Has Xara abandoned Linux?

[jbus]

I noticed that there is no longer a link to the open source version of Xara Xtreme for Linux on Xara.com. Please tell me this isn't so Xtreme for linux is too good to become abandon-ware.

[Soquili]

Hi Jbus,

Xara is currently promoting their new Windows version of Xtreme Pro. It is only natural that some changes to their home page during this promotional period.

I'm confident that development on the Linux version of Xtreme will resume once work on the Xtreme Pro version is finalized and the program goes to CD production and shipment.

[Doug]

I noticed that there is no longer a link to the open source version of Xara Xtreme for Linux on Xara.com. Please tell me this isn't so Xtreme for linux is too good to become abandon-ware.

Try looking a bit harder next time :

http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

[stuseven]

. now now... you're both right ! :-)

. yes, lots of links to Linux version at --> xaraxtreme.org

. however... at --> xara.com... and I did look... I cant find a single
link to the linux version... makes sense I guess, since thats the site
for their commercial version.

I will say this... the whole Linux project began with the idea that
open-source developers would be contributing to translating
Xara to Linux... which, evidently, never panned out. Most of the
work has been done by "the official Xara team" - who, as we all know,
have moved for the time to finish work on a new commercial release...
so... well... anybody know any capable open-source developers ? :-)

Try looking a bit harder next time :

http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

[jedfrechette]

. however... at --> xara.com... and I did look... I cant find a single
link to the linux version... makes sense I guess, since thats the site
for their commercial version.

There used to be links to xaraxtreme.org on the xara.com site.

I will say this... the whole Linux project began with the idea that
open-source developers would be contributing to translating
Xara to Linux... which, evidently, never panned out. Most of the
work has been done by "the official Xara team" - who, as we all know,
have moved for the time to finish work on a new commercial release...
so... well... anybody know any capable open-source developers ? :-)

I think there are a couple of reasons OSS developers haven't embraced Xtreme on Linux. Probably the main reason is that although Xara has opened a large portion of their codebase a critical component, the rendering engine CDRAW, has not been released under an opensource license yet. They have promised to release CDRAW as OSS but have not given a specific timeline for when this will occur. This has two effects. First it means that Xtreme can not be distributed by many Linux distributions as it is considered to be non-free. As a result the exposure of Linux developers to Xtreme is necessarily limited. The second and probably more important effect is that until Xara releases CDRAW the code that they have released is not terribly useful. A different rendering engine could probably be substituted for CDRAW but then you lose one of Xtreme's main strengths. As a result any time that is spent by outside developers may be time wasted if Xara did decide to abandon the open source version. Combine this with a large and complex codebase that takes a while to learn and there isn't a whole lot of incentive to contribute at the moment.

Another factor may be that Xara, probably rightly, doesn't want to add any new features to Xtreme until they get all of the old features ported over. Porting is pretty boring work and in my, admittedly limited, experience OSS developers love adding new features. Hopefully, this will turn into a strength for Xara after they complete the transition to an open source business model. Volunteer developers can provide innovation and Xara can still pay people to do the necessary but perhaps boring stuff.

Making the cultural transition from a proprietary to an open source company is probably much more difficult than any of the technical hurdles that Xara faces. While they seem to love to surprise their users with new and exciting versions of their software the OSS community will expect more transparency. The OSS community isn't very supportive of projects that are only partially open source.

One encouraging sign for the open source version of Xtreme is that the last commit that was made happened just before the release of the Pro Beta and it added support for some of the new features in the xar file format needed by Pro's new features. Hopefully we will see some more activity on the open source version once they finish squashing bugs in Pro.

[Doug]

Ahem-the link that I mentioned does come from the Xara site, here:

http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/?v=std&?t=

Right hand side, about half way down the page, where the penguin is and it says in big letters:

"Open Source version announced Find out more"

. now now... you're both right ! :-)

. yes, lots of links to Linux version at --> xaraxtreme.org

. however... at --> xara.com... and I did look... I cant find a single
link to the linux version... makes sense I guess, since thats the site
for their commercial version.

I will say this... the whole Linux project began with the idea that
open-source developers would be contributing to translating
Xara to Linux... which, evidently, never panned out. Most of the
work has been done by "the official Xara team" - who, as we all know,
have moved for the time to finish work on a new commercial release...
so... well... anybody know any capable open-source developers ? :-)

[TomZ]

I think there are a couple of reasons OSS developers haven't embraced Xtreme on Linux.

jedfrechette, I think that there is a lot of wisdom in your posting

Hopefully you are right.

[jedfrechette]

jedfrechette, I think that there is a lot of wisdom in your posting

Hopefully you are right.

Others have already raised these issues on the devel list so Xara is aware of them. I just thought that it might be useful for users, particularly those who may not be very familiar with OSS to hear it.

[stuseven]

Others have already raised these issues on the devel list so Xara is aware of them. I just thought that it might be useful for users, particularly those who may not be very familiar with OSS to hear it.

I have to agree, Jed, thats about the nicest summary of these issues
that Ive seen, even though it's all been talked about, here and elsewhere...
thanks again.

[stuseven]

...ohhhhhhhh... -that- tiny little link, hidden at the bottom of the page...
I missed it completely :-) Thanks for pointing it out, seriously.

Ahem-the link that I mentioned does come from the Xara site, here:

http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/?v=std&?t=

Right hand side, about half way down the page, where the penguin is and it says in big letters:

"Open Source version announced Find out more"