This is an accepted version of this page
93-686: MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Misplaced Pages on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker , after which development has been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation . It powers several wiki hosting websites across the Internet, as well as most websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation including Misplaced Pages, Wiktionary , Wikimedia Commons , Wikiquote , Meta-Wiki and Wikidata , which define
186-419: A "user contributions" option on a sidebar. In a 2004 article, Carl Challborn and Teresa Reimann noted that "While this feature may be a slight deviation from the collaborative, 'ego-less' spirit of wiki purists, it can be very useful for educators who need to assess the contribution and participation of individual student users." MediaWiki provides many features beyond hyperlinks for structuring content. One of
279-456: A MediaWiki-based wiki found that when they were asked an open question about main problems with the wiki, 24% cited technical problems with formatting, e.g. "Couldn't figure out how to get an image in. Can't figure out how to show a link with words; it inserts a number." To make editing long pages easier, MediaWiki allows the editing of a subsection of a page (as identified by its header). A registered user can also indicate whether or not an edit
372-451: A continuous feed of Recent Changes to an IRC channel that these tools can monitor, eliminating their need to send requests for a refreshed Recent Changes feed to the API. Another important tool is watchlisting. Each logged-in user has a watchlist to which the user can add whatever pages he or she wishes. When an edit is made to one of those pages, a summary of that edit appears on the watchlist
465-453: A feature but with negative value. The terminal emulator xterm has many notable features, including compatibility with the X Window System , the ability to emulate a VT220 and VT320 terminal with ANSI color, and the ability to input escape sequences using a computer mouse or other similar device, and the ability to run on multiple different Unix-like operating systems (e.g. Linux , AIX , BSD , and HP-UX ). Feature-rich describes
558-531: A file called LocalSettings.php . Some aspects of MediaWiki can be configured through special pages or by editing certain pages; for instance, abuse filters can be configured through a special page, and certain gadgets can be added by creating JavaScript pages in the MediaWiki namespace. The MediaWiki community publishes a comprehensive installation guide. One of the earliest differences between MediaWiki (and its predecessor, UseModWiki ) and other wiki engines
651-454: A large part of the set requirements for the software. Besides its usage on Wikimedia sites, MediaWiki has been used as a knowledge management and content management system on websites such as Fandom , wikiHow and major internal installations like Intellipedia and Diplopedia . MediaWiki is written in the PHP programming language and stores all text content into a database . The software
744-442: A lesser degree, the Wikimedia Foundation's other projects. Fandom , a wiki hosting service formerly known as Wikia, runs on MediaWiki. Other public wikis that run on MediaWiki include wikiHow and SNPedia . WikiLeaks began as a MediaWiki-based site, but is no longer a wiki. A number of alternative wiki encyclopedias to Misplaced Pages run on MediaWiki, including Citizendium , Metapedia , Scholarpedia and Conservapedia . MediaWiki
837-589: A new logo was initiated on June 22, 2020, as the old logo was a bitmap image and had "high details", leading to problems when rendering at high and low resolutions, respectively. After two rounds of voting, the new and current MediaWiki logo designed by Serhio Magpie was selected on October 24, 2020, and officially adopted on April 1, 2021. The first version of MediaWiki, 1.1, was released in December 2003. MediaWiki's most famous use has been in Misplaced Pages and, to
930-606: A niche role outside of the mainstream of private software development. However the success of FOSS Operating Systems such as Linux, BSD and the companies based on FOSS such as Red Hat , has changed the software industry's attitude and there has been a dramatic shift in the corporate philosophy concerning its development. Users of FOSS benefit from the Four Essential Freedoms to make unrestricted use of, and to study, copy, modify, and redistribute such software with or without modification. If they would like to change
1023-484: A programming language. The Python programming language is well-known for its feature of using whitespace characters (spaces and tabs) instead of curly braces to indicate different blocks of code. Another similar high-level, object oriented programming language, Ruby , is noteworthy for using the symbols "@" and "$ " to highlight different variable scopes, which the developers claim improves code readability. Its developers also claim that one of its important features
SECTION 10
#17327656139731116-581: A single unified term that could refer to both concepts, although Richard Stallman argues that it fails to be neutral unlike the similar term; "Free/Libre and Open Source Software" (FLOSS). Richard Stallman 's Free Software Definition , adopted by the FSF, defines free software as a matter of liberty, not price, and that which upholds the Four Essential Freedoms. The earliest known publication of this definition of his free software definition
1209-478: A software system as having many options and capabilities. One mechanism for introducing feature-rich software to the user is the concept of progressive disclosure , a technique where features are introduced gradually as they become required, to reduce the potential confusion caused by displaying a wealth of features at once. Sometimes, feature-rich is considered a negative attribute. The terms feature creep , software bloat , and featuritis refer to software that
1302-597: A variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open-source. Software feature In software , a feature is an identifiable characteristic of a computer program . The term feature means the same for software as it does for any kind of system. For example, the British Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought (1906) was considered an important milestone in naval technology because of its advanced features that did not exist in pre-dreadnought battleships . Feature also applies to computer hardware . In
1395-481: A wide variety of uploaded media files. Its richest functionality is in the area of images, where image galleries and thumbnails can be generated with relative ease. There is also support for Exif metadata . The use of MediaWiki to operate the Wikimedia Commons , one of the largest free content media archives, has driven the need for further functionality in this area. For WYSIWYG editing, VisualEditor
1488-545: Is overly feature-rich. This type of excessive inclusion of features is in some cases a result of design by committee . To counteract the tendency of software developers to add additional, unnecessary features, the Unix philosophy was developed in the 1970s by Bell Labs employees working on the Unix operating system such as Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie . The philosophy can be summarized as: software programs should generally only complete one primary task and that "small
1581-399: Is a high amount of flexibility. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) defines feature in the (obsolete) standard for software test documentation IEEE 829 as a "distinguishing characteristic of a software item (e.g., performance, portability, or functionality)". Although feature is typically used for a positive aspect of a software system, a software bug is also
1674-511: Is also used for feature and enhancement requests. When Misplaced Pages was launched in January 2001, it ran on an existing wiki software system, UseModWiki . UseModWiki is written in the Perl programming language, and stores all wiki pages in text ( .txt ) files. This software soon proved to be limiting, in both functionality and performance. In mid-2001, Magnus Manske —a developer and student at
1767-801: Is also used internally by a large number of companies, including Novell and Intel . Notable usages of MediaWiki within governments include Intellipedia , used by the United States Intelligence Community , Diplopedia , used by the United States Department of State , and milWiki, a part of milSuite used by the United States Department of Defense . United Nations agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme and INSTRAW chose to implement their wikis using MediaWiki, because "this software runs Misplaced Pages and
1860-893: Is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software . FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software , where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users. FOSS maintains the software user's civil liberty rights via the " Four Essential Freedoms " of free software. Other benefits of using FOSS include decreased software costs, increased security against malware , stability, privacy , opportunities for educational usage, and giving users more control over their own hardware. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used today, powering millions of servers , desktops , smartphones , and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages today. The free software movement and
1953-484: Is available in more than 400 languages. The software has more than 1,000 configuration settings and more than 1,800 extensions available for enabling various features to be added or changed. MediaWiki is free and open-source and is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version. Its documentation, located at its official website at www.mediawiki.org,
SECTION 20
#17327656139732046-416: Is available to use in MediaWiki which simplifying editing process for editors and has been bundled since MediaWiki 1.35. Other extensions exist for handling WYSIWYG editing to different degrees. Among the features of MediaWiki to assist in tracking edits is a Recent Changes feature that provides a list of recent edits to the wiki. This list contains basic information about those edits such as the editing user,
2139-418: Is largely incompatible with MediaWiki. Cloud hosting can eliminate the need to deploy a new server. An installation PHP script is accessed via a web browser to initialize the wiki's settings. It prompts the user for a minimal set of required parameters, leaving further changes, such as enabling uploads, adding a site logo, and installing extensions, to be made by modifying configuration settings contained in
2232-405: Is minor. Correcting spelling, grammar or punctuation are examples of minor edits, whereas adding paragraphs of new text is an example of a non-minor edit. Sometimes while one user is editing, a second user saves an edit to the same part of the page. Then, when the first user attempts to save the page, an edit conflict occurs. The second user is then given an opportunity to merge their content into
2325-414: Is optimized to efficiently handle large projects, which can have terabytes of content and hundreds of thousands of views per second. Because Misplaced Pages is one of the world's largest and most visited websites, achieving scalability through multiple layers of caching and database replication has been a major concern for developers. Another major aspect of MediaWiki is its internationalization; its interface
2418-544: Is released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license and partly in the public domain . Specifically, the manuals and other content at MediaWiki.org are Creative Commons -licensed, while the set of help pages intended to be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software is public domain. This was done to eliminate legal issues arising from the help pages being imported into wikis with licenses that are incompatible with
2511-493: Is therefore guaranteed to be thoroughly tested, will continue to be developed well into the future, and future technicians on these wikis will be more likely to have exposure to MediaWiki than any other wiki software." The Free Software Foundation uses MediaWiki to implement the LibrePlanet site. MediaWiki provides a rich core feature set and a mechanism to attach extensions to provide additional functionality. Due to
2604-416: Is to allow content to be separated from discussion surrounding the content. Free and open-source Free and open-source software ( FOSS ) is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS
2697-534: Is today better known as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird . Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the FSF's Free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the Free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The new name they chose
2790-663: Is used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to determine whether a software license qualifies for the organization's insignia for open-source software . The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines , written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens . Perens did not base his writing on the Four Essential Freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation , which were only later available on
2883-738: The United Space Alliance , which manages the computer systems for the International Space Station (ISS), regarding why they chose to switch from Windows to Linux on the ISS. In 2017, the European Commission stated that "EU institutions should become open source software users themselves, even more than they already are" and listed open source software as one of the nine key drivers of innovation, together with big data , mobility, cloud computing and
MediaWiki - Misplaced Pages Continue
2976-506: The University of Cologne , as well as a Misplaced Pages editor —began working on new software that would replace UseModWiki, specifically designed for use by Misplaced Pages. This software was written in the PHP scripting language, and stored all of its information in a MySQL database. The new software was largely developed by August 24, 2001, and a test wiki for it was established shortly thereafter. The first full implementation of this software
3069-476: The Wikimedia Foundation , took up the role of release manager . Major milestones in MediaWiki's development have included: the categorization system (2004); parser functions, (2006); Flagged Revisions , (2008); the " ResourceLoader ", a delivery system for CSS and JavaScript (2011); and the VisualEditor , a "what you see is what you get" ( WYSIWYG ) editing platform (2013). The contest of designing
3162-501: The Wikimedia Foundation . MediaWiki developers participate in the Google Summer of Code by facilitating the assignment of mentors to students wishing to work on MediaWiki core and extension projects. During the year prior to November 2012, there were about two hundred developers who had committed changes to the MediaWiki core or extensions. Major MediaWiki releases are generated approximately every six months by taking snapshots of
3255-610: The hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , announced the GNU project , saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals
3348-494: The internet of things . In 2020, the European Commission adopted its Open Source Strategy 2020-2023 , including encouraging sharing and reuse of software and publishing Commission's source code as key objectives. Among concrete actions there is also to set up an Open Source Programme Office in 2020 and in 2022 it launched its own FOSS repository https://code.europa.eu/ . In 2021, the Commission Decision on
3441-609: The open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production, adoption and promotion of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the terms FLOSS , free or libre. "Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is simultaneously considered both free software and open-source software . The precise definition of the terms "free software" and "open-source software" applies them to any software distributed under terms that allow users to use, modify, and redistribute said software in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay
3534-526: The API. MediaWiki supports rich content generated through specialized syntax. For example, the software comes with optional support for rendering mathematical formulas using LaTeX and a special parser written in OCaml named texvc. Similar functionality for other content, ranging from graphical timelines over mathematical plotting and musical scores to Egyptian hieroglyphs , is available via extensions. The software has become more powerful at dealing with
3627-512: The API. The API is accessed via URLs such as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=recentchanges . In this case, the query would be asking Misplaced Pages for information relating to the last 10 edits to the site. One of the perceived advantages of the API is its language independence; it listens for HTTP connections from clients and can send a response in a variety of formats, such as XML , serialized PHP, or JSON . Client code has been developed to provide layers of abstraction to
3720-522: The Creative Commons license. MediaWiki's development has generally favored the use of open-source media formats . MediaWiki has an active volunteer community for development and maintenance. Users who have made meaningful contributions to the project by submitting patches are generally, upon request, granted access to commit revisions to the project's Git / Gerrit repository . There are also paid programmers who primarily develop projects for
3813-638: The EU. These recommendations are to be taken into account later in the same year in Commission's proposal of the "Interoperable Europe Act" . While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to ensure license compliance for their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),
MediaWiki - Misplaced Pages Continue
3906-706: The FOSS ecosystem, several projects decided against upgrading to GPLv3. For instance the Linux kernel , the BusyBox project, AdvFS , Blender , and the VLC media player decided against adopting the GPLv3. Apple , a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang , which is another FOSS compiler but is under a permissive license . LWN speculated that Apple
3999-653: The Free Software Foundation released version 3 of its GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3) in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights. After the development of the GNU GPLv3 in 2007, the FSF (as the copyright holder of many pieces of the GNU system) updated many of the GNU programs' licenses from GPLv2 to GPLv3. On the other hand, the adoption of the new GPL version was heavily discussed in
4092-531: The MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle, are designed to further enhance the multilingualism and internationalization of MediaWiki. Installation of MediaWiki requires that the user have administrative privileges on a server running both PHP and a compatible type of SQL database . Some users find that setting up a virtual host is helpful if the majority of one's site runs under a framework (such as Zope or Ruby on Rails ) that
4185-402: The actual causes of the many issues with Linux on notebooks such as the unnecessary power consumption. Mergers have affected major open-source software. Sun Microsystems (Sun) acquired MySQL AB , owner of the popular open-source MySQL database, in 2008. Oracle in turn purchased Sun in January 2010, acquiring their copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Thus, Oracle became the owner of both
4278-470: The author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities. Although there is an almost complete overlap between free-software licenses and open-source-software licenses, there is a strong philosophical disagreement between the advocates of these two positions. The terminology of FOSS was created to be a neutral on these philosophical disagreements between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Open Source Initiative (OSI) and have
4371-434: The concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code . A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that "Open-source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business." Companies have indeed faced copyright infringement issues when embracing FOSS. For many years FOSS played
4464-502: The copyright law was extended to computer programs in the United States —previously, computer programs could be considered ideas, procedures, methods, systems, and processes, which are not copyrightable. Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when IBM implemented in 1983 an "object code only" policy, no longer distributing source code. In 1983, Richard Stallman , longtime member of
4557-419: The data contained in the MediaWiki databases. Client programs can use the API to log in, get data, and post changes. The API supports thin web-based JavaScript clients and end-user applications (such as vandal-fighting tools). The API can be accessed by the backend of another web site. An extensive Python bot library, Pywikibot , and a popular semi-automated tool called AutoWikiBrowser , also interface with
4650-439: The development branch, which is kept continuously in a runnable state; minor releases , or point releases , are issued as needed to correct bugs (especially security problems). MediaWiki is developed on a continuous integration development model, in which software changes are pushed live to Wikimedia sites on regular basis. MediaWiki also has a public bug tracker, phabricator.wikimedia.org , which runs Phabricator . The site
4743-691: The differences between wiki markup and HTML: "Take some more tea ," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take less ," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing." (Quotation above from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll ) MediaWiki's default page-editing tools have been described as somewhat challenging to learn. A survey of students assigned to use
SECTION 50
#17327656139734836-441: The earliest such features is namespaces . One of Misplaced Pages's earliest problems had been the separation of encyclopedic content from pages pertaining to maintenance and communal discussion, as well as personal pages about encyclopedia editors. Namespaces are prefixes before a page title (such as " User: " or " Talk: ") that serve as descriptors for the page's purpose and allow multiple pages with different functions to exist under
4929-450: The early history of computers, devices such as Digital Equipment Corporation 's PDP-7 minicomputer (created in 1964) was noted for having a wealth of features, such as being the first version of the PDP minicomputer series to use wire wrap , as well as being the first to use the proprietary DEC Flip-Chip module which was invented in the same year. Feature also applies to concepts such as
5022-430: The edit summary, the page edited, as well as any tags (e.g. "possible vandalism ") added by customizable abuse filters and other extensions to aid in combating unhelpful edits. On more active wikis, so many edits occur that it is hard to track Recent Changes manually. Anti-vandal software, including user-assisted tools, is sometimes employed on such wikis to process Recent Changes items. Server load can be reduced by sending
5115-562: The functionality of software they can bring about changes to the code and, if they wish, distribute such modified versions of the software or often − depending on the software's decision making model and its other users − even push or request such changes to be made via updates to the original software. Manufacturers of proprietary, closed-source software are sometimes pressured to building in backdoors or other covert, undesired features into their software. Instead of having to trust software vendors, users of FOSS can inspect and verify
5208-416: The goal of developing the most efficient software for its users or use-cases while proprietary software is typically meant to generate profits . Furthermore, in many cases more organizations and individuals contribute to such projects than to proprietary software. It has been shown that technical superiority is typically the primary reason why companies choose open source software. According to Linus's law
5301-567: The government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software was still being provided without monetary cost and license restriction, there was a growing amount of software that was only at a monetary cost with restricted licensing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some parts of the software industry began using technical measures (such as distributing only binary copies of computer programs ) to prevent computer users from being able to use reverse engineering techniques to study and customize software they had paid for. In 1980,
5394-491: The historical potential of an " economy of abundance " for the new digital world , FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism . According to Yochai Benkler , Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School , free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites
5487-485: The level of interest in a particular project. However, unlike close-sourced software, improvements can be made by anyone who has the motivation, time and skill to do so. A common obstacle in FOSS development is the lack of access to some common official standards, due to costly royalties or required non-disclosure agreements (e.g., for the DVD-Video format). There is often less certainty of FOSS projects gaining
5580-545: The more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. However, this does not guarantee a high level of participation. Having a grouping of full-time professionals behind a commercial product can in some cases be superior to FOSS. Furthermore, publicized source code might make it easier for hackers to find vulnerabilities in it and write exploits. This however assumes that such malicious hackers are more effective than white hat hackers which responsibly disclose or help fix
5673-477: The most popular proprietary database and the most popular open-source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open-source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community. Partly in response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community forked the project into new database systems outside of Oracle's control. These include MariaDB , Percona , and Drizzle . All of these have distinct names; they are distinct projects and cannot use
SECTION 60
#17327656139735766-477: The next time it is refreshed. As with the recent changes page, recent edits that appear on the watchlist contain clickable links for easy review of the article history and specific changes made. There is also the capability to review all edits made by any particular user. In this way, if an edit is identified as problematic, it is possible to check the user's other edits for issues. MediaWiki allows one to link to specific versions of articles. This has been useful to
5859-640: The open source licensing and reuse of Commission software (2021/C 495 I/01) was adopted, under which, as a general principle, the European Commission may release software under EUPL or another FOSS license, if more appropriate. There are exceptions though. In May 2022, the Expert group on the Interoperability of European Public Services came published 27 recommendations to strengthen the interoperability of public administrations across
5952-553: The page as it now exists following the first user's page save. MediaWiki's user interface has been localized in many different languages. A language for the wiki content itself can also be set, to be sent in the "Content-Language" HTTP header and "lang" HTML attribute . VisualEditor has its own integrated wikitext editing interface known as 2017 wikitext editor, the older editing interface is known as 2010 wikitext editor. MediaWiki has an extensible web API ( application programming interface ) that provides direct, high-level access to
6045-544: The parties stipulated that Google would pay no damages. Oracle appealed to the Federal Circuit , and Google filed a cross-appeal on the literal copying claim. By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information—a key area of contemporary growth —the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general. By realizing
6138-486: The purpose of creating an encyclopedia, where accuracy in titles is important. MediaWiki uses an extensible lightweight wiki markup designed to be easier to use and learn than HTML . Tools exist for converting content such as tables between MediaWiki markup and HTML. Efforts have been made to create a MediaWiki markup spec, but a consensus seems to have been reached that Wikicode requires context-sensitive grammar rules. The following side-by-side comparison illustrates
6231-418: The required resources and participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies. However, companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable, yet large companies may rely on, and hence co-develop, open source software. On the other hand, if the vendor of proprietary software ceases development, there are no alternatives; whereas with FOSS, any user who needs it still has
6324-484: The right, and the source-code, to continue to develop it themself, or pay a 3rd party to do so. As the FOSS operating system distributions of Linux has a lower market share of end users there are also fewer applications available. "We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable -- one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could." Official statement of
6417-489: The same title. For instance, a page titled " [[The Terminator]] ", in the default namespace, could describe the 1984 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger , while a page titled " [[User:The Terminator]] " could be a profile describing a user who chooses this name as a pseudonym. More commonly, each namespace has an associated " Talk: " namespace, which can be used to discuss its contents, such as " User talk: " or " Template talk: ". The purpose of having discussion pages
6510-414: The same topic in other editions of Misplaced Pages. This was superseded by the launch of Wikidata. Page tabs are displayed at the top of pages. These tabs allow users to perform actions or view pages that are related to the current page. The available default actions include viewing, editing, and discussing the current page. The specific tabs displayed depend on whether the user is logged into the wiki and whether
6603-463: The same way as namespaces. A set of interwiki prefixes can be configured to cause, for instance, a page title of wikiquote:Jimbo Wales to direct the user to the Jimbo Wales article on Wikiquote . Unlike internal wikilinks, interwiki links lack page existence detection functionality, and accordingly there is no way to tell whether a blue interwiki link is broken or not. Interlanguage links are
6696-697: The scientific community, in that expert peer reviewers could analyse articles, improve them and provide links to the trusted version of that article. Navigation through the wiki is largely through internal wikilinks. MediaWiki's wikilinks implement page existence detection, in which a link is colored blue if the target page exists on the local wiki and red if it does not. If a user clicks on a red link, they are prompted to create an article with that title. Page existence detection makes it practical for users to create "wikified" articles—that is, articles containing links to other pertinent subjects—without those other articles being yet in existence. Interwiki links function much
6789-400: The small navigation links that show up in the sidebar in most MediaWiki skins that connect an article with related articles in other languages within the same Wiki family. This can provide language-specific communities connected by a larger context, with all wikis on the same server or each on its own server. Previously, Misplaced Pages used interlanguage links to link an article to other articles on
6882-521: The source code themselves and can put trust on a community of volunteers and users. As proprietary code is typically hidden from public view, only the vendors themselves and hackers may be aware of any vulnerabilities in them while FOSS involves as many people as possible for exposing bugs quickly. FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software. FOSS allows for better collaboration among various parties and individuals with
6975-483: The strong emphasis on multilingualism in the Wikimedia projects, internationalization and localization has received significant attention by developers. The user interface has been fully or partially translated into more than 400 languages on translatewiki.net , and can be further customized by site administrators (the entire interface is editable through the wiki). Several extensions, most notably those collected in
7068-518: The trademarked name MySQL. In August 2010, Oracle sued Google , claiming that its use of Java in Android infringed on Oracle's copyrights and patents. In May 2012, the trial judge determined that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents and ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The jury found that Google infringed a small number of copied files, but
7161-488: The user has sysop privileges on the wiki. For instance, the ability to move a page or add it to one's watchlist is usually restricted to logged-in users. The site administrator can add or remove tabs by using JavaScript or installing extensions. Each page has an associated history page from which the user can access every version of the page that has ever existed and generate diffs between two versions of his choice. Users' contributions are displayed not only here, but also via
7254-837: The vulnerabilities, that no code leaks or exfiltrations occur and that reverse engineering of proprietary code is a hindrance of significance for malicious hackers. Sometimes, FOSS is not compatible with proprietary hardware or specific software. This is often due to manufacturers obstructing FOSS such as by not disclosing the interfaces or other specifications needed for members of the FOSS movement to write drivers for their hardware - for instance as they wish customers to run only their own proprietary software or as they might benefit from partnerships. While FOSS can be superior to proprietary equivalents in terms of software features and stability, in many cases it has more unfixed bugs and missing features when compared to similar commercial software. This varies per case, and usually depends on
7347-485: The web. Perens subsequently stated that he felt Eric Raymond 's promotion of open-source unfairly overshadowed the Free Software Foundation's efforts and reaffirmed his support for free software. In the following 2000s, he spoke about open source again. From the 1950s and on through the 1980s, it was common for computer users to have the source code for all programs they used, and the permission and ability to modify it for their own use. Software , including source code,
7440-590: Was "Open-source", and quickly Bruce Perens , publisher Tim O'Reilly , Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles. While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by
7533-521: Was also written in PHP, with a MySQL backend, and kept the basic interface of the phase II software, but with the added functionality of a wider scalability . The "phase III" software went live on Misplaced Pages in July 2002. The Wikimedia Foundation was announced on June 20, 2003. In July, Misplaced Pages contributor Daniel Mayer suggested the name "MediaWiki" for the software, as a play on "Wikimedia". The MediaWiki name
7626-425: Was chosen to represent MediaWiki rather than Misplaced Pages, with the second place logo being used for the Wikimedia Foundation. The double square brackets ( [[ ]] ) symbolize the syntax MediaWiki uses for creating hyperlinks to other wiki pages; while the sunflower represents the diversity of content on Misplaced Pages, its constant growth, and the wilderness. Later, Brooke Vibber , the chief technical officer of
7719-447: Was commonly shared by individuals who used computers, often as public-domain software (FOSS is not the same as public domain software, as public domain software does not contain copyrights ). Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled software with hardware, free of charge. By the late 1960s, the prevailing business model around software was changing. A growing and evolving software industry
7812-462: Was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products; rather than funding software development from hardware revenue, these new companies were selling software directly. Leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers who were able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM , filed January 17, 1969,
7905-513: Was gradually phased in, beginning in August 2003. The name has frequently caused confusion due to its (intentional) similarity to the "Wikimedia" name (which itself is similar to "Misplaced Pages"). The old product logo was created by Erik Möller , using a flower photograph taken by Florence Nibart-Devouard , and was originally submitted to the logo contest for a new Misplaced Pages logo , held from July 20 to August 27, 2003. The logo came in third place, and
7998-534: Was in the February 1986 edition of the FSF's now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of August 2017 , it is published in 40 languages. To meet the definition of "free software", the FSF requires the software's licensing respect the civil liberties / human rights of what the FSF calls the software user's " Four Essential Freedoms ". The Open Source Definition
8091-572: Was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3. The Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative. Leemhuis criticizes the prioritization of skilled developers who − instead of fixing issues in already popular open-source applications and desktop environments − create new, mostly redundant software to gain fame and fortune. He also criticizes notebook manufacturers for optimizing their own products only privately or creating workarounds instead of helping fix
8184-528: Was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto . The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and " copyleft " ideas. The FSF takes the position that the fundamental issue Free software addresses is an ethical one—to ensure software users can exercise what it calls " The Four Essential Freedoms ". The Linux kernel , created by Linus Torvalds ,
8277-578: Was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. Initially, Linux was not released under either a Free software or an Open-source software license. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License . FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD ) were released as Free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server , commonly referred to as Apache,
8370-527: Was released under the Apache License 1.0 . In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar , a reflective analysis of the hacker community and Free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as Free software . This code
8463-502: Was the new Meta Misplaced Pages on November 9, 2001. There was a desire to have it implemented immediately on the English-language Misplaced Pages. However, Manske was apprehensive about any potential bugs harming the nascent website during the period of the final exams he had to complete immediately prior to Christmas; this led to the launch on the English-language Misplaced Pages being delayed until January 25, 2002. The software
8556-463: Was the use of " free links " instead of CamelCase . When MediaWiki was created, it was typical for wikis to require text like "WorldWideWeb" to create a link to a page about the World Wide Web ; links in MediaWiki, on the other hand, are created by surrounding words with double square brackets, and any spaces between them are left intact, e.g. [[World Wide Web]] . This change was logical for
8649-491: Was then, gradually, deployed on all the Misplaced Pages language sites of that time. This software was referred to as "the PHP script" and as "phase II", with the name "phase I", retroactively given to the use of UseModWiki. Increasing usage soon caused load problems to arise again, and soon after, another rewrite of the software began; this time being done by Lee Daniel Crocker , which became known as "phase III". This new software
#972027