[Foundation-l] PediaPress

[Joe Corneli]

On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 9:20 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> If PediaPress's software is open-source the Foundation surely wouldn't
> need to buy it. This is what I'm finding confusing, and that's partly
> because of my lack of technical knowledge. But as I see it Wikimedia
> has developers, paid and unpaid, lots of people who are able to
> develop this kind of thing. So it would have made sense to ask some
> volunteers to develop it.

Or WMF could have insisted that Pediapress open source the entire
toolchain in exchange for giving them access to a nice piece of real
estate in the sidebar for, say, a year or something like that (with a
contract pending renewal).  It is OK to pay people to develop open
source software and to insist on openness as part of a contract.  If
Pediapress said "no", WMF could have kept looking for another partner
who was into the deal.