Wikipedia:WikiProject Free Software

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Free software portal

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Welcome to WikiProject Free Software, a subdivision of WikiProject Software. WikiProject Free Software is a seperate workgroup of WikiProject Software devoted to the improvement and creation of articles pertinent to free (as in freedom) software. WikiProject Free Software is intended to improve and maintain free software articles, bring such articles to good or featured article state, and to create new free software articles. The scope of this project extends to:

• articles about:
  • the free BSD variants;
  • GNU/Linux, although these are also covered by sister project WikiProject Linux;
  • other GNU variants;
  • other free systems consisting of free software;
  • free software programs;
• articles whose primary topics are highly pertinent to free software, such as:
  • websites which deal with free software;
  • organizations, such as
    • the GNU Project that develops it;
    • the Free Software Foundation that promotes it;
    • SourceForge which distributes it;
  • people, such as Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Keith Bostic;

Always remember to follow Wikipedia conventions, and to be bold.

Related projects are WikiProject Linux and WikiProject Computing.

Article rating statistics

Free software articles		Importance
		Top	High	Mid	Low	None	Total
Quality
	FA		2				2
	A		2				2
	GA	1	4	3			8
	B	8	31	22	35		96
	C			5	4	1	10
	Start	1	27	50	227	7	312
	Stub		2	20	253	25	300
	Assessed	10	68	100	519	33	730
	Unassessed				2	1	3
	Total	10	68	100	521	34	733

To edit ratings for articles tagged {{WikiProject Free Software}}, just add |class=|importance= inside the {{}} symbols, i.e. {{WikiProject Free Software|class=|importance=}}. The tag does not do this automatically, so by adding this you can rate the article.

What to do

See also: #TODOs

Here are some tasks that have to be done constantly or to almost every article. Further down the page you'll find TODO lists with one-off tasks that need to be done.

Verifying the bare minimum

Each article about a free software project should:

1. Link to {{portal|Free software|Free Software Portal Logo.svg}}, usually in the "See also" section.
2. Mention that it is free software.
3. Say which free software licence(s) is(are) used by the project.
4. Provide a link to the projects licence for confirmation (probably best done as a reference for the sentence about which free software licence the project uses).
5. Add a {{fact}} tag to any unverified statements.

Adding references

If you want to use an external webpage as a reference for a statement, the best way to do this is with a "{{cite web}}" template inside <ref> tags. The "cite web" template can take many optional fields, but "title" and "url" are mandatory. So here's a minimal reference:

The GNU project was launched in 1983.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html
|title=GNU Initial Announcement
|}}</ref>

Or if the information isn't so obvious in the linked document, or if you can give more information, you can use some of the additional tags:

<ref>{{cite web
|title = POSIX® 1003.1 FAQ Version 1.12
|url = http://www.opengroup.org/austin/papers/posix_faq.html
|quote = The name POSIX was suggested by Richard Stallman.
|date = 2006-02-02
|accessdate = 2006-07-16
|}}</ref>

Participants

If you wish to join the project, please add your name below this sentence, by adding:
#~~~~
on a new line.

1. Puttyschool (talk) 20:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

1. Stormchaser (talk) 17:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
2. Anhimgr8 03:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
3. Geekman314^{(contact me)} 16:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
   
4. KybladSphi ^{Talk Contributions} 22:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Sodaplayer ^{talk contributions} 22:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. |SUBZ3R0| 00:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Trisweb 00:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Wikinerd2000_Talk 18:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Zephyris _Talk 19:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
10. RedSpike101 15:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
11. P3net 05:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
12. NerdyNSK 00:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
13. -- 14:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Mayur Fernandes 00:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Ashawley 02:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
16. ThePurpleMonkey_{(talk•portal•contribs•count)} - Count me in!
17. Yarou 18:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Cabalamat 05:31, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
19. MichaelNetzer 08:39, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Potatoj316 19:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
21. AQ 21:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
22. Sean 18:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
23. Muchris 12:30, 1 March 2007
24. h2g2bob 14:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
25. Jonathan Roberts 8:17, 6 Marth 2007 (UTC)
26. Superm401 - Talk 03:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
27. Neal Locke 22:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
28. ( ) 18:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
29. DaniDarling 18:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
30. Gronky 14:57, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
31. themcman1 (help me with my sig) 10:55, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
32. S. Gartner ^talk 21:54, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
33. Hotshotesquire 01:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)hotshotesquire
34. Ma11achy 13:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
35. Guyjohnston 12:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
36. Aditya 18:37, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
37. mako (talk•contribs) 13:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
38. dam1213 Talk + 10:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
39. isilanes (talk|contribs) 14:38, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
40. Jet123 (Talk) 01:08, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
41. Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 16:37, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
42. (→ - review) 20:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
43. Tharikrish 15:34, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
44. Daimanta 17:53, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
45. ^{Talk • Work} 16:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
46. Carpetsmoker 01:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
47. Apageor2 19:33, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
48. Kl4m 03:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
49. --Shruti14 ^{t c s} 20:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
50. 01:35, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
51. Bbadger 16:56, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
52. Jimduchek 15:04, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
53. Chills42 (talk) 20:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
54. Resistor (talk) 22:26, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
55. vendion (talk) 18:24, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
56. Afarnen (talk) 16:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
57. ansa (talk) (UTC)
58. Johnsu01 (talk) 15:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
59. Flaminglawyer (talk · contribs)
60. HockeyInJune (talk) 02:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
61. Wwwolf3 (talk) 00:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
62. — Northgrove 13:09, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
63. Stephenchou0722 (talk) 01:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
64. 0xd34df00d (talk) 08:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
65. – ‖ Poke • EditList ‖ 22:05, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
66. Tyciol (talk) 04:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
67. --CFeyecare (talk) 02:52, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
68. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 06:51, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
69. Shooke (talk) 19:06, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
70. Ewald (talk) 19:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
71. Chenzw    10:34, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
72. Melab-1 00:25, 8 July 2008 (UTC)~
73. Timeshifter (talk) 22:17, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
74. Bbabybear02 (talk) 05:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
75. V A R G U X write me a comment 20:54, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

After you sign up, please get active on this page and/or on the Talk page. You may want to add some of the below todo lists to your watch list.

1. Raunak777 (talk) 12:16, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Templates

Articles

To tag an article as a WPFS article, please add {{WikiProject Free Software}} to the top of the talk page, which yields:

	Free software portal This article is part of WikiProject Free Software, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve free software-related articles.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.

This also adds it to Category:WikiProject Free Software articles.

Userbox

The WPFS userbox is transcluded by using {{User WPFS}}, which yields:

This user is a member of WikiProject Free Software

Assessment

The Assessment department will focus on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's Free Software related articles. This will aid us in recognising excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work.

Assessment should be conducted following these guidelines.

WikiProject article progress grading scheme [  v • d • e  ]

Label	Criteria	Reader's experience	Editing suggestions	Example
FA {{FA-Class}}	The article has attained Featured article status. More detailed criteria The article must meet the featured article criteria: A featured article exemplifies our very best work and features professional standards of writing and presentation. In addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes. It is— (a) well-written: its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard; (b) comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details; (c) factually accurate: claims are verifiable against reliable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this requires a "References" section in which sources are listed, complemented by inline citations where appropriate; (d) neutral: it presents views fairly and without bias; and (e) stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process. It follows the style guidelines, including the provision of: (a) a lead—a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections; (b) appropriate structure—a system of hierarchical headings and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents (see section help); and (c) consistent citations—where required by Criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1) (see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended). Images. It has images and other media where appropriate, with succinct captions and acceptable copyright status. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly. Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	Professional, outstanding, and thorough; a definitive source for encyclopedic information.	No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible.	Tourette Syndrome (as of June 2008)
FL {{FL-Class}}	The article has attained Featured list status. More detailed criteria The article must meet the featured list criteria: Prose. It features professional standards of writing. Lead. It has an engaging lead section that introduces the subject, and defines the scope and inclusion criteria of the list. Comprehensiveness. It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing a complete set of items where practical, or otherwise at least all of the major items; where appropriate, it has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about entries. Structure. It is easy to navigate, and includes—where helpful—section headings and table sort facilities. Style. It complies with the Manual of Style and its supplementary pages. Visual appeal. It makes suitable use of text layout, formatting, tables, and colour; it has images if they are appropriate to the subject, with succinct captions or "alt" text; and it has a minimal proportion of red links. Stability. It is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured list process.			FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives (as of January 2008)
A {{A-Class}}	The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been reviewed by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere. More detailed criteria Provides a well-written, clear and complete description of the topic, as described in Wikipedia:How to write a great article. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, appropriately structured, and be well referenced by a broad array of reliable sources. It should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Only minor style issues and other details need to be addressed before submission as a featured article candidate. See the A-Class assessment departments of some of the larger WikiProjects (e.g. WikiProject Military history, WikiProject Films).	Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting.	Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style issues may need addressing. Peer-review may help.	Durian (as of March 2007)
GA {{GA-Class}}	The article has attained Good article status. More detailed criteria The article must meet the good article criteria: Well written: (a) the prose is clear and the spelling and grammar are correct; and (b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, jargon, words to avoid, fiction, and list incorporation. Factually accurate and verifiable: (a) it provides references to all sources of information, and at minimum contains a section dedicated to the attribution of those sources in accordance with the guide to layout; (b) at minimum, it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons; and (c) it contains no original research. Broad in its coverage: (a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and (b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias. Stable: it does not change significantly from day-to-day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. Illustrated, if possible, by images: (a) images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content; and (b) images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (although not equalling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia.	Some editing by subject and style experts is helpful; comparison with an existing featured article on a similar topic may highlight areas where content is weak or missing.	International Space Station (as of February 2007)
B {{B-Class}}	The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reach Good Article standards. B-Class articles should meet the six B-Class criteria. More detailed criteria Shortcuts: WP:WIABCA WP:BCLASS WP:1.0/B The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. The use of citation templates such as {{cite web}} is not required, but the use of <ref></ref> tags is encouraged. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing. The article has a defined structure. Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind. The article is reasonably well written. The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but it certainly need not be "brilliant". The Manual of Style need not be followed rigorously. The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams and an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content. The article presents its content in an appropriately accessible way. It is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. Although Wikipedia is more than just a general encyclopedia, the article should not assume unnecessary technical background and technical terms should be explained or avoided where possible.	No reader should be left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher.	A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed, and expert knowledge is increasingly needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should also be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the manual of style and related style guidelines.	Jammu and Kashmir (as of October 2007)
C {{C-Class}}	The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant issues or require substantial cleanup. More detailed criteria The article is better developed in style, structure and quality than Start-Class, but fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements; need editing for clarity, balance or flow; or contain policy violations such as bias or original research. Articles on fictional topics are likely to be marked as C-Class if they are written from an in-universe perspective.	Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study.	Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and address cleanup issues.	Exeter Cathedral (as of June 2008)
Start {{Start-Class}}	An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources. More detailed criteria The article has a usable amount of good content, but it is weak in many areas, usually in referencing. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and MoS compliance non-existent; but the article should satisfy fundamental content policies such as notability and BLP, and provide enough sources to establish verifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of being speedily deleted.	Provides some meaningful content, but the majority of readers will need more.	Provision of references to reliable sources should be prioritised; the article will also need substantial improvements in content and organisation.	Real analysis (as of November 2006)
Stub {{Stub-Class}}	A very basic description of the topic. More detailed criteria The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.	Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition	Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority.	Coffee table book (as of July 2005)

Stub, Start, and B class assessments can be made by every editor (although it is generally regarded good behaviour not to assess an article in which you have had a major influence yourself)
A class assessment is made within this project
Good Article and Feature Article assessments require formal review procedures outside of this project.

Project selected article

When enough members have been gathered, weekly votes will be taken to determine a high-quality article to be placed here in a similar manner to the standard FA.

WikiProject Free Software articles

• Complete listing of articles that are under this project: Category:WikiProject Free Software articles
• General list of articles related to free software: Special:Whatlinkshere/Portal:Free software
• The top-level category of free software articles: Category:Free software

TODOs

TODO items specific to the WikiProject

To-do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free Software:	edit · history · watch · refresh
Here are some tasks you can do: Other: Recruit Wikipedians to the project. Complete the above goals, and the tasks on the to-do list. Tag articles as WikiProject Free Software articles. Create appropriate templates for the project, and free software in general. Nominate an article for improvement on the talk page.

Free software articles TODO

Please consider adding this box to your Watchlist (click here).

If you would like to help, here are some suggestions for things to do. The date in parenthesis is the date on which the task was added.

1. (2008-10-29) The Comparison of 3D computer graphics software article needs to be heavily expanded.
2. (2008-09-26) The OJS article is in real bad shape, and needs to be rewritten. It reads like an AD, and has no structure.
3. (2008-03-19) The article Hacker (free and open source software) has some sections which should be rewritten with a more "detached" style, and needs more references. Even the title is not perfect.
4. (2007-10-28) The timeline of FSF's and Debian's free software definitions needs to be constructed (see Talk:The Free Software Definition#Timeline: FSD and DFSG)
5. (2007-09-18) The European Union v. Microsoft (the anti-trust case) article needs to add mentions of FSFE, free software, and Samba.
6. (2007-09-17) The GNU Compiler Collection article contains no information about how fast/slow or big/small the outputted programs are.
7. (2007-08-13) GPL linking exception - this article isn't yet linked to by the articles about projects that use this exception, and the article itself contains quite a few tags complaining about original research or mistakes. Care sought.
8. (2007-05-14) The GNU/Linux naming controversy, Emacs, Common Unix Printing System, Ubuntu (operating system) and PaX articles were formerly featured articles, but have since had that status revoked. Maybe it would be easy to get them back up to Featured Article quality.
9. (2007-04-13) The Player Project needs expansion, particularly someone with knowledge of the project to write about its history, goals, features without turning it back into an advert.
10. (2007-04-11) The dual-licensing article needs some clean-up (this is half-done now)
11. (2007-03-22) The OpenMoko article is quite weak for such an interesting free software topic. Help sought.
12. (2007-03-03) Patents and free software is a consolidation of previous stubs - it's new, so it needs some help and some review
13. (2007-02-07) The History of free software article is new and seeks contributions, particularly if you have links to essays by old-times for info about free software in the 80s and 70s, as well as 90s and 60s.
14. (2007-01-24) Some cleanup, and some aggregation, and probably some merging, is needed for Autotools, GNU build system, and GNU toolchain
15. (2006-12-18) Add a section on how to contribute to the opensource community. This should cover how to create a program from existing technologies, languages and other opensource programs, how to fix a bug, write documentation, etc.
16. (2006-10-10) Many articles containing phrases such as "free software licence" or "free software community", when it is usually better to link to "free software licence" and "free software community" instead of the main free software article.
17. (2006-09-18) Free software should be mentioned in Software engineering
18. (2006-09-13) Free software community needs more work
19. (2006-08-25) For each article about a free software package, there should be a link to the licence information.
20. (2006-08-22) The Category:Free software companies category is new and could use some help. Category:Copyleft licensing needs help too, as does Category:Emacs users.
21. (2006-06-15) add {{free-software-stub}} to free software related articles which are stubs
22. (2006-06-06) Work is being done to create useful sub-categories in Category:Free software. This requires help to move articles from Category:free software into the sub-categories.
23. (2006-04-12) Add the {{portal|Free software|Free Software Portal Logo.svg}} tag to articles about, or related to, free software.
24. (2005-12-30) The Copyleft article contains information duplicated elsewhere, a review would be good

Stub and short articles