[Foundation-l] Software Policy Draft

[David Gerard]

On 05/09/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Being open and kind is one of our values just as freedom is one of our
> values.
> It does not mean we should always be 100% open and kind, but we should
> strive to that, because it is a very good way to collect content, be
> appreciated, generate a friendly editing environment.
> It does not mean we should provide content only to those using free
> software, but if we strive to ourselves provide as much as possible free
> content using free technology, we know we will ensure the best
> opportunities to access, modify and reuse the content.
> Then, if on the way to our goal, our projects make others discover the
> benefits of being kind, of being open, of using free software etc...
> then it is a bonus. A very nice bonus. But not *the* goal itself.


There's also a bad PR angle - witness the storm (in a teacup) over the
proprietary conference phone system software that was put in at the
WMF offices. Fortunately, a nonproprietary system was quite feasible
instead. That's more of a back office thing than the actual serving of
information, but it's still better I think to prefer open source where
feasible.

Openness of our operational and serving software as far down the stack
as reasonably possible is (IMO obviously) needed to keep the knowledge
we're here to distribute available to all - which is why our serving
infrastructure doesn't include anything in Java unless it also works
on a free-software implementation such as gcj. (Which is why lots of
people are really really waiting for Sun to finish properly open
sourcing Java.) Keeping back office stuff open source where feasible
is not as critical, but is still a good idea for all the
vendor-independence reasons that the freedom of free software is a
good thing, per:

    http://www.samurajdata.se/opensource/mirror/advocacy/case_for_customers.php

So having it as a guideline with "reasonable", "where feasible" in
appropriate places is IMO entirely in line with doing what we do
properly and well.


- d.