better wiki engine?

[Matthew East]

2008/3/5 Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt at myrealbox.com>:
> ffm wrote on 01/03/08 10:27:
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com
> >...
> > > On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Przemysław Kulczycki
> >...
> > > >  Is it possible to change the wiki engine? Or at least update it...
> > >
> > > It's not possible to change it, but work is currently being done to
> > > update it.
> >
> > Why can't it be changed?
> >...
>
> Because, as Mark Shuttleworth has said previously, "James [Troup,
> Canonical's head sysadmin] will refuse to run PHP stuff on our servers."
> <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2005-April/001753.html>
>
> (Actually we do use WordPress in a couple of places, but I guess that
> involves much less PHP code than Mediawiki would.)

Well, he has softened a bit since those days - there are a few PHP
programs running on some Canonical servers. However the general
principle remains the same - they won't do it unless there is a
special reason.

There are other reasons too: the Moin software is used on a large
number of different Ubuntu/Canonical related wikis, and the time and
effort required for a transition of wiki software (preservation of
pages, accounts, etc) would be ridiculous. Moin works pretty well
(although in dire need of upgrading) and we would need some
spectacular reasons before abandoning it.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF