xara branding

[metaeducation]

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...

[Charles Moir]

You are absolutely correct. We fully realise the only way we can be 'the benevolent dictator' is to keep the support and trust of the vast majority of the community, and to develop the product inline with the majority wishes.

We know full well that having made the product open source that it can be forked and we may well lose control of it. But there are good reasons why it makes sense that there is one official version (for file compatibility reasons, as just one example). We hope we will gain the trust and respect of the community to be the maintainer of the main official branch and that will be the Xara version.

As you say, and as history shows in the Linux world, rarely does a hostile branch work out, because it's usually not to the benefit of the community of users or developers. One way we can discourage that is by retaining control of the Xara brand. And trademark law has an impact here in that we have to control our trademarks (e.g. the Xara name) or else we lose it. So it would be very difficult to let the Xara name be used on derivative forks.

There are many dangers in doing what we are doing. We might lose control of the product if we do not play fair. The release of a free open source version could obviously impact of Windows revenue stream, and our business relies on this. We've spent probably $200k+ USD just on developer wages porting the codebase to Linux, and all those wages of our developers come directly from Windows sales. We hope and expect our developers will continue working on the open-source codebase and contributing features to Xara LX for everyone to benefit from.

So were we to lose that revenue, we'd be laying off developers. And that is bad for the project as a whole.

So I'll be quite up-front an open about this. A Windows version of Xara LX could well threaten that revenue and thus our ongoing support of the project. That's bad for the project as a whole. So we would not be keen on seeing a Windows version. But our belief, and this is reflected in feedback, is that Linux and the Mac versions are what most (like 99%) users want to see. So our focus for now is the Linux and Mac ports and just to try and get them as good as the existing Windows codebase.

(It's also worth pointing out the retail Windows version contains things that will never be part of a free open-source version such the closed-source third party components we license (Pantone, plug-ins etc) as well as offering customer support, CDs, manuals etc)

So to answer your specific concern, to paraphrase, 'if modifications which are for the general good of the community are stalled or resisted by Xara, there will be problems.' You are dead right, and we'd expect that would be one good reason for a fork to happen and for us to lose control of the project. We hope that everything we do will be for the common good of the community.

But the creation of a new derivative Windows version made to specifically compete with our existing Windows version, that took revenue away from our Windows sales, is one thing that is simply not in the interest of the community, certainly not the Linux and Mac communities. And ultimately it's not in the interest of the Windows users either, if that means we have fewer paid developers working on the project.