[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] Why is MediaWiki so low-tech?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Gordon Joly schreef:
> At 17:49 +0000 7/1/07, Virgil Ierubino wrote:
>
> .....
>   
>> If lack of developers and money is the only problem then why not be more
>> WIKI about it?
>>     
>
>
> Money pays for servers. Developers work for nothing.
>   
Hoi,
You would be surprised how many developers make a living programming and 
maintaining MediaWiki. It is also very much NOT according to the 
philosophy of the Free Software Foundation that programmers should not 
be paid. They are entitled to all the money they can earn.

I would also not want to say that our volunteer developers work for 
nothing.. They work to make a difference, and they do. The thing is 
there are "demands" for all kinds of functionality and much of this does 
not materialise. It does not happen because there are too few 
developers. It happens because they are volunteers too and they do what 
they like to do (and who would blame them?). The big projects that are 
wished for take a LOT of time and it helps a lot when the work can be 
done in a limited timespan as it makes the work more effective and economic.

So please, there are many big projects that the WMF wants to develop. 
They do not happen because there are no developers. Given the problems 
raising sufficient funds, we are not able to do the things that were 
planned in the way we hoped we were able to.

Thanks,
    GerardM