[Foundation-l] Google Wave and Wikimedia projects

Sat May 30 18:34:21 UTC 2009

Hoi,
One of the things that I really appreciate is the decision by Google to
create a reference implementation and the way they expect contributions to
the protocol to be accompanied by working code implemented as a patch for
the reference implementation. The reference implementation will as a product
be ready to implement.

For Wave to be a success it has to be open and interoperable. In my opinion
Google does everything it can to ensure that everyone can ride the wave and
benefit of the shared software.. When extension can not be shared, their
restricted use will make it fail because the functionality is not available
for the person who might be on a different server.
Thanks,
       GerardM

2009/5/30 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>

> 2009/5/30 Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>:
> > Milos Rancic wrote:
> >> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 7:13 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
> >>> It's not free software. The blog post says they "intend to open source
> >>> the code". That generally means the code quality is so bad that they'd
> >>> be embarrassed to make it public, and would like to clean it up to the
> >>> point where humans can understand it, but currently they have more
> >>> important development priorities and no schedule to do such a thing.
> >>
> >> This is why that (very long) presentation is important. They clearly
> >> said that they want to make their implementation as the referent open
> >> source implementation.
> >
> > Funny, that's exactly what the blog post said, which I just quoted. I
> > guess I was right not to waste an hour of my Saturday watching that
> > presentation.
>
> I watched it in the end - it really is a very impressive bit of
> software. I don't see much that is new in it, but it brings things
> together really neatly. I can see myself using it once it comes out.
>
> > Wanting it to be free software does not make it free software. The
> > code has to actually be published with a permissive license. Until
> > then, it is proprietary software.
>
> It's not the software that's important. It's the protocol and the API.
> While it would be great if their client was made open and free, that
> isn't necessary for it to be a success, as long as the protocol and
> API are truly free.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>