[Foundation-l] free software policies
Hi All: I'm still riding the wave of enjoyment I caught at Wikimania in Gdansk, thanks for that :). One of the topics that came up in my conversations there had to do with Wikimedia's policies surrounding free software. It is my view that a good portion of 'the sum of all knowledge' is currently embodied in software and programming practice. At the same time, I know that access to knowledge is often done 'by any means necessary'. Given the potential for confusion and even frustration when rights and responsibilities aren't clear, I think it would be great if the foundation had some clear policies about how it will invest in software development. I note that this year's GNU Hackers Meeting is taking place very soon; http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2010/denhaag/ -- Personally I'd love it if future Wikimanias could be co-located with or otherwise bridged with GNU meetings. Joe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] free software policies
Hi SJ: I've been thinking about your note. Maybe "programmes" would be a better word than "policies". I hope here to put my note in a pro-active frame. In fact there are lots of things that we could do, but here is where it would be nice to know more about who "we" are! You and I already discussed in person about how useful an education-l mailing list would be for in-depth discussions related to education oriented projects. "We" are to a certain extent involved with changing the way education works (for example). > [1] Among other things, even apparently-internal toolsets are > important to public access, as you say: chapters grow and come to need > all the things that the Foundation does. I might also mention that partnerships are likely to be significantly important here (and this is what inspired my initial mail). Suffice to say, my own view as that the right programme would be to make a constellation of completely free and open programs around Wikipedia that enable users to do interesting and useful things with the content. I think we could easily establish some objectives and milestones for the various projects that would fulfill this programme. We can then be fairly clear about what the gaps or obstacles are. I don't mean that everything should happen in a top-down or even centralized way. Rather, I would hope that this conversation would happen in the Wiki Way :). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Free culture?
Nice summary/overview... > 10% news/events/media coverage > 10% pointless digressions > 10% snarky comments > 10% trolling > 10% uncritical discussion of WMF > 50% sharp criticism I wonder what percentage of the sharp criticism gets dealt with? Would it make sense to keep track of that statistic? Using this breakdown as a metric, it seems likely to be a significant of value! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] PediaPress
What people seem to have been stepping around in this thread so far is the fact that Pediapress's software chain includes some components that they have NOT released as open source. There seems to be ongoing confusion about this. If there was an open source toolchain for doing what Pediapress currently does, then Wikimedia itself or any third party organization or individual could use it to create manuscripts suitable for printing, and use any printer they liked to achieve that end. I think the crux of the argument should be: is it OK for Wikimedia to have a partnership with a service provider who uses closed source software as an integral part of the service they provide. Pediapress sets a precedent that says "yes, that's completely fine". And maybe it is, but it is then just wrong to refer to this as an "open source" way of working. On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 6:07 AM, Liam Wyatt wrote: > If we're concerned about the WMF referring in its blog to a for-profit > organisation that happens to be working with us in a way that is > open-source, offline and furthering our mission to distribute our content > widely, why did no one complain about the OpenMoko Wikireader being in the > WMF blog: ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] PediaPress
> Wikimedia policy is to use only free software, at least on the > "customer-facing" side. That includes the PDF-generation process, > which runs on our servers AFAIK. > > Requiring this from sites we (in essence) link to seems excessive. We > link to Google Maps via an intermediate page, similar to PediaPress, > and their code is not 100% open source either, last time I looked. I'm just saying the reason to kvetch about Pediapress is not that they produce books or that they are a company that makes money. The more serious complaint is that they are presently have monopoly status, and that this monopoly is mostly made possible because there is no free/open source toolchain that does what they offer. There's nothing to stop the interested party from linking to OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org/) instead of Google Maps, and their code is available too (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/The_Rails_Port). But in any case, no one refers to Google Maps as an "open source" product. Referring to something as "open source" when it isn't is a bad practice. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] PediaPress
> I'd love for the LaTeX export to be made available as open source as > well. Heiko and I have talked a few times about this -- obviously it's > understandable why they prefer to at least keep some "secret sauce". > Policy-wise, what's key to us is that everything running on the WMF > side is open, but it'd be in the spirit of the partnership to make the > full toolchain open source (ideally without killing a tiny company > that's done all the work in favor of a bigger one benefiting from it). But the thing is, it's not really so much of a secret, i.e., one of these days someone will write a free/open LaTeX export and that will be that. Pediapress will then have to rethink their business model. Or they could get started rethinking it now, and once they've gotten it sorted out, they could just release their LaTeX export and be done with it. So, in order to help them out, we should ask, what IS the business model in the "endgame" where proprietary code isn't part of the picture? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] PediaPress
On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 9:20 PM, SlimVirgin wrote: > If PediaPress's software is open-source the Foundation surely wouldn't > need to buy it. This is what I'm finding confusing, and that's partly > because of my lack of technical knowledge. But as I see it Wikimedia > has developers, paid and unpaid, lots of people who are able to > develop this kind of thing. So it would have made sense to ask some > volunteers to develop it. Or WMF could have insisted that Pediapress open source the entire toolchain in exchange for giving them access to a nice piece of real estate in the sidebar for, say, a year or something like that (with a contract pending renewal). It is OK to pay people to develop open source software and to insist on openness as part of a contract. If Pediapress said "no", WMF could have kept looking for another partner who was into the deal. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Rethinking Wikibooks (was Re: PediaPress)
Hi Robert: You touched on a lot of interesting topics in that email! I'll highlight the ones that most jumped out at me. > I realize that e-book readers and some other similar things are starting > to show up on some college campuses, but the physical book is still very > much common even in this setting. Unfortunately, I can't point to much > in the way of Wikimedia content on college campuses and in fact there is > a visceral hatred for Wikipedia and anything associated with it with > many professors. I know that here at The Open University there is a lot of interest in that sort of gadget. They haven't really been deployed widely yet, and if they are, there may very well not be much or any "university-sponsored" Wiki* material on them -- but I'm nearly certain that if the devices have web browsers, there will be a lot of Wikipedia traffic coming from them :). Presumably including a lot of edits (including, hopefully, a lot of constructive ones...). > The important thing to point out here, however, is that there was some > extra motivation to participate when there is something tangible at the > end of the process. I love books. A couple times, I had a go at turning PlanetMath into a book, and we got reasonably far, e.g. here is a 36MB PDF file with the whole dog-gone encyclopedia in it (as it looked in 2005) -- http://metameso.org/~joe/docs/book.pdf. I haven't ever printed it, but I printed out the previous version in a 2-up double-sided format, and it was about the size of your average telephone book (like for a city with a quarter million people or so!). But perhaps not as useful. My point, I guess, is that as much as I like books, the mere possibility of having something *tangible* in your hands isn't really enough. The main thing is that the book has to be *good*, which means variously: concise, informative, timely, well-illustrated, inexpensive, reputable, engaging, etc., etc. -- different books for different schnooks(?), or something like that. So a mechanism for turning Wikipedia content into printed books isn't enough, either. I'd argue that even a mechanism for turning Wikipedia content into "beautifully typeset" books isn't enough. (Vide the fairly low sales figures quoted for Pediapress.) To be sure, it is (or, it would be) very good to *have* that ability. What is needed in addition to a complete and working "toolchain" is one or more complete and working "workflows". There are SO many ways in which such a workflow could feed back positively for an associated encyclopedia project like Wikipedia or PlanetMath. This is true both for books rendered in ink and those that are rendered in e-ink. You raised a really interesting idea with this question: > Would the WMF even be willing to help > coordinate funds raised for the physical printing of books, presuming > that they would be given to a school (like some Wikibooks being sent to > Kenya or even printed there to help stock school libraries)? Not only is that itself totally awesome, (1) it illustrates very nicely why WMF should produce a complete open source toolchain that does what Pediapress currently does *post-haste*); and (2) it suggests that there *could be* an entire set of monetizable services that would fit into the book-production workflow. It would be good to look for more when sketching out the workflow as a whole. (3) Combining this idea with your thought above, is there a reasonably place in the Wiki World for working out business models and strategies? Wikiversity *might* function in that way (since such a project would, after all, be very educational). But maybe it's not the best place. In any case, I think it would be good to find a good place to work more on this. I would be happy to participate in that effort. Joe Oh, and, PS. We should definitely be thinking about replacing other books, not generating a whole new market for books -- or else we'll cause a huge geological deforestation event! Or maybe Earth is already deforested enough. In any case, to paraphrase William Burroughs, we should be making books for the Space Age! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Executive Director?
> I hope that it will be possible to make this small change from a p into an m. Yeah, it's not like it's even in a graphic, it's a text page -- easy fix. But I'd suggest adding " Foundation" in there too. As it stands presently it looks like the site was hacked. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Executive Director?
> I agree completely with Michael Snow and Delphine. The impulse is > understandable, but it's a mistake to encourage a misunderstanding > that can undermine the confidence of the public in Wikipedia's > independence and create confusion about the structure of the WMF and > its projects. Furthermore, although a fundraiser is a great time to make money, it's also supposed to go hand-in-hand with educating the public. At least that's what they told me when I used to go door to door raising funds for an environmental group. I believed it and I had no trouble making quota. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki[p/m]edia
Ah, see, straight dealing like this is what it takes to get me to donate :) On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 12:20 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote: > Hi everyone - > > First, let me thank you all for your concern about the recent banners. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] "Urgent update about Wikipedia"
So, thanks to everyone for talking me into donating - that was fun. I felt good about it. But now I'm being asked for more money? I'm not so into that, in fact, it's a bit off-putting. No doubt it's a standard fundraising technique but frankly it doesn't seem like the wiki way. Maybe the united way, but we're not them. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] fundraiser suggestion
I liked the idea of clearly indicating what the current amount of funds would go for and what the next major funding milestones are. (Sorry, whoever it was who posted this initially as an alternative to things becoming "urgent" - I'd cite your post but I didn't find it upon looking again!) The thing is, that might not work to bring in the bucks the same way "urgent" does. Maybe in light of the comment about Pareto: there are going to be a few people who can contribute a lot (including non-monetary contributions) and many who can contribute a little (again, including both monetary and non-monetary contributions). Those who want to contribute "a lot" in terms of hands-on involvement, volunteer hours, and so forth, would probably be very well served by clear links to the "thermometer" or a clear indication of project and fundraising milestones. Those who just want to contribute X amount of money because it makes them feel good have no need for that stuff. Obviously we're talking about *fund*raising here, but it's still a good time to look for ways to increase non-monetary contributions, possibly including connecting with those users who would prefer a "co-op" model to a "charity" model. On 1/2/11, Mono mium wrote: > Perhaps you should work on establishing the Wikimedia brand... > > On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Erik Moeller wrote: > >> 2011/1/1 Stephen Bain : >> > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Erik Moeller >> wrote: >> >> >> >> But to suggest that the choice of such >> >> shorthand is tantamount to "lying to and misleading our donors" is, >> >> indeed, irresponsible hyperbole. It's clear that the choice was, in >> >> fact, made to _reduce_ potential confusion of donors about who/what >> >> they're being asked to support. >> > >> > Hang on: >> > >> > On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Philippe Beaudette >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> When we get letters saying things like "I'd donate, but only to >> Wikipedia, not to Wikimedia", it spells out for us that it's possible we >> could attract more people with the institution of Wikipedia than the >> institution of Wikimedia. >> >> See the immediately previous sentence in Philippe's email: "Yes, it'll >> come as a shock to all of you but there are people >> who don't know that Wikimedia is anything more than a mis-spelling of >> Wikipedia. ." He's talking about the exact same >> issue. >> >> -- >> Erik Möller >> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation >> >> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
