open source Editor: Christof Ebert ■ Alcatel ■
[email protected] Using Wikis in Software Development Panagiotis Louridas In only a few years, wikis have become one of the most popular tool shells imaginable based on open source software. You can find them just about everywhere that demands effective col- laboration and knowledge sharing at a low budget. Wikipedia has certainly enhanced their pop- ularity, but they also have a place in intranet-based applications such as defect tracking, re- quirements management, test-case management, and project portals. Panagiotis Louridas describes wiki essentials and nicely distinguishes a variety of types. You’ll find something useful, I’m sure. —Christof Ebert y 1995, Ward Cunningham, a promi- What is a wiki? nent member of the design patterns A wiki is actually two things: community, was experimenting with a hypertext environment to promote the ■ a program that makes it exceptionally easy exchange of the community’s ideas. for anybody to edit Web pages and B ■ The environment was based on the a philosophy regarding how users should then-popular Apple Hyper- go about that editing. Card application. That applica- tion worked well for individual Generally, Web pages are written in HTML. users, but Cunningham was While it’s not difficult to learn HTML, non- looking for a Web-based imple- programmers tend to shy away from it. Even mentation. On 25 March 1995, programmers find it easier to edit text than he posted the Web’s first-ever structured HTML, where linking between wiki, calling it “the simplest pages requires attention to things such as ad- online database that could pos- dresses and anchors.