[Foundation-l] Wikipedia vs Linux

[Thomas Dalton]

On 30/01/2008, Husky <huskyr at gmail.com> wrote:
> A very nice article, although it doesn't provide any new insights that
> (i at least) haven't thought of before, except for #4. It might be a
> good idea (i'm not sure if it hasn't been done before) to research
> which (large) corporations are using Mediawiki software already and
> have anyone employed on making new extensions or changes to the core,
> and seeing if they might be interested on employing someone full-time
> to work on Mediawiki and give back code to the main trunk.

Corporate sponsorship of MediaWiki is quite different to corporate
sponsorship of Wikipedia. The former ought to work well, for the same
reasons it works well for the Linux kernel. The latter, however, has
very different problems because of the market we're in - we deal with
information and it's important we keep that information neutral. There
is no real concept of neutrality for software, as long as the software
does what it's intended to do, it's fine, you don't need to worry
about companies advertising their products by adding bias patches to
Linux.

Two other comments I would make:

About #1: The quote "check the discussion page for any controversial
article and it will tend be an argument between half-a-dozen highly
passionate people", while strictly speaking true, is irrelevant. He
seems to miss the fact that it's a different half-a-dozen highly
passionate people on each page. Individual parts of a project are
always going to be done by individuals, that's obvious. It's the
central organisation that mustn't rely on individuals.

About #4: Since when has 17% been a majority?