[Wolves] Wiki

[s parkes]

>From: Matthew Revell <matthew@understated.co.uk>
>Reply-To: wolves@mailman.lug.org.uk
>To: wolves@mailman.lug.org.uk
>Subject: Re: [Wolves] Wiki
>Date: 28 May 2003 12:51:31 +0100
>
>Hey up,
>
>On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 12:36, Jono Bacon wrote:
>
> > I don't know if I have got the wrong end of the stick
> > with this discussion, but my comments regarding Wiki's
> > are not political comments, but merely practical
> > comments.
>
>Yeah, but where do the practical restrictions come from? I understand
>that wikis have been created for a specific purpose and that they do
>that job very well. However, in reading various wiki project sites I
>came across the idea that restricting who could alter the wiki content
>was against the wiki philosophy. Now, I reckon open wikis are great but
>I also think that the idea of a restricted wiki has a lot of merit for
>some uses. I know it might seem that I'm trying to do the equivalent of
>adding a great big bucket to a Mazda MX-5 and hoping it'll be good as a
>digger but I see it more as adding a supercharger option that drivers
>can either take or leave.
>
you don't have to sign up to the wiki philosophy to use a wiki as long as 
you do not vololate the licence, open source wikis can not contain this 
restriction.  They can however attempt to educate users and this is why you 
are reading these philosophy documents.

if you ever ignored your teacher you can ignore the philosphy.  As long as 
you don't make a habit of ignoring people who are attempting to make the 
world a nicer place it shouldn't effect your place in the LUG ;-)

> > As far as I am concerned, I think Wiki's are great. I
> > support the open concept,
>
>Me too - I support the open concept to the point where wiki owners
>should be able to have control. It should be open to users to either
>make their wiki free or controlled. I know that's not quite what you
>mean by "open" but to me, freedom of how a piece of software is
>fundamental to keeping things open.
>
There is no reason why you shouldn't use wiki software to create a more 
closed system that only allows certain users to edit the resources.  You 
might find other CMS solutions lend themselves to this a little better.

It would however be better if your fork did not use the title wiki so as not 
to polute the wiki movement that your fork chooses to reject.

>
> > The point I was making was that you need to be aware
> > of these risks in assessing if a Wiki is the right
> > choice for a content creation system as their may be
> > practical risks as opposed to political risks.
>
>Cool, but to me the practical risks sometimes come from a political
>unwillingness to add to the functionality of a software project. It
>doesn't destract from people who want to use the system in an open way,
>it just gives another way of doing things, which I reckon is what we're
>all about.
>
the major political point that open source wiki's stand for are open source 
software.  The strongest polical statement is covered by the GNU General 
Public Licence (or equivilent).  Although the developers of the software may 
be unlikely to add a feature it is not because of thier ideologies.  They 
explicitly allow you to add whatever feature to require as long as you 
redistribute your efforts and do not attempt to close the source of the 
software after you edit it.

Their may be an unwillingness to pollute their own offerings (that may or 
may not be politically motivated) because they develop software for the 
number one user first (themselves in most cases) and every other user 
second.  As they allow modification and redistribution of source no open 
source developer can ever be said to be unwilling to alter software for 
polical reasons.

>As Fizzy says, I could fork a project or create my own from scratch ...
>assuming my coding is up to it. That's not so much my point tho'. I just
>think it's a shame - maybe dangerous even - that perfectly good
>functionality can be rejected from a project because it doesn't match
>someone's politics. Okay, for something like a wiki - where there's
>plenty of choice - it doesn't really matter. But if spread to something
>a little more important, like the kernel, it could be disastrous.
you are not rejecting software you are reusing and redistributing the effort 
of the original maintainers.  That perfectly good funcionality is reused 
with no ill effects

>
>Anyway, this all off the top of my 'ead, with an empty stomach, so I may
>not make sense and may change my mind later :)
>
it made in my head sence yes ;-)

sparkes

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