Re: [Semediawiki-user] RFC for "MediaWiki Foundation"

[Krabina B. <kr...@kd...>]

Hi,

some thoughts from me:

Besides from MediaWiki in general, I think Semantic MediaWiki has to reinvent its purpose: now that Wikidata exists, the initial idea of making Wikipedia (and therefore MediaWiki) semantic will be handled by Wikidata.

As Semantic MediaWiki has much more to offer now, there will and should be a shift of attention. Semantic MediaWiki will probably have to focus more on being a Knowledge Management System. A competitor to Confluence, Sharepoint[1] and the like. The top choice for building wikis far beyond encyclopedic uses with use cases inside organisations and in intranet and extranet applications.

So maybe the OSDA [2] should be something for Semantic MediaWiki like the Mozilla Foundation is for Firefox after all. And Semantic MediaWiki should try to gather sponsors for continuous development of Semantic MediaWiki as well as MediaWiki features that are essential to the goals of Semantic MediaWiki. And besides, the OSDA (or a SMW foundation in General) could also provide marketing to spread the word about SMW!

And I also agree, the worst thing is forking. As much as I appreciated Ontoprise for their work I was very lecutant to use SMW+ because of it being a fork...

regards,
Bernhard

[1] http://wikiworks.com/semantic-mediawiki-vs-sharepoint.html
[2] http://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Open_Semantic_Data_Association

----- Ursprüngliche Mail -----
> Hi Yury,
> 
> Just a few thoughts about this:
> 
> - I would modify that list of organizations somewhat. OSDA is not in
> the
> business of direct software development; and, more generally, I don't
> think
> there are that many SMW developers who want to modify core MediaWiki
> to any
> significant extent, with the obvious exception of the SMW+ project. I
> would, however, add wikiHow to the list - they're a major
> MediaWiki-based
> site, that are using a highly-patched version of MediaWiki 1.12, in
> addition to a bunch of custom proprietary extensions. (And you could
> actually add Referata to that list as well, since it has some minimal
> patches to MediaWiki.)
> 
> - I don't know if one can blame the Wikimedia Foundation for the
> patching
> done by Wikia, wikiHow, Ontoprise etc., and I don't know if an
> independent
> MediaWiki organization would change the situation. For all these
> cases, it
> appears that the attitude of the organization to sending patches
> "upstream"
> falls somewhere between apathy, hopelessness (since the patches may
> be too
> substantial, and too customized for their needs, to try to integrate
> back)
> and hostility (not wanting to release one's hard-earned code as open
> source). I can understand at least the first two to some extent,
> because
> even the very minimal changes I made on Referata, which I've been
> meaning
> to integrate into MediaWiki for years now, I just haven't gotten
> around to
> dealing with. In any case, the issue there seems to be mostly on the
> side
> of the "patchers".
> 
> - There still are potentially valid reasons for wanting to have a
> MediaWiki
> Foundation, and to me the most compelling of them is the issue of new
> development: a purely software-driven organization could focus more
> on
> features more important to corporations and the like, and less on
> Wikipedia-specific development. You can read here for one negative
> view of
> the WMF's development approach, from a few weeks ago:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-08-20/Op-ed
> 
> Still, it's not like regular MediaWiki-based sites are always at
> cross-purposes from Wikipedia: right now it appears that the top
> priority
> for both is getting WYSIWYG editing into MediaWiki, i.e. getting the
> VisualEditor extension completed.
> 
> -Yaron
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Yury Katkov <kat...@gm...>
> wrote:
> 
> > I too have mixed feelings about that. I feel the pressure of
> > Wikimedia
> > foundation in many aspects of MediaWiki development, and it seems
> > reasonable and to separate so that independent MW users could take
> > decisions. However I don't have any data about two important
> > question:
> > 1) How many core developers are NOT from Wikimedia Foundation? My
> > intuition says that there is around 20-30 percents of them.
> > 2) How many big parties\organizations are interested in developing
> > MW?
> > Wikia, SMWplus team, WikiWorks, OSDA, Hallo Welt! (BlueSpice),
> > WikiVote? Anyone else? Are they ready to sponsor the the further
> > development?
> >
> > What I fear is forks. Now Wikia has their own build of MediaWiki
> > (similar to the original one, but not quite similar), Ontoprise
> > used
> > to patch-and-patch-and-patch, BlueSpice have rebuild even the
> > directory structure... Maybe the new foundation can solve this
> > issue?
> > -----
> > Yury Katkov
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 3:56 AM, Yaron Koren <ya...@wi...>
> > wrote:
> > > In case anyone's interested, there's a request for comments page
> > > for a
> > > proposed "MediaWiki Foundation", that was created last week. You
> > > can see
> > it
> > > here:
> > >
> > > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation
> > >
> > > The page was created in response to a thread on wikitech-l. The
> > > idea is
> > to
> > > separate out control of MediaWiki development to a separate
> > > organization,
> > > that's just in charge of the software, because the Wikimedia
> > > Foundation,
> > > which is currently in charge of MediaWiki, is by its nature much
> > > more
> > > concerned about the use of MediaWiki on its own sites than its
> > > use as a
> > > standard wiki tool on other sites. Personally, I have mixed
> > > feelings
> > about
> > > this idea; but I thought it might be interesting for people on
> > > this list
> > to
> > > read the arguments for and against it, and maybe to add their own
> > comments
> > > to it (presumably, comments are supposed to go on the talk page).
> > >
> > > -Yaron
> > >
> > > --
> > > WikiWorks · MediaWiki Consulting · http://wikiworks.com
> > >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Live Security Virtual Conference
> > > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> > > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond.
> > > Discussions
> > > will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in
> > > malware
> > > threats.
> > > http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Semediawiki-user mailing list
> > > Sem...@li...
> > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> WikiWorks · MediaWiki Consulting · http://wikiworks.com
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond.
> Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in
> malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Semediawiki-user mailing list
> Sem...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user
>