Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force

Article tagging

I noticed the tag in Audacity. All the wikiprojects I've been a participant in—and noticed—have placed such tags on the talk pages of the associated articles. Examine the contents of these examples: Category:WikiProject Rivers Category:WikiProject Oregon Category:WikiProject Ski Any particular reason for putting the tag on the article pages themselves? —EncMstr 22:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I tagged the Audacity article, and I wondered if it should be in the talk page myself. I tagged the article at the bottom of the page as per instructions on the WP:Free project page. I've seen wikiproject tags on both talk and article pages before, so there's precedent for either one, but I think I prefer to tag the talk page. Any others have thoughts? This should be decided before a big pile of articles get tagged. Strobilus 00:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I created the template today. It doesn't matter to me where the tag goes, actually, the talk page may be preferable. My only reservation is the ugly yellowish color that these tags often seem to have. I vastly prefer the clean white of the current tag. Also, it may be a good idea, when we're just starting out, to have the tag on the main article to attract attention. However, when we've been around for a while, I support just tagging the talk page. I would create a template myself, but I currently don't know advanced template markup. I can, however, copy it from another, similar template, and modify it so that it fits WPFS. Geekman314^{(contact me)} 03:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

There's a standard for how talk-page banners are supposed to look and act (WP:TPT). The "ugly yellowish color" is, alas, part of it. I've updated the {{WPFS}} template to use the template-building template, so it now follows the rules. RossPatterson 04:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm undecided, but I see one problem with adding tags to article pages, and that is that it sets an example that will be followed. We could end up with many free software articles having 4 project boxes on them (WPFS, WPLINUX, WPSOFTWARE, and I don't know how many others...). Gronky 01:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would pose a problem… Geekman314^{(contact me)} 00:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject banners go on the talk pages per Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide. I've moved all the uses of {{WPFS}} accordingly. RossPatterson 04:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I've never understood why it is better to spend time adding dozens of ugly yellow banners to articles rather than improving them. NicM 09:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

WP:PROJGUIDE#Recruiting explains why: By far the most effective method (to recruit new project members) is through the use of a project banner template. Another substantial benefit is to direct people to the relevant WikiProject page(s) before they edit an article. Often, a WikiProject has style guidelines and such for articles it oversees. This can help new editors, who may not know what infobox, stub template, navigation banner, etc., to use for a given type of article. In any case, project banner templates belong on talk pages rather than on article pages themselves, so they don't ugly up the articles. --Teratornis 23:36, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't really buy that. People who are interested in the area will encounter or be pointed to related wikiprojects eventually and if they are doing the work who cares if they sign their name on the page. Style guides are all good and well, but unless a wikiproject is actually working on an article they are a little presumptious and if they are, members will be quick enough to point new editors to them and to the wikiproject anyway, same as the billion other WP guides and policies. And uglying up talk pages with a dozen banners is still pretty annoying, although the "small=yes" option has gone some way to make that easier to counter. NicM 11:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC).

Articles

I'm going through my start menu and trying to tag every piece of FOSS I can think of. Even if you don't want to do the tagging, can anyone tell me the names of some FOSS so I can tag/create their articles? P3net 05:56, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a Linux system? The software package manager has a long list of free software. This is an online list for Debian. That should keep you busy for awhile...  :-) —EncMstr 06:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure do! P3net 03:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Category:Free software is a category containing virtually all free software articles on Wikipedia. Geekman314^{(contact me)} 12:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

IRC channel

Wikinerd2000 has been kind enough to register a freenode IRC channel, #wpfs, for our use. Feel free to use it to discuss the project, or free software in general. (By the way, if you don't feel that it's appropriate to use a Wikipedia IRC channel for general discussion, please feel free to say so.) Thanks! Geekman314^{(contact me)} 14:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

While we are on the subject, I changed my nick from [gosub] to yamato on freenode. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikinerd2000 (talk • contribs) 23:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

An existing FS todo and stub box

Portal:Free software, on its Portal:Free software/Contribute page, has a todo box:

• Portal:Free software/Task_list

and a box of requested articles and stubs:

• Portal:Free software/Expansion_required

These can be added (transcluded) to the WP:WPFS page by adding these:

• {{Portal:Free software/Task_list}}
• {{Portal:Free software/Expansion_required}}

But I'll leave it to someone else to say where they should go. It makes sense for the portal and the project to share these things. They've currently been designed to fit into the portal, but they can be changed if required - but Portal:Free_software will be applying for Featured status soon, so, if they are to be changed to fit in the WikiProject, I'd still like to keep them looking reasonably well on the Portal. Gronky 15:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Free Internet forum software category

I think that the OSI-approved-license restriction should be removed from the Free Internet forum software category. This does not accurately reflect the category description and means that any free forum software released under its own license (or any other non-OSI-approved license) is excluded from this category.

Some of the more popular software excluded by this restriction:

Ikonboard MyBB Phorum SMF YaBB (I thought YaBB was GPL, but their downloads page says otherwise)

This would also give some of the more obscure titles more exposure.

Because this restriction has been in place since the category was created, I wanted to discuss this instead of just changing it myself...

Oldiesmann 16:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right. I've fixed it now by copying the standard "Category:Free whatever" intro. Gronky 18:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Title of WikiProject

Greetings,

Iraneal has brought to my attention that term used to refer to software which has has its source code released is a point of contention, and that entitling the WikiProject "WikiProject Free Software" seems like it exhibits a bias towards one camp. Perhaps a re-titling is in order? Geekman314^{(contact me)} 02:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Open Source was already tried, and it didn't work. Wikiproject Free Software is off to a pretty good start. Maybe it's that free software implies a slightly different scope (one that includes the ethical and political issues), maybe it's that the term "free software" has a clearer or more accepted definition, maybe it's that free software has a more defined history (did "open source" begin in 1998? 1983? the 50s?). IMO, changing what people have signed up for won't help. Gronky 02:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

As long as the project page is clear what "free" means in relation to the project, I don't see a problem. As Gronky points out, the flexibility of the term might help attract participants. It's rather ingenious to use an article for the definition... —EncMstr 02:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Retitled to what? There is no alternative that isn't ugly (FOSS, FLOSS) or stupid ("free / open source software", "free software / open source software"). And as Gronky points out, when talking about the actual software they are pretty much the same thing, but free software has a lot more philosophy and ethics articles. Although I think we should cover specifically open source related articles too. NicM 09:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

This project is still young, but it seems to be working out regardless of its name. You can count me as one of the "Stallman is a raving lunatic", "BSD beats GPL hands down", pro-Open Source camp, but I can live with calling this "Wikiproject Free Software" just fine. The internecine wars among the advocates of freely-available-source programming need to stop someday, why not start stopping now?

Besides, WPFLOSS would have to be group for either dentistry or G-string fans :-) RossPatterson 17:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'll weigh in as the one who brought this whole thing up. Nine times out of ten, the two terms are completely compatible. What I try to avoid are projects/communities that are proponents of "Free Software" to the deliberate exclusion of the open source definition. When I was invited to participate in this project I checked the project page, found no mention of open source, and assumed it was intentional. The inclusion of this very discussion, however, proves otherwise, and I believe that Linus' intentions were to include as many Free Software/Open Source advocates as possible to make it a better project. In sum, I can live with "Free Software" as the title of the project. But it would still be nice (and inclusive, in the wikipedia tradition) to reference open source (and the compatibility of the two) somewhere in the project page. I know it's just semantics and hair-splitting for some, but for others (me, obviously) it makes a difference. Neal Locke

Free software used to mention in the intro that it is also called "open-source software". That seems to have disappeared at some point. I've just re-added it. Gronky 13:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Article improvement

I believe that enough articles have been tagged that we should start really improving them in earnest. We should probably pick some articles to focus in particular on. Any ideas? Geekman314^{(contact me)} 23:21, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, Free software itself could use some work and Open source is pretty awful. Open source software isn't that great either. I'm not really interested in FOSS philosophy but they are probably important articles. On the software side, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux could all do with tidying up, and Linux kernel with a bit too. There are dozens more software articles in various states of disrepair. NicM 11:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC).

Google searches for WikiProject Free Software

I'm impressed: [1]. Also, with the inclusion of quotation marks to narrow the results: [2]. Geekman314^{(contact me)} 22:09, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's how to link to the same searches with an interwiki link:

• google:WikiProject Free Software
• google:"WikiProject Free Software"

The trick is to represent inter-word spaces with  . --Teratornis 23:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Debate on free software subcats

People in this project may have ideas on how to improve categorization of free software on Wikipedia. I think we might want to improve the names, short descriptions, and/or generate a consensus as to what does and doesn't belong in the categories. This was brought up on Category talk:Free software#Typically, this means software in response to Talk:POV-Ray#Why is this in Category:Free graphics software, when it isn't Free?, so perhaps discussion should be centered in either or both of those other pages. --Karnesky 14:58, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I added a poll, as we're starting to get the same comments from the same small group of people. Talk:POV-Ray#Free software categorization straw poll --Karnesky 22:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think "Free X" categories should be zero cost and categories specifically for free software should be, eg, "Free software X". NicM 12:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

How about "Freeware X" and "Free software X?" --Karnesky 12:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

That would perhaps be better. "Free X" is pretty ambiguous. The only problem with "Free software X" is that you could end up with clumsy titles like "Free software 3D graphics software," but I suppose it could always be "Free software 3D graphics programs." In either case, it makes clear that it is using "free software" as an attribute (possessing of a free software licence) rather than as a description (is software that is free, which is ambiguous). NicM 12:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

I would recommend that it remain "Free X software", but freeware be classified as "X freeware". Geekman314^{(contact me)} 13:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't change the problem at all. NicM 13:49, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

It could always be "free software for 3D graphics". --Karnesky 15:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I could go for something like that. And since it puts "free" and "software" together in the title, there would, hopefully, not be the issues seen on POV-Ray talk. Also, I think the cat descriptions should prominently mention that "free software" has nothing to do with price. Furthermore, I don't think articles should be included in more than one Free, Free Software, or Freeware categories--only the most specific one that fits.--Hamitr 16:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that is ideal, it again seems to be putting the "free" before the "free software." My point is to avoid describing something as "free," which is very ambiguous and non-obvious, rather than as "free software," which is less so. "Free software for 3D graphics" can be read as "Free," "software for 3D graphics." whereas somthing like "Free software 3D graphics programs" cannot. NicM 00:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

I see your point (from the last half of your comment, at least). I could go for either as long as "free" and "software" are together. Of course my motivation is to remove as much ambiguity as possible, so whatever achieves that will get my vote. --Hamitr 00:55, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

"Free and open source software for X"? --Karnesky 01:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think both is necessary. I would pick either the FSF or OSI list of approved licenses and have either "Free software X" or "Open source X" categories. Everything else could go into whatever category is for free (zero cost) software ("Free X" or "Freeware X" or whatever). NicM 23:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

Neither individual list is comprehensive (it takes time to verify licenses), so I wouldn't like that.

Note also that there is ongoing talk on POV-Ray that "free software" is a generic term. I don't know how much to humor them--nothing less than something like "X software under a FSF-approved license" would seem to satisfy all detractors. --Karnesky 23:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Optimum level of sub-cats

Does anyone have an opinion on the number of sub-cat levels? For instance, the phpBB article is in Category:Free Internet forum software. If I go to that cat page, I kind of expect it to be a sub-cat of both Category:Free software and Category:Internet forum software. Instead, of Category:Free software, though, it is in Category:Free network-related software which is a sub-cat of Category:Free software.

The same is true for trying to get from Category:Free_3D_graphics_software to Category:Free software. It goes:

↑Category:Free software

↑Category:Free_application_software

↑Category:Free_graphics_software

↑Category:Free_3D_graphics_software

--Hamitr 16:42, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Relation to: WikiProject Open Source

In #Title of WikiProject, Gronky says: WikiProject Open Source was already tried, and it didn't work. I have some questions:

• What does "didn't work" mean?
• Did the WikiProject's name have anything to with it "not working"?
• WikiProject Open Source does not mention anything about the project "not working." Should it?
• Why don't either of the following two project pages mention the other?
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Open Source
• What is the relationship between these two WikiProjects? Are they working independently on exclusive sets of articles, or is one WikiProject trying to deprecate the other?

I personally don't care either way, but the presence of two WikiProjects that seem to overlap, yet seem oblivious to each other, may confuse some people. --Teratornis 00:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be doing much now anyway, I suspect not because of the name, more likely because the people who established it had less time/commitment or didn't get the word out as well. Gronky calls it free software and he has put a lot of effort into this WikiProject and pages like Portal:Free software, I don't think there is anyone similar who prefers the name open source. NicM 12:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

License of Chameleon (GIS)

While perusing some GIS articles, I came across Chameleon (GIS) which is claimed to be open source, but is not yet in Category:Free GIS software. The license appears to be a modified BSD or BSD-like. Would anyone with more expertise care to comment? --Hamitr 16:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

You are correct, the license is BSD-style and source code is available, so this is free software. --h2g2bob 15:21, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Added category --h2g2bob 15:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Internet Explorer?

Someone added this WikiProject to the Internet Explorer article a few days ago. I'm removing it; clearly IE is absolutely not Free software within the definitions of this WikiProject. :) -/- Warren 23:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Nominations for AFI

1. Free software. Obviously, this is of central importance, but it is only a B-class article. It would be excellent if it could be improved to an FA. --Liπus the Turbogeek^{(contact me)} 18:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
2. OpenSSH and OpenSSL - these are two of the most common open source items you can possibly find in use. While OpenSSL gets more use, being used in everything from Opera to OpenSSH itself, it is a very important bit of software, however, OpenSSH does get noticed a fair bit more, since it gets used as itself, rather than always being included inside the other software (unless you count all the Unixes, Linuxes and BSDs it's included with by default). I really think both should be made Featured Articles, though OpenSSL more than OpenSSH. 74.13.60.113 06:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
3. Java Development Kit - newly released under the GPL, but the article is thin and lacking in sources

Ratings w/ template

I reduced a couple of the {{{WPFS}} importance ratings (Apache and Pidgin). In my opinion top ratings should be for articles core to free software/OSS, articles that define or are central to the subject, eg Free software Free Software Foundation. Even the most significant free software programs (Linux, Apache, the *BSDs, Firefox, etc) should be a high, and most software medium or lower. Ditto most philosophy articles: medium or lower unless they deal with an important topic, in which case high. Obviously there may need to be compromises about what is "important" (although with software, if GNU and Linux are high, it should be easy to relate most of the rest). This is my view, any other opinions so we can get some kind of consensus on this? I might go through and review all the unrated articles so it would be nice to know :-). NicM 22:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC).

Proposed LastCommitBot for free software articles and comparison tables involving free software

I have an idea for a bot to improve free software infoboxes, and comparison tables involving free software (as found in Category:Software comparisons). Users often want to know whether a project is actively maintained, or has been abandoned. As a rule of thumb, a project which has not had any commits in its source code repository for years is likely unmaintained. I therefore propose the idea of a bot to run every month or so, and to add to each free software infobox and comparison table including free software, an automatically-obtained "last commit date", if it is possible to automatically obtain one (of course, some free software projects do not have public source code repositories). I suggest that if the last commit was less than a month ago, it could simply say

Last commit: Less than 2 months ago

(this takes account of the fact that the data might not be updated again for a month.)

(Last commit could be a wikilink to an appropriate page explaining the concept.)

If the last commit was older than a month ago, it would instead put:

Last commit: YYYY-MM-DD

(with YYYY-MM-DD being replaced by the actual last commit date). Times are obviously not necessary.

The bot would obviously only attempt to edit pages where there was data that need to be updated. It would call the various clients (CVS, svn, mtn, darcs etc.) to find out the latest checkin date (on any branch, because - for example - a rewrite or refactoring might be taking place somewhere other than on the HEAD).

How would it know the URL / location of the remote repository? Well, that could be specified in a standardised way in comments in the infobox or table, for example. I'm sure some kind of system could be worked out.

The only potential problem I see is getting "false positive" results where a dead project and a live project share the same repository - but I think that is likely to be both rare, and easily dealt with, by marking the infobox or table row as not to be updated by this bot.

I am not volunteering to create this bot. I might or might not contribute to its creation, I haven't decided yet. If there is a positive response here, I or someone else might take it to the idea to the next stage - Bot Request for Approval. It's not required to show source code to get approval, although a trial process may be required. Anyone considering implementing such a bot might want to consider basing it on / adding to PyWikpediaBot.

What do people think of this idea? —greenrd 17:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, giving people like me who like to quickly get a summary of the status of a project, specifically relating to how active it is. One item that comes to mind is how to decide what is a good cut-off date for a "dead project" flag? Ma11achy 14:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. --Liπus the Turbogeek^{(contact me)} 23:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't last release be better, perhaps from the software infoboxes in the articles? Also, I think you need to be careful not to draw any conclusions from the last commit or last release, which would surely be POV and OR—so a "dead" flag is definitely a bad idea. I don't think merely showing the date would be a great problem though. NicM 07:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

The point of having it as last commit instead of last release is so that you can see what the development activity is like, so you can see that work is being done even if there hasn't been a release in a while. That's important, and that's something that might not occur to newbies and non-techies. Also, there's currently no way to automate last release checking (except by mirroring data from Freshmeat, which is incomplete and might not be up-to-date because - but I am repeating myself - there is no way to automate last release checking). I agree on the flag thing.—greenrd 20:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I think just pulling Wikipedia's idea of the last release from the infoboxes would be fine, if it is inaccurate or missing, well, it is already inaccurate in the source article and putting it on other pages just gives more chance it will be fixed. Why not do both.... if you do end up pulling CVS repo from the infoboxes it would probably not be much more work. NicM 07:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

"Intellectual property" in Wikipeda

I've noticed that the biased and misleading propaganda term "intellectual property" is used a lot in Wikipedia. I think this is unacceptable, and I try to remove references to it whenever I can (except in a few cases, such as in articles about the term), and replace them with more accurate and neutral terms. Does anyone think it would be appropriate for this project to deal with this matter, or that it'd be a good idea to start a new WikiProject for this? Guyjohnston 21:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I would propose that a new wikiproject be created, "WikiProject Free Culture" or something. --Liπus the Turbogeek^{(contact me)} 02:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with using the term in contexts where it meets the definition in intellectual property, which seems clear enough. If it is being misused, I wouldn't think a WikiProject to deal with one term is really necessary, and I certainly wouldn't try to bring culture into it. Wouldn't it most likely already come under WP:LAW? NicM 13:15, 16 May 2007 (UTC).

It could be put on the Task list. The entry could be about reviewing WP use of the term with attention to cases where a more specific term or terms could be used? Gronky 00:23, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Notepad++

Notepad++ needs to be improved, to have the lack of notability template removed. It also deserves a much better article as it is such a good editor. --Adam1213 Talk + 10:19, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

New SVG logo

I have raised the issue in the talk page of the Free software portal, but maybe here is more pertinent, looking at item 23 in the todo list:

23. (2006-04-12) Add the {{portal|Free software|Floss draft.png}} tag to articles about, or related to, free software.

I'd like to note that I have "corrected" the Floss_draft.svg image that was to supercede the currently used Floss_draft.png. There were some concerns for not using that SVG, but I hope the new one (Floss logos.svg) is OK. May I suggest using the new SVG for the {{Portal|Free software|Floss logos.svg}} tags? Does it make sense changing current portal tags to use the new SVG? I started doing it yesterday, but I'd like to comment here before going on, lest more harm than good is done. — isilanes (talk|contribs) 14:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Idea for new todo box: translations

There are some articles that are getting quite mature but which have few or no translations:

• Alternative terms for free software - most interwiki versions describe a different topic
• Free software licences - most interwiki versions reflect a very old version
• Software patents and free software
• Permissive free software licences
• History of free software - still lacking some maturity, actually, but worthwhile topic

Creating equivalent articles in other languages would make Wikipedians from non-English Wikipedias aware of the work we've done here, and when they build on that work, we would have further sources to draw from to improve our articles.

And in the other direction, what articles exist in other languages, or are better in other languages, that we should try to use as starting points for articles in English wikipedia or for improving the corresponding articles in English wikipedia? Gronky 15:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of other languages, I just noticed that WPFS already has an Italian sister project: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:Software_libero Gronky 19:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Why I Have Been Gone!

I, WikiNerd, have been gone because my Comcast Service was terminated for exceeding bandwidth. i will not be able to return untill atleast mid July, because I am moving. ~~