6 MediaWiki is the software used for Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) and the
7 other Wikimedia Foundation websites. Compared to other wikis, it has an
8 excellent range of features and support for high-traffic websites (Wikipedia
9 peaks at 380 requests per second as of August 2004). However, it is generally
10 harder to install. Be sure to follow the INSTALL document closely.
12 Installation on a Microsoft Windows system is not recommended, however it is
13 possible. Documentation for installation on Windows may be found at:
15 http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_MediaWiki_on_Windows
18 The MediaWiki software was written by:
32 These developers hold the copyright to this work, and it is licensed under the
33 terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 (see
34 http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html). Derivative works and later versions of
35 the code will also be considered free software licensed under the same terms.
37 The newly-founded Wikimedia Foundation currently has no legal rights to the
38 software, although copyright may be assigned to it at a later date. Wikimedia
39 has not funded any of the development work.
41 Sections of code written exclusively by Lee Crocker or Erik Moeller are also
42 released into the public domain, which does not impair the obligations of users
43 under the GPL for use of the whole code or other sections thereof.
45 Many thanks to the Wikipedia regulars for testing and suggestions.
47 The code is currently maintained at Sourceforge under the project "wikipedia",
48 module name "phase3". You can view the code in CVS there:
50 http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net
52 Please report bugs and make feature requests in our BugZilla system:
54 http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org
56 Documentation and discussion on new features may be found at:
58 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
59 http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_development
61 If you are setting up your own wiki based on this software, it is highly
62 recommended that you subscribe to mediawiki-l:
64 http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
66 The mailing list is very low volume, and is intended primarily for
67 announcements of new versions, bug fixes, and security issues.
72 The code is written in PHP. Version 4.3.2 or higher is recommended. There are
73 known issues with early 4.2.x releases. Also, the Monobook skin currently does
74 not work under the new PHP 5 (but you can use one of the older skins).
78 MediaWiki requires MySQL 3.23 or later, and PHP-MySQL. Version 4.0 or later is
83 The code was written on and for Linux, and no attempt has been made to make it
84 portable to other OSs. The math support in particular has run-time dependencies
85 on things like TeTeX and GhostScript that are generally found in Linux but not
86 other OSs. However, we have had reports of successful installation on Windows,
87 albeit without TeX support.