GetWiki

GetWiki is an interactive PHP/MySQL application for Wiki websites such as Wikinfo. A highly modified, and controversial, version of the MediaWiki 1.1.0 software running Wikipedia and other sites, GetWiki introduces XML import of individual articles from any other Wiki-site offering GetWiki/MediaWiki XML export. GetWiki also uses XHTML and CSS document and accessibility standards, comprehensive security measures, and interfacing unbiased toward Wikipedia.

GetWiki is essentially an improved MediaWiki that lets anyone be an interactive GFDL corpus access provider, specializing only those pages in the GFDL corpus they have a need to import and modify. It is the closest thing available to Project Xanadu, the original Ted Nelson view of how the world wide web should evolve.

History

GetWiki was forked from MediaWiki in January, 2004 by M.R.M. Parrott, partially under a Creative Commons License for the images and some of the code. The intention was to simply add the XML import feature to MediaWiki for use on the then Internet-Encyclopedia, but the resulting application became a fork through numerous customizations for the new Wikinfo. Such customizations and changes, code cleanup, and dozens of bugfixes of the MediaWiki version forked, have produced an independent, secure wiki application.

License

Much of the new GetWiki code was released under a non-commercial-use-only version of the Creative Commons license instead of the GNU General Public License (GPL). This included a feature which introduced XML import of individual articles from any other MediaWiki or GetWiki powered site. This meant that the authors of MediaWiki were unable to use the code in their project (which continues to be completely licensed under the GNU GPL), thus slowing the adoption of this feature. This alternative licensing is not allowed under the GPL, because of point two in the section "Terms and Conditions For Copying, Distribution, and Modification", but the GetWiki developers deny this.

The Wikipedia sysop power structure and Wikimedia, which require all GPL software, forbid anyone to copy the key features of GetWiki into MediaWiki, since this would reduce their power to enforce "rules" they make up. Since Wikipedia violates GFDL it is common to see GFDL corpus access providers start up as mirrors without interactive features. This helps Wikimedia retain monopolistic control on editorial control of the latest/live version of most pages in the GFDL corpus. This control further retards the corpus itself and is entirely contrary to the principles of Open Content and Share Alike.

Current release

The current stable release of GetWiki is version 1.0.

See also

• comparison of wiki software

External links

• GetWiki website
• The "GetWiki" article on Wikinfo

References

• Adapted from the GetMeta article, "GetWiki" http://www.getwiki.net/wiki.php?title=GetWiki, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
• Parts are also from the Wikipedia article "GetWiki"

This article contains content from Wikipedia. Current versions of the GNU FDL article GetWiki on WP may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

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