Hi Brian, That's a reasonable question. Both this consortium and the MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group have the general aim of making things better for "enterprise" users of MediaWiki, but beyond that the two have surprisingly different goals and approaches. The MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group, or MWStake, has a large number of goals, but a big part of it, as I understand, is working with the Wikimedia Foundation and core MediaWiki developers to make sure that the needs and desires of enterprise users are taken into account. That sort of advocacy is not what the EMC is concerned with. On the other hand, MWStake also does some coordination on volunteer efforts at software improvement, so in that sense the two are more similar.
I'm not familiar with a corporate sponsorship thing for MWStake, but even if that happens, the two are quite different in terms of their decision-making approach. Anyone can join MWStake, and then decisions are made (as I understand it) via discussion and consensus. With the EMC, you have to pay to get in, and then there's a precise system of weighted voting to allocate the funds. It certainly could happen that the two organizations could coordinate, yes. And some companies could end up being members of both. Nonetheless, I see these as distinct organizations, and it seems like there's a need for both. Thanks! -Yaron On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Brian Wolff <bawo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wednesday, May 24, 2017, Yaron Koren <ya...@wikiworks.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I'm very excited to announce the launch of the Enterprise MediaWiki > > Consortium (EMC), an organization devoted to supporting and maintaining > > "enterprise MediaWiki" software. > > > > As you may know, a lot of open-source software has some sort of > > organization or foundation that is intended to pool money from users of > the > > software toward developers. MediaWiki is in an unusual situation: it is > > funded by the Wikimedia Foundation (and, to a lesser extent, Wikimedia > > Deutschland and others), but those organizations' primary allegiance is > to > > software that runs on Wikimedia sites. That leaves a lot of > > MediaWiki-related software (extensions, skins, etc.) that is mostly > > intended for use on non-Wikimedia sites, i.e. "enterprise" uses: some of > > this software has significant usage, but very little of it has > > institutional support. > > > > That is where the Enterprise MediaWiki Consortium fits in. It is intended > > to fund the development of extensions and other software that otherwise > has > > no funding source. The set of software being funded is entirely up to the > > membership of the EMC, and of course the amount of support that can be > > provided depends on the amount of money that members contribute - an > amount > > that will hopefully grow over time. > > > > If you belong to an organization, company or website that makes use of > > MediaWiki - and specifically, of MediaWiki-related software not used on > > Wikimedia sites - please consider joining the Enterprise MediaWiki > > Consortium - to provide much-needed support for the software you use, and > > to have a greater say in shaping its future. > > > > You can read more about the EMC here: > > > > http://enterprisemediawikiconsortium.org/ > > > > -Yaron > > _______________________________________________ > > MediaWiki-l mailing list > > To unsubscribe, go to: > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > > > > Out of curiosity, what is the relation between this group and > MWStakeholders group. Im given to understand that MWStake was also > considering having a corporate sponsership thing too (I may bemistaken on > that though). Do you envision the two groups working together, or do you > see them as being entirely separate and independent? > > Best of luck in this new venture, > > -- > Brian > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > To unsubscribe, go to: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > -- WikiWorks · MediaWiki Consulting · http://wikiworks.com _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list To unsubscribe, go to: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
