David Gerard schreef:
On 08/01/07, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The notion that the MediaWiki software is almost entirely developed for one organisation is seriously wrong. OmegaWiki, formerly WiktionaryZ has realised a lot of functionality already and this is just one other project. There are many more projects that have developed on MediaWiki and much of this development, like OmegaWiki, is as Free as the WMF developed functionality is.
I stand corrected :-) Is as much of this as possible in the main line of development, or regularly merged?
OmegaWiki makes use of the MediaWiki SVN. The code is therefore first entered in SVN before it is applied to our environments. (Yes, we have some test environments, and one production environment). The software is in its own SVN branch. I understand that the software will be merged with the cutting edge release as used by the WMF but you have to ask Erik about the precise details.
As to distributed MediaWiki, as you may remember the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (Andrew Tannenbaum's department) is actively working on a distributed Mediawiki and is particularly interested in the distributed network functionality that is required. This includes things like making sure the content is near to where it is requested.
Excellent!
The WMF could provide a meeting place for organisations that use MediaWiki stimulate cooperation. The WMF can provide a developer that has as his task to mentor new developers, particularly students from Universities that want to be technically involved in MediaWiki projects.
That's the sort of thing I mentioned. Trouble being that would take an experienced MW coder who wants to do that and can do that as well as code.
Well, this is an investment. First you invest, then you profit. It takes money to realise this. The profit is in the expanded base of coders.
My expectation is that it will be possible to do some 50 projects in a half year (only the MW support .. not supporting the content part of the project) this is likely to lead to a retention of developers of in between five to ten percent and will as a consequence be a good investment.
Yep.
The organisations that develop MediaWiki may also need support to build extensions so that their code can be part of the main MediaWiki code. This can be a paid for service. When it is not the WMF who does this, another organisation may be willing to provide this service ... I am sure there are more things that can be done when MediaWiki has its organisational part developed it may even generate money for the Foundation.
I wonder if there's any money in MediaWiki programming consultancy as yet.
- d.
ABSOLUTELY .. There are regularly tasks that need coding .. Experienced developers have a distinct advantage. For OmegaWiki we have introduced several people both professionals and "amateur" developers into the vagaries of both MediaWiki and Relational MediaWiki. I can tell you that we have sunk substantial amounts of money in the development of OmegaWiki and this is likely to continue.
We also have several students who have a place for their thesis who will be working on content related technology. We are working with the University of Bamberg on a project to internationalise educational content that will use data from OmegaWiki. This will also require some software and that is in their budget as software development. The point here is that as we are willing to cooperate and acknowledge our partnering, we are able to realise OmegaWiki in a way that is not really open to the WMF projects because of the way organisations like Virgin Unite are treated.
By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects. In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential group of people.
Thanks, GerardM
PS We have regularly a need for more developers...