On 19/01/07, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
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".
This being the case, we generally develop functionality with a semi-defined project scope in mind for MediaWiki; it's a wiki engine, mostly driven by the Wikimedia interpretation of a wiki.
A *lot* of what goes into MediaWiki (aside from bug fixes) is new functionality developed *for* use on Wikimedia wikis; a lot of extensions are developed to facilitate extras for Wikimedia. Having said that, there *are* things going into development which Wikimedia might never make use of, but which fall under the general scope of what MediaWiki is supposed to function as; a lot of additional extensions and plugins, for instance - stuff like LDAP authentication and other corporate/academic-used features.
I don't see any real problem with the current interpretation of things. MediaWiki is as open as Wikipedia - the code is licenced under the GNU GPL and anyone who really feels strongly about it can fork it quite happily at any time.
A huge number of organisations can and do take a vested interest in developing the software to its fullest potential. The superb effort going into things like Semantic MediaWiki and WiktionaryZ may never have been on the agenda in 2003, and may not be completely adopted in all Wikimedia projects, but they're very much in tune with what MediaWiki is.
What is MediaWiki? It's a free form wiki engine which has a purpose. That purpose is to make sharing of ideas, information and content easy for anyone.
How is that counter to any Wikimedia ideology? It's not. I think MediaWiki development works better when everyone feels they're in a comfortable environment where they're free to work on their own portions that interest them. Sure, they have to put up with me swearing every so often...sure, they have to be careful. But I personally, and I suspect others, have a nice comfortable feeling of not having to be accountable to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. I like that; I can view all my users as equals.
In case it's not clear; I support the current status quo.
Rob Church