[Foundation-l] Development tasks and project needs

[Chad Perrin]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 12:22:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Sj-
> > Nonsense.  Money is an excellent resource when properly applied, but
> > there is no fundamental reason why we should have fewer volunteer
> > developers than Linux has, for instance.  After all, what are we
> > writing but the kernel for our collective intelligence?
> 
> An interesting comparison. However, it is worth noting that there is a  
> billion dollar industry behind the Linux kernel, and many of its most  
> active developers are directly employed by corporations like IBM, Novell  
> and Red Hat. Hence, development tends to be driven by corporate interests.

On the other hand, there's a much lower bar for entry into working on
projects like Wikipedia developing content, which is in plain English
(or whatever language you're using), and even for entry into working on
the MediaWiki software (PHP web application design is considerably less
hairy than hacking kernel code).  Your points stand, basically, except
that you might be underestimating the effectiveness of pure volunteerism
in many (not all, but many) aspects of the entire Wikimedia family of
projects.

--
Chad Perrin
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