2006-04-05

For system requirements, installation and upgrade details, see the files RELEASE-NOTES, INSTALL, and UPGRADE.

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is the software used for Wikipedia [http://www.wikipedia.org/] and the other Wikimedia Foundation websites. Compared to other wikis, it has an excellent range of features and support for high-traffic websites using multiple servers (Wikimedia sites peak in the 5000+ requests per second range as of November 2005).

While quite usable on smaller sites, you may find you have to "roll your own" local documentation, and some aspects of configuration may seem overcomplicated because MediaWiki is primarily targeted as an in-house tool.

The MediaWiki software was written by:

• Lee Daniel Crocker
• Magnus Manske
• Jan Hidders
• Brion Vibber
• Axel Boldt
• Geoffrey T. Dairiki
• Tomasz Wegrzanowski
• Erik Moeller
• Tim Starling
• Gabriel Wicke
• Ashar Voultoiz
• Evan Prodromou
• Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
• Niklas Laxström
• Domas Mituzas
• Rob Church
• Jens Frank
• Several others

The contributors hold the copyright to this work, and it is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later[1] (see http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html). Derivative works and later versions of the code must be free software licensed under the same terms. This includes "extensions" that use MediaWiki functions or variables; see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins for details.

The Wikimedia Foundation currently has no legal rights to the software.

[1] Sections of code written exclusively by Lee Crocker or Erik Moeller are also released into the public domain, which does not impair the obligations of users under the GPL for use of the whole code or other sections thereof.

[2] MediaWiki makes use of the Sajax Toolkit by modernmethod, http://www.modernmethod.com/sajax/

which has the following license:

   'This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution
    License. To view a copy of this license, visit
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ or send a letter
    to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way,
    Stanford, California 94305, USA.'

Many thanks to the Wikimedia regulars for testing and suggestions.

The official website for mediawiki is located at:

http://www.mediawiki.org/

The code is currently maintained in a Subversion repository at svn.wikimedia.org. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion for details.

Please report bugs and make feature requests in our Bugzilla system:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Documentation and discussion on new features may be found at:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:FAQ
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Development

Extensions are listed at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_extensions

If you are setting up your own wiki based on this software, it is highly recommended that you subscribe to mediawiki-announce:

http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

The mailing list is very low volume, and is intended primarily for announcements of new versions, bug fixes, and security issues.

A higher volume support mailing list can be found at:

http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Developer discussion takes place at:

http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

There is also a development and support channel #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net, and an unoffical support forum at www.mwusers.com.