On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Merlissimo <m...@toolserver.org> wrote:
> Because of the open source requirement i hope that i have rewritten my
> tools with the help of WMDE in about 6-10 month.
That's great, I'm happy to hear that WMDE is helping with this.
> That's a boring and usless additional work
Boring it may be, useless it is not. Wikimedia is founded on free
software / open source principles, for many good reasons, some of
which have already been given in this thread. If the policy is
motivating the elimination of a proprietary dependency for tools that
are important and valuable to our projects, that means the policy is
having its intended effect. In other words, your example underscores
precisely why treating this kind of policy as non-negotiable is
important, and why we will continue to do so.
Non-free licenses of various kinds ("use it for free", "use it for
non-profit purposes", "you can inspect the code") may be tempting, but
tend to cause problems in the long run -- due to changes of terms by
the original developer, lack of compatibility with other licenses,
lack of adaptability of the code, problems distributing the code in
open source contexts, and so on and so forth.
On the upside, when open source projects eliminate proprietary
dependencies, this is often the source of innovation and positive
change that benefits more than just the project in question. The story
of the Linux dependency on BitKeeper ( see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper ) is a good example of that.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
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