On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 2:11 AM Mathieu Lovato Stumpf Guntz <psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:
> Now, the WMF by its own word aims to "provide the essential infrastructure > for free knowledge". > Should this statement be taken seriously, the foundation can not be light on > the tools it chooses > to communicate with the community, and what tools it provides to addresses > the community > needs. Thank you for this excellent reframing, Mathieu. Put in strategic terms, should the Wikimedia movement invest in independent FLOSS projects that meaningfully support and enable its mission? There are many ways Wikimedia could make such an investment. The Open Technology Fund, for example, operates a program called OTF Red which funds security audits for open source projects with a network of service partners. [1] Its focus is different than Wikimedia's (and it therefore would likely not invest in many projects of concern to Wikimedians), but there's no reason why Wikimedia could not operate a similar program for upstream software relevant to its mission, either because it currently relies on it, or would like to be able to do so in future. An investment could also be made in managing relationships with maintainers of these projects, to help make them aware of funding opportunities, and to organize the continuous re-evaluation of free and open source software projects for the purpose of adoption. A clearly articulated budget for investment in upstream FLOSS projects -- e.g., USD $1M/year -- would force careful prioritization of concerns. In my view, it's important to understand free and open source software as emancipatory. It enables the movement to liberate itself from a dependency on Big Tech, and allows movement members everywhere to adapt software to their needs. This is crucial to address the inequities the free market unavoidably produces. In concrete terms, to run surveys in the Global South, it seems incongruous to use technology developed by Global North software vendors destined to be forever under their control, impossible to independently localize, translate, or customize. In addition to tools like LimeSurvey, I believe that a strategic view should encompass projects that are used for authorship -- applications like Krita, Blender, and Inkscape -- as evidenced by metrics on tool use. [2] Similarly, event management applications like Mobilizon [3] show great potential to offer a real alternative to Facebook Events. But that's just my opinion, and I'm curious if the strategic planning process has yielded an answer to this question that may inform future investment decisions by WMF and affiliates. It's also possible that such funding activities are already ongoing, in which case I'd love to learn more about them. Warmly, Erik [1] https://www.opentech.fund/labs/red-team-lab/ [2] It may be possible to derive such metrics from categories like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Created_with_Inkscape [3] https://joinmobilizon.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
