On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 5:35 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Sorry for the jargon. We try to avoid tech industry terminology in public
communication but sometimes when we publish an internal document it slips
out.
Wiktionary defines productize as "make something a commericial product".[1]
Productization is defined as "The act of modifying something, such as a
concept or a tool internal to an organization, to make it suitable as a
commercial product."[2]
Remove the commercial part of that, which implies selling, and it basically
applies. In software development and in the Wikimedia context, it basically
means to take something that is an experimental concept and make it a
permanent part of the site for users -- whether that's readers, editors or
donors depends on the software in question.
The word product is used not to strictly clarify that something is not a
service. On the Web, the line between products and services is decidedly
fuzzy, at least when you talk to people who work in the tech industry. In
reality people when people say "a product" they really just mean "a thing
people use or buy".
1.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/productize
2.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/productization