[Foundation-l] getting Wikipedia to the 5.2 billion people who can't access it

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Wave might replace parts of MediaWiki but it would not replace Wikipedia...
> To appreciate this, you have to realise what it is the WMF stands for..


It stands for the Wikimedia Foundation.

It is content first and foremost.


No, it's a board of directors, and a staff, and a bunch of servers - none of
which are really required and all of which can and should be replaced.

If you want to say that whatever it is that replaces Wikipedia *is*
Wikipedia, fine, though you might have some trademark issues until the WMF
actually dissolves.


> MediaWiki is our current software. It is
> great software and it has great functionality. When the Wave software is
> able to replace aspects of MediaWiki, you will find that it is possible to
> integrate it into MediaWiki.


But MediaWiki is not a distributed platform.  That's the problem.  It's too
centralized, both technically and politically.

If there is a problem, it is with MediaWiki. Given its license it cannot
> contribute back to Wave.. Wave functionality can be incorporated in
> MediaWiki because it does not have a viral license.


Huh?  Wave does not have a license.  Parts of it will be proprietary, parts
will be GPL, parts will be BSD, parts will be public domain.