Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

GNU

There is a content dispute on the GNU article -the problem is basically where and how to put the current usability status of GNU in the article lead. There is a long discussion between me and User:Yworo on the talk page about that and it seems we're unable to reach a compromise. Expert attention would help. Thanks. --Cyclopia^talk 23:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Forks in {{Infobox Software}}

Hi all, I requested adding a "forks" field to the template, but I was told that consensus is required. Since I think this field would mostly (though not exclusively) useful to free software, I'm asking here. I don't know if it's better to discuss here or (likely) on the template talk page, I'll keep an eye on both anyway. Thanks! Balabiot (talk) 22:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

New subcategory for Category:KDE

Hi, you might be interested in my suggestion for a new subcategory of KDE here. --Schuhpuppe (talk) 01:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Perl

Hello all, I've just joined this WikiProject. I'm working on bring Perl back to good article status — I'd like to get it all the way up to featured. Feedback on the article (and the spinoff, Perl language structure) is welcome. Feezo (Talk) 00:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

AfD on Beerware

Beerware, an article that would seem to fall under this project's purview, has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beerware. I'd like to invite the experts here to either comment on the debate, or perhaps to improve the article to address concerns. -- RoninBK _{T C} 06:29, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Notification of nomination for deletion of GNU/Linux naming controversy

This is to inform the members of this Wikiproject, within the scope of which this article falls, that this article has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/GNU/Linux naming controversy. - Ahunt (talk) 12:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Software Testing Tools

let's start making some softwre testing tools writing test plans, writing test cases, Writing Test Suites, writing defects — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.147.19.21 (talk) 19:49, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Gnome proposal

I've proposed the creation of WikiProject Gnome. Please comment. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

cwm (window manager)

I think this page should be taken into scope of WikiProject Free Software. Though it is currently in AfD process, I hope it will survive, and then can be rated and tagged. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 12:24, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Featured article review of Mozilla Firefox

User:WhatisFeelings? has nominated Mozilla Firefox for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. WhatisFeelings? (talk) 04:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit request

Hello! I have noticed that there are two pages (LLVM and Low Level Virtual Machine) that are almost the same article. It looks as as if someone who didn't know how to move articles copied and pasted one article into the other. Unfortunately, no one nipped it in the bud, so they are slightly different, so making one redirect to the other would result in lost information. I have tagged the articles requesting that LLVM be merged into Low Level Virtual Machine, and normally I would do the merge myself, but I know absolutely nothing about this subject, it would be better for someone in a project that supports the article could do it. Could some member of this project do the merge for me? Thanks and happy editing! pluma♫ ♯ 18:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

LiquidFeedback

I just heard about this software on tv which is used by the Pirate Party Germany but didn't find an article in En.Wikipedia. I found one reference at Schulze Method. And a full article at this Google translated German wikipedia page. I don't know enough about software to do it, but maybe someone here does. Thanks! CarolMooreDC 21:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Plan 9 from Bell Labs nominated for GA

Plan 9 from Bell Labs article was nominated for GA review (at WP:GAN#COMP). Comments (and the review itself) are welcome! — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:17, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Redundant categories

Hi folks,

We have the following categories:

• Category:Free_and_open-source_software_licenses
• Category:Free software licenses
• Category:Open source software licenses
• Category:FSF-approved software licenses
• Category:OSI-approved software licenses

There's no need for the second and third categories. Free software and open source software are synonyms; while it's true that not all FSF-approved licences are OSI-approved (and vice versa), that's the function of the FSF-approved and OSI-approved subcategories.

Is there something I've missed or should the second and third categories be deleted? --Sanglorian (talk) 20:23, 10 March 2012 (UTC) (moved from archive talk page by KarlB)

I partially agree with the above post - Category:Free software licenses and Category:Open source software licenses are not needed (but I don't think they are truly synonyms, Mr. Stallman would not approve of that statement, but they are rather close...). Also, I would argue we should diffuse the category 'free and open source software licenses', and place all of the licenses either in FSF-approved or OSI-approved. Are there licenses which we can really call 'free and open source' which are not approved as such by one of these bodies? Ideally the Category:Free_and_open-source_software_licenses cat would just be more general articles. If there aren't other comments on this in the next few days, I will make this change and recommend deletion of the 'free software licenses' and 'open source software licenses' at CfD. --KarlB (talk) 01:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Firefox article needs serious repair!

Hello WikiProject Software/Free Software! The Firefox article is really outdated and in need of repair. It would be great if we could put together a team to help maintain it - or at least bring it up to date. Thanks ҭᴙᴇᴡӌӌ 15:13, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

RfC about wording and links in template:infobox software

The request for comments regarding recent changes in template:infobox software is filed at Template talk:Infobox software#RfC: natural and programming languages labels. Input would be very appreciated. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 11:57, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Template:PFSfooter nominated for renaming

Template:PFSfooter has been nominated for renaming to Portal:Free software/Selected article/footer. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. DH85868993 (talk) 01:27, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Ubuntu (operating system)#Ubuntu as "Adware"

I have started an RFC at Talk:Ubuntu (operating system)#Ubuntu as "Adware". Please join the discussion there. Elizium23 (talk) 05:08, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

RFC: Eighth Generation Consoles

Sorry if this is miscategorized, but I felt that the next-gen may have Free Software implications, and felt that the users here would be technologically minded, if this is off the mark I apologize. I'm looking for additional outside opinions into the inclusion or exclusion of Video Game Consoles into the 8th Generation article. I have started a new section here and am requesting outside comment. Talk:History_of_video_game_consoles_(eighth_generation)#.22We_need_hardware_comparisons.22. Thank you. -Kai445 (talk) 07:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi I just created an article

The article is here. And I was hoping people could help me expand it because it is a stub right now. I believe this article can become a g.a. in the very least because of the popularity of this app. For example, the number of review in the app store are 314801 Ratings, while something like Google Earth has 440890 Ratings. So it has the same order of magnitude number of reviews as Google Earth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quacod (talk • contribs) 03:55, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Seeking community feedback regarding the Chakra_(operating_system) article...

Hello,

As Chakra_(operating_system) is noted on its talk page as being within the scope of WikiProject Free Software, I would like to offer folks an opportunity to voice their opinions on an ongoing thread at Talk:Chakra_(operating_system)#Regarding_notability_tag....

Thanks in advance for your time and attention,

--Kevjonesin (talk) 00:15, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Planning WikiProject Open

Everyone: several of us have been talking about starting Wikipedia:WikiProject Open, which would support the improvement of topics like open educational resources, open access, and free/open source software. Please join us this Thursday for a planning discussion! Or add your ideas to the page or talk page. -Pete (talk) 18:19, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

OpenOffice.org feature nomination

I've nominated OpenOffice.org for feature. Uninvolved reviewers for FAC would be most welcome. Or, if you haven't time for that, just looking over the article would be good :-) - David Gerard (talk) 09:03, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to help craft a proposal

Surveillance awareness day is a proposal for the English Wikipedia to take special steps to promote awareness of global surveillance on February 11, 2014. That date is chosen to coincide with similar actions being taken by organizations such as Mozilla, Reddit, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Feedback from members of this Wikiproject would be greatly appreciated. Please come join us as we brainstorm, polish, and present this proposal to the Wikipedia Community. --HectorMoffet (talk) 12:18, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Academic databases and search engines

There is a major need for categorizing academic tools as free or proprietary. For instance, List of academic databases and search engines only tells you if the service is charged for, not whether the software or data is copyleft.

Major tools like CiteSeerX, CrossRef, CiteULike, and Citebase have no info of this sort, or have something ambiguous, not in an infobox. Some FOSS topics like OAI-PMH are also not well-covered.

Information on the openness of publishers would also be very useful; some are brilliant at making data available and using open standards, others less so.

Scientists still mostly, albiet unwillingly, use a lot of closed-source software. Making this sort of information easily available would help in key areas that would make science more open.

Is there anyone with a good knowledge of FOSS licensing who would be willing to take on one of these three tasks (fixing the list, fixing the page infoboxes, adding info to publisher's pages)? Does anyone have other urgent tasks in this category?

HLHJ (talk) 20:47, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

List of formerly proprietary software

Contributions are welcome at an ongoing discussion at Talk:List of formerly proprietary software#Photoshop and Talk:List of formerly proprietary software#Non-commercial software on this list concerning the inclusion criteria for the list. (Note that someone changed the criteria stated in the article itself while the discussion was ongoing, so please consider each version.) —Psychonaut (talk) 11:51, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

CCPDF converter

There is a dispute on the notability of CC Pdfconverter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC_PDF_Converter. What makes opensource freeware notable? 1.114.13.44 (talk) 08:29, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

It's the same as other software. See Wikipedia:Notability (software) and Wikipedia:Notability#General_notability_guideline. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 08:33, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Expert attention

This is a notice about Category:Software/Free Software articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 03:37, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

FLOSS on mobile (or lack thereof)

Articles related to mobile software such as Mobile computing, Mobile application development, History of the iPhone... don't make any mention about app markets and digital rights management on mobile platforms. Only Tablet computer includes a one-sentence reference to walled gardens.

Is there an article that can be linked from those which covers the criticism against the iPad for introducing this model to personal computing, the initial boost to Android for being open source, the current attempts of Google to move the platform back to a closed source userland, and the movement to build free ROMs? Diego (talk) 18:21, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Offline Sync for Mediawiki

There is a new proposal for a grant proposal for for an offline mediawiki sync using xml. I met the wikem guys at a Houston conference where I work at Chevron and it is really exciting what the guys at WikEM.org are working on. The wikipedia community should contribute their opinion on this grant https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Offline_MediaWiki_search_for_NASA_and_Medicine — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.18.226.225 (talk) 02:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

We'd like to add Open Lighting Project to the Free Software category

 I am currently having a bit of a hard time starting an Open Lighting Project page. I would like to add Open Lighting Project under the Free Software categories. Do I need to just add the template and fulfill the guidelines? Nightrune 00:39, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Transmission (BitTorrent client) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Transmission (BitTorrent client) to be moved to Transmission (software). This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 22:47, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Rename to Free-libre Open-source Software

this wikiproject task force. Fgnievinski (talk) 17:21, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Tor (anonymity network) listed at Requested moves

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Hacker (programmer subculture) listed at Requested moves

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Hacker (subculture) listed at Requested moves

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Tor (anonymity network) listed at Requested moves

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Tor (anonymity network) listed at Requested moves

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Tor listed at Requested moves

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Tor (anonymity network) listed at Requested moves

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UBlock listed at Requested moves

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Android (operating system) listed at Requested moves

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Android (operating system) listed at Requested moves

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Android (operating system) listed at Requested moves

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Template:Latest stable software release/mpv (media player) listed at Requested moves

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Page for picoTCP (GPLv2 TCP/IP stack for embedded devices)

Hi all! The instructions of writing a new wiki article are somewhat overwhelming, so I'd rather discuss this first before trying anything.

First and foremost, as I'm part of the developer team for picoTCP there is a conflict of interest. Though, my intentions are ini no means commercially related: I'd like for any engineer to have the full overview of what solution are out there. Would someone be interested to guide me in this endeavor? Would it be OK to start with a minimal page and then further expand it with new information in the future?

Looking forward to your reply! Toonpeters (talk) 12:25, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Article about Bareos Open Source Backup listed for deletion

Hello, I hope this is the right place to point FOSS interested people to the deletion discussion about the Bareos article: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bareos Gul.maikat (talk) 12:03, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Software infobox changes

There are some proposed changes to Template:Infobox software that may affect FOSS articles. The proposed changes affect what data appears in the "Initial release" field of the template. See here. SharkD  Talk  04:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

HipHop Virtual Machine listed at Requested moves

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Popular pages report

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force/Archive 3/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject Software.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

• The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
• The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
• The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject Software, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Dropbox Paper licence

I couldn't figure out what licence Dropbox Paper is released with, or is it offered as a 'service' only without source code download? --Gryllida (talk) 04:52, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposals: the issue of the separate Free software movement and Open-source software movement articles

Hello WikiProject members and everybody else interested in FOSS watching this page:
please participate in the discussion I started over at Talk:Free software movement: Merger proposals: the issue of the separate Open-source software movement article.

Please comment there and not here for a centralized discussion. Thank you.

--Fixuture (talk) 21:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

MTR (software) listed at Requested moves

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Find listed at Requested moves

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AdBlock listed at Requested moves

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WP:Manual of Style/Computing#Definite article section proposed for revision

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

The WT:MOSCOMP#Definite article section is proposed, here, to be substantially revised for better agreement with RS practice, linguistics, and MoS norms.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  17:11, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Free_Software

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod ^talk 15:45, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Android (operating system) listed at Requested moves

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Yellow Dog Updater, Modified listed at Requested moves

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Yellow Dog Updater, Modified listed at Requested moves

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Talk:Apache OpenOffice

Hi, there. I invite everyone to participate in the polite ongoing discussion. --Entalpia2 (talk) 15:07, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

The discussion is at Talk:Apache OpenOffice. --Entalpia2 (talk) 21:30, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Licenses of Open Source / Free Software to the scope

Shall we consider including "articles of Licenses of Open Source / Free Software" to the scope of this WikiProject? Codecodelover (talk) 21:30, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Jitsi listed at Requested moves

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Jitsi Desktop listed at Requested moves

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Request for comment on Brave (web browser)

There is a request for comment on the Brave (web browser) article:

Should the Brave web browser be classified as a pay-to-surf web browser?

If you are interested, please participate at Talk:Brave (web browser)#Request for comment on "pay to surf" classification. — Newslinger talk 20:20, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 12

Newsletter • August 2018

This month: WikiProject X: The resumption

Work has resumed on WikiProject X and CollaborationKit, backed by a successfully funded Project Grant. For more information on the current status and planned work, please see this month's issue of the newsletter!

-— Isarra ༆ 22:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Xterm

The article Xterm has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Non-notable software with only "how-to" mentions in tech website articles.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:29, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 13

Newsletter • December 2018

This month: A general update.

The current status of the project is as follows:

• Progress of the project has been generally delayed since September due to development issues (more bitrot than expected, some of the code just being genuinely confusing, etc) and personal injury (I suffered a concussion in October and was out of commission for almost two months as a result).
• I currently expect to be putting out a proper call for CollaborationKit pilots in January/February, with estimated deployment in February/March if things don't go horribly wrong (they will, though, don't worry). As a part of that, I will properly update the page and send out announcement and reach out to all projects already signed up as pilots for WikiProject X in general, at which point those (still) interested can volunteer specifically to test the CollaborationKit extension.
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Pilots was originally created for the first WikiProject X prototype, and given this is where the project has since gone, it's only logical to continue to use it. While I haven't yet updated the page to properly reflect this:
  • If you want to add your project to this page now, feel free. Just bear in mind that more information what to actually expect will be added later/included in the announcement, because by then I will have a much better idea myself.
• Until then, you can find me in my corner working on making the CollaborationKit code do what we want and not just what we told it, per the workboard.

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 22:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 23 December 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved (closed by non-admin page mover) SITH (talk) 18:34, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

---

Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free Software → Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force – The proposed name would align this WikiProject with the Free and open-source software portal. Free software is an ambiguous term, since the word free can mean both "absence of control or restriction" (libre software) and "absence of cost" (freeware). This WikiProject is concerned with libre software, but occasionally, editors mistakenly tag freeware articles with {{WikiProject Free Software}} and include it into the project. The term free and open-source software clarifies the scope of the project, and would make a more suitable name. This WikiProject would remain a subdivision of WikiProject Software despite the simplification of its page title. — Newslinger talk 07:45, 23 December 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. SITH (talk) 12:40, 30 December 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. —usernamekiran(talk) 10:32, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

• Question: If this is a task force, as the project page says, why does it not use the task force naming style - Wikipedia:WikiProject Free Software/Free and Open-Source Software task force? --Gonnym (talk) 13:25, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Software and Wikipedia:WikiProject Websites are listed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Science § Computing as both task forces of WikiProject Computing and separate WikiProject groups. In that list, "Free Software" has been listed as a separate WikiProject (and not as a task force) since 2007. I've added a note indicating that it is both a task force and a separate WikiProject group. ​ — Newslinger talk 23:27, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
    • The top of this page still reads "A subdivision of WikiProject Software." Since no one has responded to any talk page threads on this subdivision since 2014, I am wondering whether it wouldn't make more sense to simply fold it back into Wikipedia:WikiProject Software rather than making in more independent despite its general inactivity. Dekimasuよ! 03:47, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
      • This WikiProject was marked as "semi-active" until I reactivated it last August with the intention of restoring it. Since then, I've maintained the free and open-source software portal, created an invitation template, and started recruiting editors who are editing FOSS articles. I've also subscribed this project to WikiProject X and will overhaul the project pages when the new interface is available for testing. The scope of this WikiProject is very well-defined, and has cultural connotations (see Free software movement, Open-source-software movement, and Open-design movement) that would be lost if the project were folded into WikiProject Software. While most of the talk page threads here solicit participation at another page, and don't require a direct response, they are still useful for interested editors. I'll change the header of the main project page if that would clarify the purpose of this project.​ — Newslinger talk 07:27, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
        • I've removed the unnecessary header and sidebar, and rephrased the first sentence. — Newslinger talk 09:37, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

• Support - proposed title is a clear improvement on existing title as "Free software" is ambiguous. I think "Free and open-source software task force" would be even better because the MOS doesn't like lots of caps and it is best to consolidate our efforts into fewer and stronger wikiprojects as the Wikipedia project matures. ~Kvng (talk) 21:43, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  • ​I've changed the proposed redirect target to Wikipedia:WikiProject Free and open-source software to improve the capitalization. As a task force, do you think Wikipedia:Free and open-source software task force would be acceptable, or should it be Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force to fit convention? — Newslinger talk 02:32, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force looks best to me from out here. I am not an active member of WP:SOFTWARE so I'm not sure how much my opinion matters. ~Kvng (talk) 03:44, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Changed proposed target to Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force. — Newslinger talk 03:57, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

• Support the revised proposal. Dekimasuよ! 21:54, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

• Good suggestion, the "free" as in XnView "for NC use" vs., say, Freeciv always confused me, even after creating the freesoft: Interwiki on m:. –84.46.53.16 (talk) 07:48, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Proposed merger from WikiProject GNOME and WikiProject KDE into the free and open-source software task force

As GNOME and KDE are major free and open-source software projects, I propose to merge the inactive WikiProject GNOME and WikiProject KDE into the currently active free and open-source software task force. — Newslinger talk 01:21, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Pinging (former) members of the inactive projects: Happysmileman, Skeith, CloneDeath, Vendion, Unforgiven24, Ewald, Little Filament, ScotXW ~Kvng (talk) 13:50, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

As there has been no opposition for two weeks, I'm going to proceed with the merge. Please comment if you would like this to be reversed. — Newslinger talk 22:16, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Review article

Hey, I am uncertain, if this is the right place to ask you for this, so please redirect me if I am wrong here. I created the FOSS Draft:Eclipse Theia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Eclipse_Theia) and would like to get a review. It has already been rejected a couple of times and I am trying to improve the article. Thanks in advance ChristinFrohne (talk) 07:43, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi ChristinFrohne, and thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Yes, this is one of the right places to ask about Draft:Eclipse Theia. From what I can see, the draft was ultimately rejected because the reviewers determined that Eclipse Theia is not notable enough for an article in Wikipedia. Before paying any attention to the text in the draft, your first priority is to ensure that Eclipse Theia meets the general notability guideline. To do this, you must find at least two independent reliable sources that contain significant coverage of Eclipse Theia.

The current version of the draft has 17 citations. Let's go through them one by one:

1. theia-ide.org: This is published by Eclipse Theia, and is clearly not independent of Eclipse Theia.
2. Red Hat Developer blog: Company blog posts are considered self-published sources, and are generally not reliable.
3. EclipseSource: Blog of Eclipse-related company. Not reliable or independent.
4. JAXenter: The source appears to meet the minimum criteria for reliability, but an interview with Eclipse Theia developers isn't considered independent when most of the text is the interviewee's responses.
5. Eclipse: Not independent.
6. theia-ide.org: Not independent.
7. Eclipse blog: Not reliable or independent.
8. JAXenter: This appears to be a qualifying source.
9. Langserver: Self-published source. Not reliable.
10. Eclipse: Not independent.
11. JAXenter: Qualifying sources have to be independent from each other. Since #8 is a qualifying article from JAXenter, this article isn't independent of that one.
12. Medium (Gitpod): Self-published source. Not reliable.
13. The Register: This source is reliable and independent, but doesn't contain significant coverage of Eclipse Theia. The article is about Gitpod, and only briefly mentions Eclipse Theia in two sentences.
14. EclipseCon: Not independent.
15. Heise Online: Reliable and independent, but lacks significant coverage of Eclipse Theia. This article is about Eclipse Che 7, and doesn't contain much information on Eclipse Theia.
16. IBM Developer: Company blog. Not reliable or independent.
17. Google Cloud: Self-published documentation. Not reliable or significant.

Of these 17 sources, only source #8 counts toward the general notability guideline. You'll need at least one more qualifying source before Eclipse Theia can be considered for a Wikipedia article. Unfortunately, the only sources listed on Google News are additional articles from JAXenter.

In this situation, if you aren't able to find additional qualify sources, I highly recommend incorporating the information from Draft:Eclipse Theia into the Eclipse (software) and Eclipse Foundation articles. You should probably condense the text from this draft into a single section to avoid unbalancing the other articles, but in my opinion, this is the best way to write about Eclipse Theia on Wikipedia.

I hope this was helpful for you. Please feel free to respond with any questions. ​— Newslinger talk 09:41, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Newslinger, thank you very much for your detailed review. It helps me a lot, getting a feeling for the sources. It is a good advise to add the information about Theia to the existing article of Eclipse Foundation. Unfortunately it doesn't have a section with a list of existing project and it feels a bit out of place to just add Theia there, don't you think so? I did some more research and found the following source. Would any of them work as a reliable source? 1. https://sylvainleroy.com/2018/05/07/top3-self-hosted-cloud-ide-2018/

2. https://alternativeto.net/software/theia/

3. https://www.html.it/04/12/2017/theia-un-solo-ide-per-desktop-e-cloud/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Edit

4. https://github.com/theia-ide/theia

Thanks for your help! ChristinFrohne (talk) 12:26, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Possibly. Here's what I see:

1. Sylvain Leroy: This is a personal blog, which is a self-published source, and is not considered reliable.
2. AlternativeTo: This site is made of user-generated content, which is not considered reliable.
3. HTML.it: HTML.it is owned and operated by Triboo Media. This appears to be a qualifying source, but the content reads a bit like a press release. I need a second opinion.
4. GitHub: GitHub contains a mix of self-published and user-generated content, and is not considered reliable.

Since I'm not especially confident about JAXenter and HTML.it, I'm asked other editors for their opinions on these sources. You can see and participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § JAXenter (jaxenter.com, jaxenter.de) and HTML.it for Draft:Eclipse Theia. ​— Newslinger talk 13:46, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

wow! thank you so much for your engagement and help! Let's see what kind of feedback the others have :) ChristinFrohne (talk) 06:52, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

oh and one comment: source no. 15 from your list covers the topic about Theia actually quite well, in my opinion. The whole article is about Eclipse Che changing its development environment to Theia. It is mentioned in the sub headline. So maybe that source can then also state its notability? ChristinFrohne (talk) 07:30, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

As Newslinger said, this is one of the places to ask about drafts. I've started another discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#Draft:Eclipse_Theia. ~Kvng (talk) 15:23, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Significant coverage is not very well-defined, so you could make that argument about source #15. When combined with the other qualifying sources (JAXenter and HTML.it), it does provide more support for Theia's notability. The noticeboard discussion unfortunately didn't attract any attention, but I've made a comment at Kvng's talk page discussion. — Newslinger talk 06:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

@ChristinFrohne: After some discussion, Kvng has accepted your draft. It is now at Eclipse Theia, and I have copyedited it. Some less suitable content was removed, and I have also rearranged the list in Eclipse Theia § Applications into a prose format, which is preferred. — Newslinger talk 12:27, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Newslinger, thank you so much for your help and the copyedit! Awesome that the article is published now! I will keep your edits in mind when I will work on an other article. It's simpler and easier to understand now for everybody, awesome :) ChristinFrohne (talk) 07:53, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

​No problem. Please don't hesitate to ask for help with your next article. — Newslinger talk 19:52, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion of LWN.net on the reliable sources noticeboard

There is a discussion on the reliability of LWN.net (formerly Linux Weekly News) at the reliable sources noticeboard. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § LWN.net for Draft:NumWorks. Thanks! — Newslinger talk 02:45, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Template:WikiProject Free and open-source software into Template:WikiProject Computing

Since the free and open-source software task force is no longer a WikiProject, I've proposed to merge our old WikiProject banner, {{WikiProject Free and open-source software}}, into {{WikiProject Computing}}. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 March 30 § Template:WikiProject Free and open-source software. — Newslinger talk 08:06, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

@Newslinger: - why not merge it into Wikipedia:WikiProject Software? Christian75 (talk) 11:36, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Christian75, since WikiProject Software is a sub-project of WikiProject Computing, a merge to either project would have been valid. I selected WikiProject Computing to reduce template clutter on article talk pages: {{WikiProject Computing}} already supports WikiProject Software and the FOSS task force, allowing an article to be classified under both WikiProjects and the task force with one template. — Newslinger talk 05:53, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on reliability of SitePoint on the reliable sources noticeboard

There is a discussion on the reliability of SitePoint on the reliable sources noticeboard. If you're interested, please participate at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § SitePoint for Grav (CMS). — Newslinger talk 22:48, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Noticeboard discussion of Hacker Noon and InfoSec Handbook

There is a noticeboard discussion on the reliability of Hacker Noon (hackernoon.com) and InfoSec Handbook (infosec-handbook.eu). If you're interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Hacker Noon (hackernoon.com) and InfoSec Handbook (infosec-handbook.eu) for /e/ (operating system). — Newslinger talk 03:32, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 15

Newsletter • September 2019

A final update, for now:

The third grant-funded round of WikiProject X has been completed. Unfortunately, while this round has not resulted in a deployed product, I am not planning to resume working on the project for the foreseeable future. Please see the final report for more information.

Regards,

-— Isarra ༆ 19:24, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment on reliability of Liliputing (liliputing.com)

There is a request for comment on the reliability of Liliputing (liliputing.com) on the reliable sources noticeboard. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § RfC: Liliputing. — Newslinger talk 20:43, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Mahara (software)

Newly created article that might not be notable per WP:GNG or WP:PRODUCT. There may be specific notability guidelines for software, so I was wondering if someone could take a look at this and assess it. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:27, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Marchjuly, there is currently no subject-specific notability guideline for software (Wikipedia:Notability (software), a.k.a. WP:NSOFT, was not passed). However, after looking through Google Books, Semantic Scholar, and JSTOR, I found 4 sources that should qualify Mahara under WP:GNG, and I've added them to the article. Thanks for coming here instead of immediately nominating the article for deletion. Hope this helps! — Newslinger talk 01:26, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Newslinger for taking the time to look at the article. There's some discussion on the article's talk page that you might be able to help clarify as well. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:30, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

​No problem! I've seconded your advice on that page, and also invited Jonathanischoice to ask questions here. — Newslinger talk 02:19, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Newslinger, I've left a couple of edit suggestions on Talk:Mahara (software) which may be of interest, specifically the auto-updating of the latest release versions somehow (I'm a noob at that sort of thing!) Cheers, Jon (talk) 21:26, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Link tax

Hello, the article just describes the German case. Please add information about the linx tax regulations of Spain, the European Union and Canada. --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:54, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Help needed with Draft:Traefik

Hi everyone,

This article was originally accepted and quickly tagged AfD for failure to meet GNG and NSOFT. The argument got quite heated, and it's clear that as an employee of Containous (the creators of Traefik) that I have entirely way too much COI to be submitting this to AfC again. I've edited the Draft to the point where I feel it's quite nuetral, and includes what I consider sources which meet GNG, however, these sources were rejected by those who commented in the AfD as "manuals or tutorials" so they didn't count (even though these are published books, from trusted sources, that include Traefik as more than passing mentions, and there are reviews of the software, which I have now cited in the Draft).

I'd really appreciate feedback as to next steps and if anyone here feels comfortable with taking over from this point. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kcmastrpc (talk) 17:38, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Kcmastrpc, and thanks for disclosing your status as a paid editor. WP:NSOFT is an essay, not a guideline, and does not have wide acceptance. You can ignore WP:NSOFT and focus only on WP:GNG. The main problem with Draft:Traefik is that it cites too many self-published sources, which are considered unreliable. Please remove the following sources from the draft:

1. "Interview Emile Vauge créateur de Traefik" from frenchgo.fr – Self-published blog
2. "Traefik 1.0.0 reblochon is out!" from Containous – Linking to your company's blog looks promotional and is generally ill-advised. Consider finding secondary sources that are both independent and reliable for this information. If none exist, consider excluding it from the article.
3. "Traefik" from Technology Radar – Company website
4. "Traefik Active Load Balancer on Rancher" from Rancher Labs – Company blog
5. "Use a custom traefik ingress controller and configure HTTPS" from Microsoft Docs – Company documentation
6. traefik on Docker Hub – Service website. Not acceptable for number of downloads.
7. containous/traefik on GitHub – Code repository. Acceptable as an external link in the infobox and the External links section, but not acceptable for number of stars.
8. "Interview d’Emile Vauge, créateur de Containous et Traefik" from Medium (RSP entry) – Self-published blog
9. "Containous Announces the General Availability of Traefik Enterprise Edition" from Containous – Press release. Consider secondary sources, instead.
10. "Introducing Traefik Enterprise Edition: We Made It Distributed" from TechCrunch (RSP entry) – Sponsored content is not acceptable as a source.

After removing the above sources, you may need to find more reliable sources to show that Traefik meets WP:GNG. — Newslinger talk 21:38, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to look at the draft and respond. I'm quite confused at this point because I was under the impression that sources that needed be reliable was for the purpose of the article passing GNG, or "being notable". Many of the sources you pointed out which need to be removed support the non-notable content (such as the "platform" section in the infobox, or "history"). If every non-reliable source was suddenly removed from wiki, most of the content would disappear, or am I missing something? I'm not going to go fishing for examples, but I've seen tweets, youtube videos, and all kinds of crazy stuff cited in articles before (and some that didn't even appear to have any actual sources which met GNG). Anyways, perhaps I'm just venting, thank you again for your feedback. I'll see what I can do. — Kcmastrpc (talk) 22:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

​No problem. To qualify for an article, a topic needs to pass one of the notability guidelines. Once notability is established and the article is created, Wikipedia has additional policies and guidelines that determine how articles should be written. The three most important ones are the core content policies (verifiability, neutral point of view, and no original research). The verifiability policy states that "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable" to reliable sources. If you're not sure whether a source is reliable, feel free to ask here or on the reliable sources noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 22:12, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

And to answer your other question, it's true that many Wikipedia articles do not meet the verifiability policy. Some sources that are considered generally unreliable may be used in a limited way (e.g. for uncontroversial self-descriptions, and as primary sources when supported by a reliable secondary source). For all other cases, if you encounter content on any article that is only supported by unreliable sources, you may remove it. — Newslinger talk 22:43, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

​Thanks again for the review and the resources. I've updated the draft, removing the sources you identified as non-reliable. I've also included some additional sources which I found in the `news` tab of Google, and while I tried to stay away from potentially unreliable sources, I've used sources that I've seen pass N in other discussions. In any case, I would like to hear about the next steps, potentially requesting that someone who has no COI review/edit the article and submit (if possible). Thanks again for all your help. — Kcmastrpc (talk) 18:07, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@Kcmastrpc: One of the important reasons AfC exists is as a channel for submissions from COI editors. You don't need to find another editor to resubmit this to AfC for you. ~Kvng (talk) 13:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

@Kvng: Thanks, I read up on the COI/Paid, and AfC and understand this a bit better now. I've submitted the article for AfC, made all the necessary declarations. I noticed the article isn't showing up on the project page under article alerts, is there anything else I need to do for this to show up? — Kcmastrpc (talk) 13:45, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Kcmastrpc: Looks like it is correctly submitted. Article alerts will be updated by a bot later. ~Kvng (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

It looks like the editor who accepted the article originally has declined the AfC, stating the sources don't meet WP:GNG. I've referenced multiple independent articles and publishers who cover this software in-depth, so I'm not sure what else I can do here. Any additional assistance is appreciated. — Kcmastrpc (talk) 16:53, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm an experienced AfC reviewer. The primary criteria we use to determine whether a draft should be accepted is whether it is WP:LIKELY to be deleted at WP:AFD. Most of the time a reviewer has to use their experience and judgment about that. In this case, we have the answer. I personally believe the book sources you've referenced meet WP:GNG but the community does get rightly bristled by COI and I estimate you're going to have to wait a year or so before editors are ready to have an objective look at this particular draft again. ~Kvng (talk) 20:09, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello again, my COI ended over two years ago and I've been trying for months to get this accepted at AfC. I've even moved the page into main to have another editor kick it back to draft. It's been declined twice even though I've cleaned up the sources and provided additional sourcing in Draft_talk:Traefik. Your advice would be greatly appreciated, and I'm even tempted to just move it back to the main space and tempt fate with AfD. It seems some editors take their deletion-ism quite seriously. Thanks again for helping me out a few years ago and any help you can offer now. Kcmastrpc (talk) 00:11, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Help needed with Draft:BiglyBT

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to write an article on a fork of Vuze (which itself is no longer developed), but due to previous activity of people affiliated with the project (e.g. posting things which looked very promotional), the bar to jump over is now a bit high for me and I need help with this article.

It would be great if more people had a look and helped.

Thanks!

Andrej Shadura (talk) 08:17, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi Belamp, it looks like the primary reason Draft:BiglyBT was rejected was because the software doesn't quite meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Are there other independent reliable sources that provide significant coverage of BiglyBT? — Newslinger talk 17:44, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I’m not sure; BiglyBT is a fork (by the same authors) of Vuze which, as I already mentioned, is no longer developed. I expect that existing users of Vuze are migrating to BiglyBT, but it’s basically the same program, so I’m not sure whether the notability requirements should apply as if it were something completely different? I initially wanted to extend the article on Vuze, but because of the previous (promotional) articles, that attempt was perceived as spam and reverted. I’m not sure how to proceed. Andrej Shadura (talk) 18:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

The quality of the sources on Draft:BiglyBT is borderline for notability, but should be sufficient to add another section in the Vuze article. I recommend using prose, not lists, since lists of features are seen as promotional. In the Vuze article, use only sources that are independent, reliable, and secondary to describe BiglyBT. The articles from TorrentFreak (RSP entry) and Chip are good sources, while the pieces from Softpedia (RSP entry), PC Magazine (short mention), and the Free Software Foundation (advocacy group, requires in-text attribution) are acceptable. If there is disagreement on whether to include a section about BiglyBT on the Vuze article, I recommend drafting the section on the talk page and then starting a request for comment to solicit opinions from a broader section of Wikipedia editors. ​— Newslinger talk 21:16, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I have started a discussion thread with a draft here, your comments would be appreciated. Andrej Shadura (talk) 20:50, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

The role of the FOSS task force

All of this below is my personal opinion and a matter of commentary and critique. All of this can be only achieved by collaboration.

The Problem at Hand

This post is inspired by a recent talks started by Abuluntu (talk · contribs) with one of the proposals was merging WikiProject Linux into FOSS task force. All in all, I would be in favor of this, as the project seems dead. Regardless, I see a danger in the trend of losing free-software-related projects on WP:

• first, a merger of free software project and open source software project
• then, dissolving of KDE and GNOME Wikiprojects
• now, the same happening to WP:Linux

And it's not happening because FOSS task force is blobbing – no, it seems just as quiet and nearly as deserted as the rest. Take a look at the main page: issues from todo list are mostly from 2006 and 2007. The page is actually rather well structured, so this may be why remaining people flock to it. What I'm afraid of is, if things progress, there will be no centralized point to gather around the issues of related articles. And *there are* issues:

• new, even quite high-profile software with stub or start articles (Peertube, ActivityPub, WebTorrent)
• over-reliance on first-party sources from github pages, forums, mailing lists
• overall lower quality of prose with style going towards manuals or release notes

This is not a comprehensive list, or you may even disagree with points already written, but the issue is, all of this will not go away without some steering.

A Solution

The Free and open-source software task force needs to reinvent itself.

It needs new participants and in order to get them, it must become a more social experience and must provide more guidance for interested users. It should encourage more participation and become a hub for new users, where they feel welcome to ask questions and participate in work.

All your ideas are welcome, this are a few mine, noted while looking at successful WikiProjects:

• set goals and milestones (WP:WikiProject_Video_games has a nice table showing completion)
• create a reference library – with reliable sources to help combat first-party references (as this one)
• create coherent assessment rules (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment)
• article of the week where we focus on improving one high-profile article – as a way to wake this project up, as other make sense only when there's more people participating (actually, any other form of public coordination, just like Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Operation_Majestic_Titan)
• some kind of invite / welcome messages (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/Outreach
• better todo list (something like: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Islam#Current_issues maybe?)

— K4rolB (talk) 21:02, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

These are all excellent ideas, and I agree with the three issues listed above. The lack of reliable sourcing for less popular topics in the FOSS topic area is a major issue, and a reference library would help greatly. I'm generally in favor of merging together less active WikiProjects, since the combined project is more likely to have some kind of interaction between editors. We do have an invite template in {{FOSS task force invite}}, which I have been using for new editors who show an interest in FOSS. — Newslinger talk 09:29, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Join forces with WP:LINUX

Because of nearly no activity on the talk page of WikiProject Linux I have started a discussion to join forces with this task force. Is that a good idea? – Abuluntu ( talk 12:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

​That's certainly an option. Another option would be to convert WikiProject Linux into a separate task force under WikiProject Software WikiProject Software. — Newslinger talk 10:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Newslinger, Wikipedia:WikiProject Software is the correct link for the software project. And this might actually be under the umbrella of Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing at this point. WikiProject consolidation seems to be a good thing. ~Kvng (talk) 16:28, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. — Newslinger talk 03:03, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

​Nice suggestion! I'll include it in our discussion. – Abuluntu ( talk 11:14, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Need help distinguishing company page from open-source project

Suggestion

Hi everyone, I would like to get feedback on the suggestion of moving the page Parse_(platform) to Parse,_Inc.. The reason is the lack of disambiguation between the dissolved company Parse, Inc. and the active open-source project Parse Platform. The current article primarily describes the company history, but uses the open-source project name as the article title, easily creating confusion for readers. To address this, the proposed change is to move the article to Parse,_Inc.. This is analogous to the distinction between the company Facebook,_Inc. and the product Facebook, or the company Google and the product Firebase. I opened a move request in the past, but it seems to have expired without conclusion due to lack of participation. I am hoping that an admin (maybe Deepfriedokra) can advice on how to best approach this, or even approve the move. Should I just open another move request? COI disclosure: I am a member of Parse Platform. However I want to explicitly mention that this is not a promotional suggestion but intended to improve the article quality for readers. ManuelTrezza (talk) 13:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Anyone can move a page, but if You want to request it and create a discussion, then I will support the move. – K4rolB (talk) 17:19, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Amazing @K4rolB, thanks for your reply, I will request the move with a COI disclosure and ping you for move support. ManuelTrezza (talk) 00:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello World!

I'm rather new as an editor to Wikpedia and I'm focusing on software/FOSS articles. I'm glad this Wikiproject already exists although there have been no recent activity on this talk page here. Could we make a short roll call to see who is currently watching here and being active whilst also having the possbility to get to know each other? I'm always on on IRC in #wikipedia-en - don't be shy to say hello GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 01:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @GavriilaDmitriev, nice to have You! I'm active on and off, probably off soon again, because of meatspace life :P. There are some active users but not many. I hope we can come up with ideas to revive this place. – K4rolB (talk) 10:54, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Best way is in doing the work itself. But Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Members seems also to not be so active. So I'm curious if this is normal for the IT parts of Wikiprojects. May I ask where is the best place to get in contact with the other members of the Free_and_open-source_software_task_force? GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 12:35, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Well, there isn't really such place. All communication happen between this Talk Page (rarely, as You can see) and talk pages linked in article alerts. – K4rolB (talk) 14:23, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm currently watching this page, and I'd be happy to help with any article. — Newslinger talk 07:36, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Categorize importance of InterPlanetary_File_System

I was categorizing the leftover C-level unclassified FOSS articles by importance and struggled with just one. I would like to ask and discuss of the impotance of InterPlanetary_File_System to WT:FOSS. It is a protocol and network and not an application. I would have rated it High. But if I account that it's not an application it might be even a low or sohuld be excluded. You can find the place to rate it on top of Talk:InterPlanetary_File_System

My questions:

1. Should IPFS be part of WT:FOSS?
2. Any opinions on rating it different? Based on what judgement?

GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 17:27, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

As IPFS is an open protocol and has FOSS implementations, it should be a part of WP:FOSS. When it comes to ratings the best indicator we have now is WP Software importance scale and that would point to Low as it is very specific piece of technology. Also, please take a look at my recent post about importance categorization improvements. – K4rolB (talk) 19:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Agree with k4rolb. It is part of FOSS but of low importance at the moment. (Also, that article is in desperate need of improvements.) - Daveout(talk) 20:03, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Done. Tagged as low. GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 22:27, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Help me complete some drafts?

Here's some draft I have been working on:

• Draft:Nitter
• Draft:NodeBB
• Draft:Freetube
• Draft:Ethercalc
• Draft:Pixelfed
• Draft:Lemmy (software)
• Draft:Invidious

Help appreciated Greatder (talk) 06:07, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I looked at your drafts. Some are almost one liner and some you tried to push through with little changes. I made the effort to look into your sources in the Ethercalc talk page. I do agree that those programs/websites should be pushed by our task force.

What is the step you struggle most with when drafting?

Maybe you would appreciate it more to create a list of suggestions (just as you did here) with open source projects which are in usage and deserve their articles. Then we can prioritze and try together to try to dig out good secondary sources for it. GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 15:54, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@GavriilaDmitriev: This is my suggestion list, feel free to organize by importance than we can find sources :) Greatder (talk) 08:47, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

 Note: Discussion was continued here

Github as source

I found it rather hard to find information on Github as an reliable source. For this reason I asked on Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Github_as_reliable_source_for_software_topics for some clarification. While I am aware that it can depend on each case if Github might be a reliable source, it is often factual while not being original research. But independently of what I am thinking it would help to have Github (or other source control software like Gitlab, Bitbucket) somewhere mentioned in the Wikipedia help articles for other people to read up on it. What is consensus here on this Project? GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 01:20, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello again GavriilaDmitriev. GitHub is a primary sources. It isn't forbidden to use those, but using them requires more caution. Well-regarded secondary sources are normally preferred. This page explains it better than I can. \\ On a different note, It's always good to se new people here interested in improving FOSS articles, hope you like it and decide to stay. - Daveout(talk) 15:54, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Adding to the comment of @Daveout, there is a real problem with FOSS articles that they overuse primary sources, like Github, release notes, project documentations and internal wikis. They can be good enough to establish basic facts, but not good enough for notability.It would be beneficial to quality of articles to avoid such sources whenever possible. Also you can never trust user-generated content. – K4rolB (talk) 17:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

GitHub/GitLab is probably okay as a citation in an infobox for the latest version of an obscure foss project (usually there is no other citation is available for something like this, it's better to have one citation than zero.), but it's probably generally not okay to use GitHub as a source for something in the main body of an article. Basically, GitHub is a last resort to use only when it is absolutely necessary. The only instance where GitHub is a totally reliable source for information is for the most recent version of a project hosted at that specific repo. For any other information, even about the project itself, there might be biases involved. But data doesn't have bias, and a version number is pure data. Psypherium^{talk page} 14:10, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Rebuilding Zabbix?

User:Beetstra has IMHO rightfully triggered the deletion of the Zabbix article. I consider the topic a rather easy exercise for a small joint task force effort since the product itself is old, well known and still in a quite widespread use. I would suggest after it's likely deletion that we rebuild it with an updated POV which is more balanced which includes that it's mostly superseeded by more modern and secure software. This is less about the importance of Zabbix itself than a community building action to see who is currently active and if we can do something together. I'm also open for different topics to work upon - although I would prefer to start with something easy everyone can contribute without being domain expert. GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 14:12, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I take that back since I was accused of being WP:PAID for Zabbix.inc GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 04:26, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

A list of reliable sources reporting on FOSS

Hi all! As You are probably all too aware, FOSS articles rely too heavily on references to self-published or user-generated sources – those being patch notes, blog posts, git repos, project wikis, etc. Having that in mind, I was saving for myself those websites that seemed to do a quality job at reporting on FOSS. Over time it became a nice list so I share it with You here, in my user space!

Take a look if You want, share other findings, help weed out sources that I mistakenly took for reliable!

It would be cool to curate an index of valuable sources as they seem to be somewhat scarce for FOSS (outside of routine reporting). Such a list could then become semi-official for this Task Force. Opinions? — K4rolB (talk) 16:44, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Full agree! I agree with your insight that FOSS articles struggle with secondary sources and I agree with your suggestion for allieviate this issue.

How about you tidy up the list, structure it well and then make it official with it's own article within our task force space? Right now we lack activity and WP wants us to WP:BeBold anyway. GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 16:00, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@K4rolB I still would love to see your list worked upon in some Draftspace. Further down here on the talk page user @Jon mentioned he would have more input for good sources.

Additionally I want to say that I tried to use your sources list for one article but failed. Some of them have the same source/backend and didn't yield different results for search queries. So I would appreciate if you could add some details to the source and why it is considered safe to use as secondary source.

I'm positive that we can implement and link that list somewhere here in our WikiProject space to make the work for further contributors easier.

GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 06:46, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @GavriilaDmitriev,

I cannot promise I will have time to do this right now, but I will see.

It is unfortunate that it is not easy to find a reliable source for many smaller projects, but the sources list is not exhaustive, so not all is lost.

About making opinions on source quality: I checked whether they post they own articles, whether they go beyond routine reporting, who is behind the site – is it a personal blog, or is there some vetting process. Whether they are connected somehow to influencial organizations. It is possible I have made mistakes. What exactly are you pointing to? – K4rolB (talk) 09:09, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Following your comment I worked some to improve the list. I very appreciate that you have used the URL to the search feature wherever possible. Please feel free to edit the content and discuss details on the talk page or if it's a short remark put it into the Issues field.

I also left my criticism of those pages. Maybe we should order the list in regard to likelihood to have useful content. This means quality but also quantity of results which are not just copied from other websites.

I try to continue my work and do further formatting, data enrichment and including further sources. Although I would suggest to not go overboard with adding and removing the lowest quality ones in the process. GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 10:53, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I already tried to put them in order from the most mainstream (thus hopefully most notable) to the least. – K4rolB (talk) 12:32, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I made a custom Google search engine based on User:K4rolB/Sources. You can find it here. Dexxor (talk) 11:27, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I had the same idea in mind that we could write a tool to aggregate the search results from there.

Ironically you used Google for that which is not in favor of me and many other people in the FOSS space. Does this CSE automatically take the data from the table or are you the only person able to add entries to it?

So while this is a good prototype I recommend an FOSS implementation of it. I can provide the hosting and setup of the service if someone writes the code for it.

In case we won't bother with the effort of a FOSS implementation I would be rather undecided if it's better to not have any tool or to make a deal with the devil (Google) since I don't want to be the person who promotes one of the biggest violators of the FOSS spirit. GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 11:43, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Wow, that's great! It will be really useful. We could already put that on our project page, if that is ok with @GavriilaDmitriev? K4rolB (talk) 12:31, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Short answer: I don't like it but yes, do it. Be bold! GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 12:42, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

If you don't like Google but are fine with DuckDuckGo (which is also not FOSS) you can create a Firefox bookmark to this long link and add a keyword (let's say fo). Then you can perform searches by typing fo your query in the address bar.

As for making a FOSS engine, following this guide could be a fun weekend project. If you don't want to crawl the websites yourself, Common Crawl looks interesting; some independent search engines are listed here. However, using Google is a lot easier and means better search quality as well as access to operators such as "exact match" or before:2021. Dexxor (talk) 18:19, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Moved Inactive and former participants

I went through our complete WT:FOSS Participants list and checked everyone for their activity on WP. I moved those who haven't been active on WP for roughly 6 months or longer. This should be safe enough to determine if someone is active. Some of those accounts are either already retired or in one case was already banned and in another case the only action of that whole account was to join WT:FOSS. The current members can be split into 3 categories:

1. 1/3 is active here in our WT:FOSS portal and on FOSS topics
2. 1/3 is active in FOSS topics but seemingly not participating on communications here (which is totally acceptable and they remain in the member list)
3. 1/3 are very active on WP but seemingly not on FOSS topics (also remaining in the list)

I plan to send each of the latter 1/3 a new

Hi, WikiProject Software/Free and open-source software task force/Archive 3! Thank you for your contributions to articles related to free and open-source software. I'd like to invite you to become a part of the free and open-source software task force, a project aimed at improving the quality of articles about free and open-source software on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the free and open-source software task force for more information. Feel free to sign your name under "Participants". Thanks! GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 10:45, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

invitation to invite them to be either active in the group or to engage more on FOSS topics.

For now that should be sufficient to have a reliable member list and to try to show that we are more active now again. It is not planned to do any further steps on this matter for now. GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 10:45, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello @GavriilaDmitriev:! I'm happy to help with clean-up tasks; things tend to go in fits and bursts depending on what is going on in the real world; I try to keep an eye on articles related to JMAP and audio/video codecs. Thank you @K4rolB: for the list of decent citation sources - perhaps we can add Linux Weekly News, and MIT Technology Review... maybe I should make a list too! — Jon (talk) 19:59, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Jonathanischoice, thanks for the sources, how could I forget the LWN? :D

Added already. – K4rolB (talk) 09:03, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up the membership rolls. I don't understand your proposal. It seems like you're proposing to send invitations to join the project to editors that are already members. ~Kvng (talk) 14:22, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I already finished that step when I wrote that message. It's what I meant with: "it is not planned to do any further steps on this matter for now". I notified around 20 user to invite them to be more active even some of them have been already a member. The impact was minuscule after all. GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 18:58, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Red Hat Summits

I think Red Hat Summits (which are important events with important key events for open source and software overall) need to be added to Wikipedia as detailed pages. --Comrade-yutyo (talk) 12:12, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

So what would you suggest to do? Nothing stopping you to create articles in Draft-space :) GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 17:13, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Veracrypt

VeraCrypt is a fork of the non-free TrueCrypt. This doesn't seem to register with one editor. I would appreciate your opinion at Talk:VeraCrypt#Licensing_of_VeraCrypt. Thank you. --Palosirkka (talk) 10:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

It is sweet of you to call me an "editor." Thank you. Your other nickname for me was ... unsavory. Anyway, you say VeraCrypt is a fork of TrueCrypt? I agree. Dispute resolved. Bye-bye. Waysidesc (talk) 06:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

As being from the WP:FOSS team I would like to tell both of you that it's great how much you both care about FOSS topics. While sadly I haven't found the time yet to dig into the same depth as both of you, I would shift the attention to what you both seem to have in common (research, knowledge and caring about this topic (but also strangely both not having a profile page)).

Licenses are not the easiest topics and especially not in such a constellation. Also we can have (as your discussion shows on the article page) different definitions what is considered FOSS. To be very pragmatic about it I would recommend to agree on something like "partially FOSS" and as the article already talks about what are the details of this issue.

Both of your energy would be better in the whole lot of other FOSS articles where your input is really needed. I would love to have both of you active here in WP:FOSS. Feel free to visit me in IRC or discuss somewhere here in the wiki what tasks we have open.

Please be nice to each other.

GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 15:04, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:OpenSearch (software)#Requested move 12 May 2022

Members of this WikiProject may be interested in the proposed move of OpenSearch (software) to OpenSearch and OpenSearch to OpenSearch (syndication); see discussion. --Macrakis (talk) 13:47, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Taskforce call for help: Help adding onion sites of popular websites

The most reliable site I found was dark.fail, but I need help categorizing and adding links to those sites in the List of onion sites article. Greatder (talk) 13:54, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Link: List of Tor onion services Greatder (talk) 09:15, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

New IRC Channel for WP:FOSS

Community building is hard. There are a lot of people who care and engage in FOSS topics but there is no way to interact with each other besides of posting on each other talk pages which is rather unpersonal.

To enable us to talk to each other and discuss the direction of WP:FOSS we can use IRC as chat platform.

Click here for the official manual for using IRC for Wikipedia

Here in short where to find us:

Server host	irc.libera.chat
Port	6697
channel	#wikipedia-en-software
quick access	https://web.libera.chat/?#wikipedia-en-software

We are sharing the same IRC with our mother group since IRC is pretty inactive anyway.

Feel free to join! GavriilaDmitriev (talk • they/them) 09:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

The problem with IRC is there's no async communication. If someone answers or talks while I am offline, I can't access those talks. Unless you have archives, do you? Greatder (talk) 08:00, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

@Greatder: You can use Matrix to stay online on IRC. See meta:Matrix.org § Using Element as an IRC client for the man page. But if you've been idle for one month, they will kick you from the server. That's enough for you, maybe? — Labdajiwa (talk) 00:30, 30 August 2022 (UTC)