[Labs-l] [Labs-announce] [Tools] Announcing right to fork policy, abandoned tool policy, and Tool Labs standards committee

[Jonathan Morgan]

This is an incredibly important initiative. Having procedures to ensure
that we can preserve vital infrastructure (bots and tools), and a committee
to oversee the process of implementing those procedures, is a crucial step
to "future-proofing" Wikimedia. It certainly helps me sleep better at night
:)

So, heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Bryan and the Tool Labs
Standards Committee for stepping up. I promise to support your work any way
I can!

Cheers,
Jonathan

On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 2:29 PM, Bryan Davis <bd808 at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hopefully most of you are aware that over the last several months I
> have been working with the Tool Labs community to draft policies to
> help ensure that vital tools and bots can live on if their initial
> maintainers lose interest or are otherwise prevented from keeping
> their projects in good working order. I am very happy to announce that
> we now have two policies and a volunteer working committee to help
> enforce the policies.
>
> The Tool Labs right to fork policy [0] helps to protect Wikimedia
> wikis from loss of a useful tool. It guarantees the right to fork an
> existing tool project by developers who are interested in extending
> and maintaining it after the original developers have lost interest.
>
> The Tool Labs Abandoned Tool policy [1] helps to protect Wikimedia
> wikis from loss of a useful tool. It defines processes for:
> * Requesting to be added as co-maintainer of a tool which has no
> active maintainers (adoption)
> * Requesting removal of inactive maintainers in a tool they have
> adopted (usurpation)
>
> The Tool Labs Standards Committee [2] is a group of Wikimedia
> volunteers who review, approve, and facilitate access requests for the
> source code of Tool Labs hosted tools, and adoption and usurpation of
> abandoned tools. Seven outstanding community members have been chosen
> to form the initial committee:
> * Eran Roz (User:Eranroz)
> * James Hare (User:Harej)
> * Huji Lee (User:Huji)
> * Amir Sarabadani (User:Ladsgroup)
> * Matanya (User:Matanya)
> * Nick Wilson (User:Quiddity)
> * zhuyifei1999 (User:Zhuyifei1999)
>
> There is a lot of work left to be done to establish the basic
> operating procedures used by the committee. I am looking forward
> working with the committee to help them get started. After some
> initial setup I expect them to become self-sufficient in carrying out
> the work of evaluating and processing requests from the community.
> Please join me both in thanking these individuals for accepting this
> responsibility and in helping them support all of us who create and
> use tools to make the wikis better.
>
>
> [0]: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs/Right_
> to_fork_policy
> [1]: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs/
> Abandoned_tool_policy
> [2]: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs/Tool_
> Labs_standards_committee
>
> Bryan
> --
> Bryan Davis              Wikimedia Foundation    <bd808 at wikimedia.org>
> [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]]  Sr Software Engineer            Boise, ID USA
> irc: bd808                                        v:415.839.6885 x6855
>
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> Labs-announce at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/labs-announce
>



-- 
Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>
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