Right to fork

The right to fork from Wikimedia projects is universally recognised as an objective.

In the past we had some forks, actual (e.g. es.wiki in 2002 against ads) or threatened (e.g. de.wiki in 2011 against image censorship, later canceled).

Current situation:

• For obvious reasons, the Wikimedia Foundation focused on the right to fork towards it, with Wikivoyage and related heavy investments in 2012 (lawsuits and software development).
• Terms of use ensure minimal requirements (license) but no explicit right to fork (even in the very long 2011 version).
  • According to some, before the License update, ensuring the right to fork was required by the GFDL.
  • Values includes references to the right (or freedom) to fork via dumps availability; the unofficial User:Sue Gardner/Wikimedia Foundation Guiding Principles also has a passage.
• A lot of data is made available for download (see also the "Getting the dumps" section of Data dumps).
  • But not some crucial data like the user table, see phabricator:T140977.
  • Missing data needs to be identified and prioritised.
  • Some workarounds exist when data is missing but the source project is still online: mw:Manual:Grabbers, mw:Extension:MediaWikiAuth.