Wikimedians for software freedom/Context
Software freedom is a key issue for the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia Foundation. All Wikimedia infrastructure is built on free and open-source software, and many volunteers and community members are actively involved in the broader free and open-source software ecosystem.
Why we have to support software freedom
- Effectiveness:
- Supporting digital accessibility.
- Reducing digital barriers.
- Protecting personal data and avoiding active tracking, surveillance and potentially remote control.
- Avoiding strong dependency on a single proprietary ecosystem.
- Allowing the community to self-manage the parameters of its political structure.
- Principles:
- Supporting open knowledge (code is knowledge).
- Respecting peoples' digital rights.
- Avoiding forcing member of our communities to execute proprietary software on their smartphone and computer to participate in our events and activities, and having to accept the terms and conditions of proprietary products.
- Collaborating and contributing to the wider open movement.
- Social contract:
- Aligning with our values and long-term strategy.
Anyone is certainly free to use all the "popular" proprietary technologies they like in private, but in Wikimedia public events and activities and in our institutional practices we need to consider software freedom.
Wikimedia Foundation policies
Software freedom is relevant for the Wikimedia Foundation, its strategy, values, principles and approaches.
From the 2030 Movement Strategy:
- «Censorship, surveillance, and the increased commercialization of knowledge endanger Wikimedia's existence»
- «the obstacles to participation for underrepresented groups persist»
From the Movement Strategy's Principles:
- «structures must address for them to be empowered and able to contribute free from barriers»
- «adopting policies and providing technology, resources, and infrastructures to protect the privacy and security of our Movement participants»
- «Inclusivity is at the root of the development of processes, practices, and structures for the Wikimedia Movement»
- «Structures and platforms need to be adaptable to not only empower those who are already in our Movement, but to embrace those yet to join and others who were previously excluded or overlooked»
- «addressing existing privileges as well as barriers to participation»
From the m:Movement Charter/Content/Values & Principles:
- We represent a fact-based, open, and inclusive approach to knowledge
- We share, in the spirit of free knowledge, all of our content, all our software, all our platforms with the world
From the Movement Strategy Recommendations+:[1]
- «directly address the barriers and circumstances that prevent people from utilizing or participating in our Movement.
- «Support compliance with the most advanced accessibility guidelines using free and open-source software»
From the Wikimedia Tech Cloud Services Terms of use (also applying to Toolforge), point 4.3:
- «Do not use, host, or install any software on WMCS unless the software is licensed under an Open Source license»
From the Wikimedia Global Advocacy Team:
- «To protect the people in our community, we advocate for privacy rights and against mass surveillance.»
From the Wikimedia Foundation Technology page:
- «we design and build the open-source technology that powers Wikimedia projects»
From the Wikimedia Foundation documentation:
- «Free and open-source software from Wikimedia»
From the Wikimedia Technical blog:
- «Open Source for open knowledge»
From the Strategy/Multigenerational/Artificial intelligence for editors:
- «following Wikipedia’s values around community governance, transparency, support of human rights, open source»
- «We prioritize using open source AI technologies or open weights, and we develop only open source AI»