Developers


 * You may want to see this page, which contains a list that puts more emphasis on Wikimedia server access, as well as extended information on Developers.

Developers are people who write software, in this case MediaWiki-related software. They are said to have "commit access" (or to be "committers") if they have access to commit changes to the central Subversion repository where the latest copy of the software is stored. (This is in contrast to having shell or root access to Wikimedia Foundation servers, for instance, which would make them system administrators. Users with root access could presumably grant themselves commit access if they so desired, since Subversion is now on the Wikimedia cluster.)  Brion Vibber, as lead developer, is usually the one to grant commit access, but Tim Starling has done so sometimes as well, possibly along with others.

A list of developers with commit access is reproduced below with some commentary. A full list of people with access to at least one of our Subversion repositories is available at http://svn.wikimedia.org/users.php.

Those with "root" or "shell" access might not really be developers, but rather system administrators of Wikimedia servers, where the Subversion repository is stored. In many cases they rarely use their commit access, or if they do, only to maintain non-MediaWiki things in the repository. In principle they probably have admin access on Subversion, Bugzilla, and so on if they have some reason to use it, at least in the case of roots.

To see which developers are actually active, try http://www.ohloh.net/projects/22/contributors, which gives nice stalkerish summaries of all sorts of fun statistics.

History
Developers formerly had an important role in the Wikipedia power structure, since they were the only ones able to create sysops or ban users. This has since changed, with the formation of user classes such as bureaucrat, and the technical capabilities given to these classes.

Some developers had shell access to the California servers, but due to inactivity, weren't given shell access on the "new" Florida servers. Magnus Manske, Nick Reinking, Lee Daniel Crocker, Axel Boldt, Matthias Jordan, Neil Harris and Ed Poor are in this category. Note that Ed Poor was not involved with software development, but instead carried out what are now bureaucratic or sysop tasks, such as promoting sysops and locking accounts. Past MediaWiki software development activity level of developers may be found through CVS statistics.

The following users had CVS access on Sourceforge. Since April 2006, Subversion has been used instead. Angela Beesley (expired shell), E23 (snok) (expired shell), Tomasz Wegrzanowski (expired shell and root), Guillaume Blanchard, Axel Boldt, Rowan Collins, T.D. Corell, Lee Daniel Crocker, The Cunctator, Johan Dahlin, Peter Danenberg, Michael Dill, Andrew Dunbar, Emmanuel Engelhart, Andre Engels, Fantasy, Tom Gilder, Jan Hidders, Anders Wegge Jakobsen, Matthias Jordan, Shane King, Thomas R. Koll, Niklas Laxström, Christian List, Wil Mahan, Magnus Manske (CVS admin), Zoran Obradovic, Julian Ostrow, Nicholas Pisarro, Jr., Evan Prodromou, Nick Reinking, Derek Ross, Valerio Santinelli, Chris Seaton, Alexander 'Ajvol' Sigachov, Chuck SMITH, Bogdan Stancescu, Marian Steinbach, Tarquin, Timwi (MediaZilla admin), Anders T&ouml;rlind, Zhengzhu, and Rob Church.

External link

 * MediaWiki developer map

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