David Gerard wrote:
On 10/01/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Well, Brion has been the release manager for MediaWiki for years. Since he's on the payroll of WMF, I don't think we're assuming any _new_ responsibilities, but merely clarifying existing responsibilities. And I definitely do agree that the WMF should do a better job at soliciting and coordinating external contributions to MW, but this, like many other things the WMF _should_ be doing, is greatly limited by our ability to spend money on doing so.
For the record, Erik proposed to the board that MediaWiki becomes a wikimedia project some weeks ago, and I indicated I was not overly supportive of the idea and asked that he asks their opinion to developers.
I am not very happy with the idea, because to the difference of the wikimedia project, Mediawiki is directly used by and developed for the benefit of many other projects.
Examples: right now, no organisation is "authorized" to host a bit of the projects. No organisation is "authorized" to put an advertisement on the project sites. And to take the example of OmegaWiki, no organisation is authorized to add itself as a "sponsor" or whatever of any of our projects. Because practically, the projects are financially supported at 99% by the Foundation.
Do you really want that for MediaWiki ?
I agree the term "related" does not describe the current relationship between MediaWiki and the Foundation. I think Brion gets it right in saying "Wikimedia projects are the primary customers of the MediaWiki".
I would prefer to make it clear the relation between software and foundation, but not to qualify it under the same terms than the relation with the projects.
OK - what does officially putting MediaWiki under the umbrella of the WMF do for MediaWiki that is an improvement on the present situation? List with + and -.
I saw no answer to this part. Unless I really missed it entirely. I would like to see arguments.
The main argument given by Erik was the techsummit. We are planning to have in the future a big bunch of days dedicated only to mediawiki development... for its primary customer. It seems a bit odd for an organisation to give so much to a project that is not even recognise as one of its project. Hence the suggestion to officially announce mediawiki as a Foundation project.
Meanwhile, I would like to see a list of pro and con developped before letting the board participate to such a decision ;-)
ant
- d.