki. I can tell you that we have sunk substantial amounts of money in the development of OmegaWiki and this is likely to continue.
We also have several students who have a place for their thesis who will be working on content related technology. We are working with the University of Bamberg on a project to internationalise educational content that will use data from OmegaWiki. This will also require some software and that is in their budget as software development. The point here is that as we are willing to cooperate and acknowledge our partnering, we are able to realise OmegaWiki in a way that is not really open to the WMF projects because of the way organisations like Virgin Unite are treated.
By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects. In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential group of people.
Thanks, GerardM
PS We have regularly a need for more developers...
On 09/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects. In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential group of people.
Mmm. There's talk of my company selling my services to a customer as a MediaWiki sysadmin, as they have several installs with *no sysadmin responsible* ... and I'm going to have to learn to code soon whether I like it or not ...
- d.
On 09/01/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. There's talk of my company selling my services to a customer as a MediaWiki sysadmin, as they have several installs with *no sysadmin responsible* ... and I'm going to have to learn to code soon whether I like it or not ...
A clever bloke like yourself will pick up the nuances of MediaWiki development fairly rapidly, both for extensions and hacking core code.
Rob Church
On 09/01/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/01/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. There's talk of my company selling my services to a customer as a MediaWiki sysadmin, as they have several installs with *no sysadmin responsible* ... and I'm going to have to learn to code soon whether I like it or not ...
A clever bloke like yourself will pick up the nuances of MediaWiki development fairly rapidly, both for extensions and hacking core code.
NOOOO YOU BASTARD AIEEEEEEEEE
/me runs away
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 09/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects. In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential group of people.
Are you talking admin as in sysop, or as in system administrator?
Matthew Flaschen
On 10/01/07, Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen@gatech.edu wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 09/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects. In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential group of people.
Are you talking admin as in sysop, or as in system administrator?
I was talking as in Unix sysadmin; I suspect Gerard meant programming as well.
- d.
David Gerard schreef:
On 10/01/07, Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen@gatech.edu wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 09/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects. In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential group of people.
Are you talking admin as in sysop, or as in system administrator?
I was talking as in Unix sysadmin; I suspect Gerard meant programming as well.
- d.
Hoi, The two admins that I know off do NOT do any programming.. they do NOT do any hardcore system management. They create an environment, build communities, hold hands for newbies and they are nice people. All relevant requirements for the job. Thanks, Gerard
On 10/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The two admins that I know off do NOT do any programming.. they do NOT do any hardcore system management. They create an environment, build communities, hold hands for newbies and they are nice people. All relevant requirements for the job.
Christ, keep yer hair on!
Seriously, though, this sounds rather similar to the job that Wikia employed a few people (Sannse and Mindspillage) to perform some time ago, and it'll probably be a growing trend as wiki culture refines itself.
Rob Church
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org