[Foundation-l] what do we do in the event the Foundation fails? - Re: Pol...

[Jeff V. Merkey]

David Gerard wrote:

>On 18/04/07, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>>2) Any new community will essentially have to rebuild the user account
>>>database from scratch. This will slow down initial growth very
>>>significantly. At the same time, if a designated successor
>>>organization already has a replicated database they can use, that
>>>would make things easier.
>>>      
>>>
>
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>>A thought: how would you ensure that this -successor- organization would
>>have the same goals and way of thinking of the current foundation?
>>    
>>
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>You couldn't.
>
>The user database is something that should be freed if possible. Not
>the passwords to WMF - but the fact that it's what credits
>contributions to their creator. Proprietising this and using it as
>leverage in blessing a chosen successor fork in case of disaster
>strikes me as a bad thing - can people only prove they wrote something
>if they choose the right fork to work with?
>
>
>- d.
>  
>

The user database is already contained within the dumps, at lest the 
relevant portions. It is easy to create a script to read the last
author and recreate the account with dummy passwords. There are also the 
.7z dumps which contain all of the history. It's rather
simple to write a program under SQL that reads all histories and 
recreates the accounts. No problem there -- I already have tools
written that do this.

What do you folks think I have been doing for the last year? I have been 
replicating Wikimedia, and I have succeeded -- with a full
suite of tools -- and to date I have manged to SELL 510K worth of 
servers and tools to folks who are doing JUST THAT.

:-)

Jeff

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