Schools

From FOSS.

FOSS (i.e. Free and Open Source Software) is a catch-all term for 'Free Software', supposedly software which is free as in free speech, but not as in free beer, and 'Open source software', which is committed to the commercialisation of software whose source code is open and licensed on a CC basis.

Magnus Manske on the influence of FOSS

(Manske was the original developer of the MediaWiki software).

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Wikipedia book
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 20:37:46 +0100
From: Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail.com>
To: edward <edward@logicmuseum.com>

On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 7:34 PM, edward <edward@logicmuseum.com> wrote:

>>But one more question if that's OK. I have been corresponding with a person who claims to be an authority on OS. In fact (having checked him out) he clearly is an expert on software and hardware engineering (worked at Intel managing development) and claims to have been close friends with Ward Cunningham. Anyway, he says, of the founding Wikipedia community (meaning I assume the people who started it Feb-Dec 2001): "None of them had one f-cking idea what the open-source theory or practice was, or if they did, the application of the principles there was erroneous".
This seems pretty strong, but I don't have enough knowledge of OS methodology and practices. I've tried to steer clear of the issue in the book, but I suppose I _ought_ to address the issue of how well the principles and practices as they developed in Wikipedia at that period actually reflected the spirit or principles of OS and FS. My source claims, for instance, that Cunningham believed that a wiki was not scaleable, and that Wikipedia policies should have reflected the huge growth in numbers.
<<

Well, I am pretty certain at least some of us knew the open source principles; but of course we didn't apply them in a technical stringent sense. We were writing an encyclopedia, not source code. Stallman's GNUpedia/GNE ("GNE's Not an Encyclopedia") [1] discussion list, where I lurked as well, was much closer to the "principles". Except, it was nothing more than grandiose plans; every article should exist in as many versions as people would care to write, the reader could see all versions, but would get those by "people he trusts" by default; and so on. This took place roughly the same time Nupedia started. Never saw any code for GNE. Vaporware at its finest.

Wikipedia /did/ have some (technical) scalability issues, but we overcame those with clever software, and by throwing hardware at the problem. Ward Cunningham tries to sidestep the scaling issues with his Federated Wiki [2]; I'm sure that works for many settings, and I wish him good luck, but Wikipedia is doing fine. Coming back to the OS principles; I guess things like forking, which is essential for source code, is hard to do with Wikipedia, as is merging forked versions back in. Wikipedia is also much more open than any other FOSS code repository; not only can everyone (even without user account or email) submit patches, but edit the "code" live. That would never work for software, but human readers are more resilliant than CPUs :-)

In terms of the people themselves, I've looked at a few of the contributors to the lists. There is yourself of course - you developed the first version of MediaWiki, yes? Then there was Daniel Lee Crocker, who supposedly developed the next version of MediaWiki. I've corresponded with Axel Boldt who also seems (to me) to be an expert.

>>Any others?

First, just the other day some poor soul started writing an article about me [3]. This is based on a draft on German Wikipedia, where I was declared not notable :-) but English Wikipedia is more relaxed. The draft has more details on Yours Truly, plus references. Then, you can find a comprehensive list of old-time MediaWiki software geeks at [4]. I would particularly emphasise the contributions of Brion Vibber, Tim Starling, Ævar, Domas, and Rob Church.

Cheers, Magnus

• GNE
• Ward_Cunningham Federated_Wiki
• Magnus
• Special:Version

References

WP history article--not well-written and nowhere near "complete", but usable as a beginning reference.

Steven Levy's 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a much better reference, as it covers the early days of hacking (MIT, TX-0, PDP-1, phone phreaks, Greenblatt, Minsky, the early days of the personal computer) to a greater degree than most online "references".

ITS, the first operating system written with hacking and open usage in mind. Note that it had a command that would crash the entire timesharing system, but tell all the users which user entered it. ITS also had no passwords and no restrictions on file access.

Free Software Foundation, Stallman's nonprofit, one of the first to dedicated itself to open-source software promotion. FSF founders and trustees have edited the FSF Wikipedia article many times.

Open Source Initiative, the other important open-source nonprofit. Note that one of the members of the Board of Directors is none other than Mike Godwin.

(note: WP's coverage of the early hacker scene is spotty at best. The articles about important early figures Richard Greenblatt, Bill Gosper, Tom Knight and especially Stew Nelson are pathetic. Without these men and their early work, there might not be a Wikipedia, or even an open Internet, today.)

Linus management style

• [1] Guys, guys, guys. I'm going to have to start cursing again unless you stop sending me non-critical stuff. So the next pull request I get that has "cleanups" or just pointless churn, I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster. So don't do it. Send me just fixes to serious problems. Ok? ... Go out and test. And again - please don't make me curse you and your pets.
  • Further, Torvalds then list 40 or so developers who are each responsible for certain sections and changes -- and he lists by full name, not ridiculous pseudonyms.

Older than you think

Per Eric:

"The open-source didn't emerge from a magical, love-filled garden of freedom and hippie sentiment. Software sharing was old and commonplace by the time Stallman wrote his "manifesto". One of the world's first high-level programming language compilers, UNIVAC A-2, was open-source and given away to users at no charge in 1953. "

"Large numbers of open-source developers were encouraged by their employers to put paid time into writing open-source code, usually to run on the employer's hardware. It is very often done by big firms like IBM, especially in Europe. It is no accident that much of the present-day Linux applications code was written by German programmers. Some of that was due to Bob Young, cofounder of Red Hat. He didn't do it to give away free software, he did it to make money, by offering support services and custom development for commercial users of Red Hat. If you could use Red Hat without hiring support services, great, good luck. Any company of real size would pay for support, to avoid having its own staff of coders, and to (presumably) obtain access to specialized knowledge possessed by the original developers. Other open-source firms, like Canonical, copied his method [2]."

"Most of this history was NOT written down or documented properly. It was "edited", well after the fact, by the mad evangelists like Stallman, Raymond and Barlow. Everywhere you look into this, you ultimately see traces of their massive egos."

"Wikipedia's own article is a mess. Who made one of the biggest early contributions, in 2004? Eric S. Raymond!"

Ciaran O'Riordan

From this Wikipediocracy thread, August 2014, some comments about a recent Slashdot thread:

"This guy:"

"Well, this article he wrote is nonsense. I know nothing else about the guy. He just takes every controversy and paints it as an unsolvable failure of the iron-fisted Wikimedia Foundation. I hope he edits Wikipedia better than he writes blog entries."

"turns out to be Ciaran O'Riordan, aka Gronky (T-C-F-R-B), aka Markvs (T-C-F-R-B). He is one of the first members of the Free Software Foundation, and has been committing COI on FSF-related WP articles since 2004, and probably earlier."

"Feel free to bring him up on the COI Noticeboard or Jimbotalk. Or don't, the hell with him."

Other FSF insiders who edited the FSF article heavily:

• Lentower (T-C-F-R-B), aka FSF co-founder and board member Len Tower. Also created and edited his own bio.
• Bkuhn (T-C-F-R-B), aka former FSF director and board member Bradley M. Kuhn. Also edited his own bio, with the help of Ciaran O'Riordan as "Gronky".

See also

• Gomi

Links

• "Some Simple Economics of Open Source", Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, The Journal of Industrial Economics, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 197-234. Stable URL. Summarised here

The Wikimedia Foundation encourages and promotes the use of Wikipedia within schools, despite the proliferation of pornographic and unencyclopedic material throughout the project. Some of this work is supported by tax-free donations.

Examples of such promotion are:

• A 2008 initiative for schools. "Dr Andrew Cates (Wikipedia administrator BozMo), CEO of SOS Children (and also a Wikipedia administrator) said: "Wikipedia is an incredible phenomenon, and we are proud to have helped improve the accessibility of Wikipedia content to include users requiring remote access, child-friendly access and checked access. This year, general quality improvements on the English Wikipedia (particularly on requiring reliable sourcing for material) means the single most important selection criterion is now relevance or interest to children and manual content checking is slowly becoming secondary."
• schools-wikipedia
• Schools FAQ To be fair, this does have a warning about pornographic content.
• School_and_university_projects "The classroom coordination project exists to provide guidance to educators who incorporate Wikipedia writing assignments into their classes. Feel free to post questions for experienced Wikipedia volunteers at the talk page. In 2010, the Wikimedia Foundation has expressed official support for teaching with Wikipedia and facilitated the creation of a dedicated group of volunteers that you can ask for assistance in your course."
• India schools
• Wikipedia for teachers
• Sample coursework feedback
• "Wikipedia in schools - Convincing people by truth" – Presentations & Discussion: Evolving school-projects / Discussion: Working with schools and universities: What are the incentives for educators to participate in our programs? What are the best practices in recruiting schools, teachers and other staff members? How can we achieve sustainability and scalability?