User:AntiCompositeNumber/rtf

Should the bot policy require public, open-source code?
Should the bot policy include the following requirement that the source code for bots on the English Wikipedia be published under a free license?

The Wikipedia editing community is built around free software and the principles of free content. However, a significant number of edits come from automated programs, and many of these bots do not have freely-licensed and publicly-disclosed source code. That means that other editors do not have the freedom to use the software on their own, to study the code to better their own bots or protect the wiki from security problems, or to adapt the bot for other tasks or wikis. In this way, these bots are not fully serving the goals of Wikipedia.

This lack of source-code disclosure also presents a practical problem. When a bot operator leaves the project, their bot(s) will eventually also stop editing, either through lack of maintenance or deliberate action. Other community members can recreate the bot, but this task is made exponentially more difficult when the bot's source code is not public. This proposal aims to prevent that situation by requiring new bot tasks to have public source code.