[Toolserver-l] Changes to expired accounts web hosting

[James Forrester]

On 5 February 2010 11:02, River Tarnell <river.tarnell at wikimedia.de> wrote:
> Martin Peeks:
>> Closed source software can be as good as open source software - do
>> remember that.
>
> The issue here is nothing to do with whether the software is good or not.
> No one is suggesting that tools will somehow become much better because
> they're open source, and (unless I missed it) no one is suggesting that
> tools should be open source for ideological reasons, only for pragmatic
> reasons.

Actually, "we" have had a very long-term rule that we don't use
non-OSS software as a part of the Wikimedia "stack". This rule is so
old it pre-dates the Foundation (I remember it being a concern that
the new-fangled Foundation wouldn't necessarily take it into account
in future). It has always been an ideologically-based rule, even if it
has also had practical needs.

I know that a lot of people will claim that the Toolserver's tools
aren't part of the software used as a part of the Wikimedia wikis. I
disagree. To the end-user, the software that we the community use to
link from geo-tagged articles in Wikipedia, or find categories, or
other things. Sure, lots of these are editor- rather than
reader-focussed, but I don't think that there is an easy line to draw.

If people want a shell account to run "cool" tools that happen to do
Wikimedia-related things, there's no particular need for them to have
TS access. There are lots of free or cheap shell providers out there.
TS access is a privilege, and we should expect those who have the
advantages of this privilege to work within the same rules that we
expect from other members of the community.

But then, I've never written code for the toolserver, running code on
my own shells when I've needed it. So maybe I'm biased. :-)

Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester
jdforrester at wikimedia.org | jdforrester at gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]