[Foundation-l] Foundation too passive, wasting community talent

[MZMcBride]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 5 April 2011 03:02, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>> Another example might be an UploadWizard that is focused on
>> ensuring that Wikimedia fulfills its Multimedia grant requirements rather
>> than actually being fully developed and ready for use by Wikimedia Commons.
>> These examples are off the top of my head, but anyone paying attention can
>> see the trend fairly clearly, I think.
> 
> What I see is grants supplying money to get initiatives that have been
> long-wanted happening. The near-impossibility of getting even quite
> simple things through a bureaucratic kudzu-choked community process
> has been noted on this list *many* times.
> 
> This is far from ideal, as you note. But in practical terms, I submit
> it's better than this stuff never happening at all, which is what
> would occur without it.

It goes back to nothing in life being free, I think. The money for (most of)
these grants has been restricted. These projects are generally worthwhile,
but with grant money, they immediately become top priority due to grant
deadlines and the specifications for these products must be tailored to the
demands of the grant. That isn't to say that the code can't be
expandable/extensible/etc., but the primary goal of these tools is to
fulfill the needs of the grant, not to fulfill the needs of the community.

> If I've correctly ascertained your essential point: you appear broadly
> to think the WMF is becoming a self-sustaining creature *at the
> expense* of the community; and you think it's getting bloated and
> complacent. I think both of these are quite incorrect.

Something thereabouts. It's easy enough to find people who agree with this
view, though it's easy enough to find people who agree with any view on the
Internet....

MZMcBride