The FAQ explaining the motivations behind making Xara open source is very appealing to me. I like not only the idea of it, but seeing that it brings along a different tone which is more honest and open when talking about the product itself.

One tricky area I noticed was branding. The FAQ mentions that anything branded "Xara" will be the official version from the company. But it seems to me there are three categories:

1. Binaries shipped and sold thru xara.com
2. Source code hosted and retrievable from svn.xara.com
3. Derivative source and binaries retrievable from other locations

Will the code in category 2 be moderated and given special status to call itself "Xara"? Will code in category 3 have to call itself something else, even if it is a mostly similar package? (BobDraw)

Clearly it is most beneficial if there are no hostile forks, and if Xara Corp can be a "benevolent dictator" in terms of how the source is used. Yet one concern I have is that the "easiest" wxWindows port (an open-source windows version) may be resisted on svn.xara.com. It makes me worry that if modifications which are good for the community are stalled on svn.xara.com if they're not in the interests of Xara Corp, there will be problems...