Please stop politics on Xara forums !

This will be my last message on Talkgraphics forums.

I cannot accept that XaraLX forum were closed on a so political and irrespective message : http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...6&postcount=39

The greatest universally renowned flemish painters in the Renaissance were closely concerned by the invention and fabrication of oil painting which was a true revolution. At all times artists were extremely involved in the evolution of their media.

It's totally inexact to say that artists aren't concerned by programmers work !!! Not later than yesterday a Belgian comics designer (and they aren't so bad...) remained three hours with me at a demo of Inkscape and XaraLX I did at a little free software exhibition organized by the students on Louvain-la-Neuve University campus.

Sorry, now I am going out.

ivan

I fail to see 'politics' in Covoxer's posting. :confused: What he wrote seemed like a realistic assessment of reality. I don't see him saying "artists aren't concerned by programmers work". Of course artists respect the work of programers who develop tools -- but that respect alone isn't likely enough to motivate someone to create tools for others.

Sorry Ivan if you have trouble with all this.

regards, Ross

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It's totally inexact to say that artists aren't concerned by programmers work !!!

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Ivan I truly hope this is a misunderstanding, I cannot see where John said that artists are not concerned by programmers work?
Is this the line you are referring to?

"..artists prefer XaraLX, programmers prefer Inkscape..."


The decision to archive the Xtreme for Linux forum was discussed and made many hours before John's post in the Xaralx progress! thread. The forum was closed not on his but on Bill's final post.

Please reconsider - we'll miss you :(

ce sont des cruches, on a perdu pas mal de brave types a ceux qui roulent des pallots a Xara, sa me surprend pas ke ten a plein le cu

always sad to lose talented poeple, happening a lot these days :(

ciao

Ivan, I wish you wouldn't go!
If you must, though, please know you will be missed!
---Maya

Well the only political in it was the phrase 'communism', and that it doesn`t work. Well, Capitalism seems to work fine, if you forget how trilion billions
seem to evaporate and the whole system needs like a trillion billion injection
rendering your old age pension allmost worthless.

What I see, in games, that programmers provide sloppy work and they hardly bother really to fix all the things, because the MODmakers make the game
interesting and playable in many cases. Also my pinnacle studio version 9
never ever got completely debugged, "oh, just buy the next version, some bugs will be sorted" I mean, that proves they sold me a bad product and have no intention of fixing the product. And in this way capitalism works, because I won`t buy their products anymore, they don`t really seem to mind ;)

Are all wishes met in XX4 etc? No. Plenty of wishes left which havent been
attended for many years, I read here sometimes (Don`t get me wrong, I really like the program, and since I am an amateur, all the things provided seem fine to me)so even commercial products don`t fully tend to the customer. But mostly the big common denominator is met.

And now enough of my rant ;)

Hi Ivan,

I feel bad to hear, that you will stop your postings here.

Regarding to the Open Source discussion: Xara Xtreme LX was started as an interesting project, but it is now more popular as an bad example within the Open Source community, which other companies or developers can learn from. The Open Source community works different as Xara Ltd. thought and I'm sure they wanted to see this project has never started. I don't blame Xare or the two or three Open Source developers who are interested in this project for this. Every side has learned a lesson and without learning we will see no progress.

Regarding to John's opinion about the quality of Open Source software: I don't see it in this negative way. Instead, I'm very happy that a lot of developers are willing to develop Open Source software and that there are great alternatives available in competition with the commercial products.

Regards,
Remi

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Originally Posted by ascerbic

(oh no, they are throwing puddings at me, war of the open source against anti open source puddings EEEK LOLOLOLOL

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Never saw a war... missed the pudding throwing too.. :confused:

If it's free (and usable) -- I'm there! Never saw an "anti" anything. I certainly did not see any "EEEK LOLOLOLOL" (whatever that means?) :confused:

Ivan, (if you still come back to read this) -- We have met in person and have shared Quebec cheese, wine, beer and a too rushed prime sushi dinner... Did you see me as having horns and a devil's tail and being a hateful and disrespectful person? I was a TG mod (at the time). :(

I have not met the mods here but I'm 100% sure they are trying to keep things as sane as possible for the community as whole -- they really are here for TG (no matter what the usual whiners think they know).

Being a moderator is difficult (making everyone happy is impossible). Working out language is difficult... Ivan, we also struggled with language but we worked it out because we wanted to make it work... All I'm asking is that you keep "language" in mind -- things are misunderstood all the time when the web clashes with cultures and language (and emotions).

Ivan, I see you as very, very, intelligent and a humble man... With great ideas and a drive (with an ultimate goal) that puts us as all at shame here at TG (I hope it will work out for you). All I want to say is, you met me in person and according to some, I'm the biggest ******* that ever volunteered his time here... The current mods have more patience (and better language skills) than I ever had. They are good people!

You post great ideas and techniques... And people do read and take note and learn, even though they don't always comment. There is no reason for a "last post" -- PM a mod and talk it over and you will see that they are not bad people.

Ivan, you don't need to leave... Take some time... More people than you could ever imagine enjoy your posts here at TG. Things spill over (from all kinds of places) and get all mixed up... You need to be here at TG. Period!

Drop me a PM if you want to talk in private.

Risto

Knowing the reasons behind this Ivan, I respect them

TG will be the poorer for your not being here, and that is a real shame for the community, we shall miss you

But I know you will be active as ever in the things that matter to you, as should we all be, and that is what counts

I wish you all the very best, and if you do decide to return we shall all be very pleased to welcome you back

votre ami dans un monde de changement
steve

I apologise for the violence of my reaction after seeing the closure of XaraLX forum.

And Risto, Steve, Maya, Ross, Remi, Sledger, Ankhor, Ascerbic (and possibly others before I post), thanks for your sympathy and your reactions. I will not leave Talkgraphics forums ; your friendship convinced me.

In fact I continue to use some commercial software, including XX4 because I am not an ideologist nor a pure theoretician (even if I think that philosophising a bit and putting things in perspective is absolutely indispensable).

However the coincidence between that and the - to my opinion - shocking last message in the xaralx progress thread was explosive for me ! I continue to feel the contents of this message as very offending not only because a lot of assertions inside are hazardous, but also because of its quiet certitude about the sort of "elitism" and the often bad quality of free software.

And Covoxer, if you read this thread, I wouldn't offend you, but your developer's status mentioned under your name give you the power to convince most people of the universal truth of what you are saying. But this kind of power is also a big responsibility and to my sense being so assertive without specifying that you only expressed your personal opinion is not fair.
Now on which kind of informations you build your opinion is another kind of thing. I think in this area even statistics fail to demonstrate anything... and of course statistics could be biased by the position of who did or who read them. But in any case truth requires humility.

Now I would detail my own opinion about what you wrote.

"the usual and predictable failure of the open source scheme"

Ideological or naïve or badly informed ?

"the open source was invented as model of developing software by programmers for programmers"

Wrong because at the origins free programmers were users first (see below)

"programmers tend to develop software that they need or want or like to develop"

Of course if programmers were only programmers and completely isolated from the real life... that could be a big problem.

But most brilliant free software programmers and developers I know have another occupation and they became programmers and developers for the following reasons :

- 1° because the commercial software they use doesn't match their goals and they may not touch and change it ;

- 2° because using only commercial software can limit the free circulation and communication of ideas and knowledge (that was one of the origins of the idea of the GPL) ;

- 3° because at some point commercial software could limit the freedom of expression (which of course is the case when programming is part of this expression).

Free software programmers aren't some kind of Gods. They are human, communicative and accessible persons who share the best they can do. A lot of them are true artists or true scientists, or true "amateurs" in the purest and nicest sense of this word (like amateur gardeners or amateur naturalists who play a so important role in the circulation of knowledge) !

"artists prefer XaraLX, programmers prefer Inkscape"

Just an opinion and to my sense a very narrow interpretation of the words "artists" and "programmers" (see above).

"Open source is generally not the best approach at developing software. It lacks the regulating factor. In commercial model the market always balances demand and proposition [....] the most effective regulating factor is a market, and so the demand is best covered with commercial software"

Ideological or naïve, I don't know... But at the lights of today's (and successive) economics crisis one should be very prudent before speaking about "regulating factors"...

"If the demand is represented by the non programming group, it will never be properly fulfilled"

In fact this is exactly the contrary. If I only take today's Inkscape development, bug correction and addition of new features asked by the "non programming" users are extremely fast.
And I must add that if the "Dear Xara" section of Talkgraphics forums is very welcome, useful and constructive, it was waited for a long time while this kind of communication has always been the base of free software development. I wouldn't offend anybody at Xara saying that and I am sure they know that.

"While the application software is extremely poor, badly developed and of low quality if present at all, comparing to commercial world"

I don't know what you mean by "quality". Of course if you speak about "Total Look" interfaces in some cases. But otherwise and about richness of functionalities your assertion is mostly wrong.

...

ivan

Sorry, exceptionally my post was a little bit too long and technically rejected because of that.

Here are the last paragraphs :

..."It's like a communism - it works only when everyone is a communist"

But this is the same for every kind of "ism". "Ism's" always arises when lazy theoreticians have found the way to stop thinking, and afterwards "ism's" are imposed to people (by the "regulating factor" of imposed political correctness) with the goal of limiting their free thinking.

Perhaps that could have been better if I titled "Please stop ism's on Xara forums"... ;)

ivan

This is the reason why I love it to have you here at TG, Ivan!
This is a very well balanced and profounded answer from your side. *thumbs up*

Regards,
Remi

Ivan good to have you back.

We all have opinions (good or bad) about open-source software and I think there is one important principle to consider that includes the open-source software debate, but isn't limited to it:

We should allow people to express their opinions, respect them even if they are different to ours, provided they do no harm to people. The fact that another may not agree with what we might say, need not diminish our own view and we need not feel threatened or insulted by it - eventually we may consider that what they say has merit, despite being different to our own view.

In the context of open-source I don't think that there is a wrong or right view - people can easily come to a different conclusion about the merits of open-source software depending on their perspective.

In this respect covoxer makes interesting points as do you, though I doubt that either of you is "right" or "wrong" or even profound.

Whatever our view it's good to hear alternative viewpoints and there's no point in expressing our own view if we cannot tolerate listening to the differing views of others.

Welcome back.

Paul

[who believes that everyone is entitled to a view, even if it's different to my own and therefore entirely wrong.. ;-) ]

First of all, thank you for not leaving community. And for commenting my post. I was really wondering why it hurts you so bad.
I'll try to explain all the things you had commented. But before I continue, let me assure you that there is no principal contradiction between my message and your point of view. It's just a pitiful misunderstanding.

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Originally Posted by ivan louette

And Covoxer, if you read this thread, I wouldn't offend you, but your developer's status mentioned under your name give you the power to convince most people of the universal truth of what you are saying. But this kind of power is also a big responsibility and to my sense being so assertive without specifying that you only expressed your personal opinion is not fair.

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As I'm going to explain now, all I said is generally true. I'm ready to edit or delete my post if anyone proves it wrong.

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"the usual and predictable failure of the open source scheme"
Ideological or naïve or badly informed ?

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No, logical. I had explained this later in my post. There is demand? Yes. Is there a proposition? No. Are people happy? No. Isn't it a failure?

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"the open source was invented as model of developing software by programmers for programmers"
Wrong because at the origins free programmers were users first (see below)

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:) So I have to clarify what I meant by "programmers" and "users". Obviously, programmer is a person who writes programs. User is a person who uses programs. But since every person that uses computer including programmers, uses programs, so everyone is user. But far not everyone is a programmer. That's why under "user" I assumed person that is not a programmer (who can not write programs). I didn't thought this can be confusing. Sorry about this.

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"programmers tend to develop software that they need or want or like to develop"
Of course if programmers were only programmers and completely isolated from the real life... that could be a big problem.
But most brilliant free software programmers and developers I know have another occupation and they became programmers and developers for the following reasons :
- 1° because the commercial software they use doesn't match their goals and they may not touch and change it ;
- 2° because using only commercial software can limit the free circulation and communication of ideas and knowledge (that was one of the origins of the idea of the GPL) ;
- 3° because at some point commercial software could limit the freedom of expression (which of course is the case when programming is part of this expression).

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You are absolutely right! And so am I. As you say, they just do what they want/need/like to do. Right? There's no problem with this for programmers at all of course. After all, if it was, they wouldn't do it right? And as I said in my controversial post - if everyone become a programmer(well, at least majority of users), then there will be no need in commercial software any more! :)
But unfortunately, most users can not become a programmer as you understand.

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Free software programmers aren't some kind of Gods. They are human, communicative and accessible persons who share the best they can do. A lot of them are true artists or true scientists, or true "amateurs" in the purest and nicest sense of this word (like amateur gardeners or amateur naturalists who play a so important role in the circulation of knowledge) !

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Where was I saying opposite? After all I'm one of them.

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"artists prefer XaraLX, programmers prefer Inkscape"
Just an opinion and to my sense a very narrow interpretation of the words "artists" and "programmers" (see above).

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Unfortunately, from what we all know it is a fact. I'm sure you are familiar with LX thread. Now think about it - how many people were asking and still are, for the LX to be developed? They were not programmers. I assumed them artists because of the nature of this program. On the other hand - how many people are developing LX? None. These are the programmers. So artists want LX, it's a fact, and none of the programmers (including those programmers who are artists at the same time) wants to develop it.
I'm not sure what do you mean by narrow interpretation, but there's not a single artist/programmer who develops LX that I'm aware of. So am I wrong?

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"Open source is generally not the best approach at developing software. It lacks the regulating factor. In commercial model the market always balances demand and proposition [....] the most effective regulating factor is a market, and so the demand is best covered with commercial software"
Ideological or naïve, I don't know... But at the lights of today's (and successive) economics crisis one should be very prudent before speaking about "regulating factors"...

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Well, we don't live that bad today, do we?;) The market as a regulating factor exists for thousands years and better replacement had not been invented yet even in theory. It started from the time when division of labor became unavoidable due to the technological evolution. In ancient times, everyone was producing everything he needs with his own hands. But since people wanted to live better (and still do), they needed more complicated goods and services. Thus professional specialization was necessary to master ever growing complexity of the labor. With a specialization became trade. People had to trade goods produced by other professions with their own products. But how to make it so that there are enough products of all kinds? Some controlling mechanism is required. The free market is one of them. It is self regulating and it is naturally easy to implement. It has flaws of course, but as I say, all known alternatives are much worse.
So, at the lights of any crisis, was it 70 years ago or today, it only shows how people that try to control market can destabilize it. It shows flaws of the particular implementation of the market, not the principle of it.

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"If the demand is represented by the non programming group, it will never be properly fulfilled"
In fact this is exactly the contrary. If I only take today's Inkscape development, bug correction and addition of new features asked by the "non programming" users are extremely fast.

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Yes. But that's because your interest in this product IS represented by demand in programming group. Ask them to develop LX and you'll see what I mean.

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And I must add that if the "Dear Xara" section of Talkgraphics forums is very welcome, useful and constructive, it was waited for a long time while this kind of communication has always been the base of free software development. I wouldn't offend anybody at Xara saying that and I am sure they know that.

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As far as I know, there are much more developers working on Inkscape than on Xtreme. But that's not the point. You see, I was talking about regulatory function of the market because it's a market that fulfills the demand with proposition. Think about it. If you need any kind of software and you are not alone, you'll find it on a market. And nobody who wants this software have to become a programmer. It's quite different story when you become a programmer though. As I say - open source works well for programmers (better than commercial). Market works for everyone.

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"While the application software is extremely poor, badly developed and of low quality if present at all, comparing to commercial world"
I don't know what you mean by "quality". Of course if you speak about "Total Look" interfaces in some cases. But otherwise and about richness of functionalities your assertion is mostly wrong.

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Quality of software consists of many factors and in many aspects is a subjective thing. Nevertheless, statistically, most open source application projects never reach release stage being permanent betas. Product in beta stage is positioned by the developer as a product with insufficient quality for public use. Simply, program doesn't work as well as is expected.
There are exceptions of course, there are brilliant open source programs, of very high quality, but this is not the rule.
One more thing, you say "richness of functionality". Many projects have very high functionality indeed, and no one can deny it. But functionality is not the only factor that makes software great. For example, take a Virtual Dub (I'm sure you know it). Quite simple program, with limited functionality. But isn't it great? Subjectively of course, but supported by opinion of quite a huge number of users it is really brilliant program. On the other hand take a Gimp. A whole lot of functionality, but is it great? Well, maybe for someone... after all it's all subjective... ;)

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..."It's like a communism - it works only when everyone is a communist"
But this is the same for every kind of "ism".

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Some "ism's" for sure, but not all. Humanism or realism have nothing to do with this. ;) I was making this metaphor on communism because it has some ideological similarities to the open source. But you are right, I could say as well that "fascism works only for fascists" or something like this. :)
I support what you say about "ism's". Including both "opensourcism" and "antiopensourcism" if you know what I mean. I tend to view things in a sensible light and hope everyone follows.
I'm definitely not an enemy of the open source. I know it's successes very well, as well as it's failures. As you can easily see, I have never said that open source is useless or something like this. I just say that it is not an universal answer for the software demand. On the other hand, it is very good that there is alternative to the commercial software. After all if it wasn't good, it would never reach this level.

:D Wonderful news! I'm so glad you'll stay, Ivan! :D

I enjoy a beautiful open source free program called Stellarium. It is updated and continues to impress me. It is a planetarium program with a lot of power and it is really beautiful in appearance besides. If you'd like to take a look at it, see here. http://www.stellarium.org/
---Maya

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Originally Posted by Crow Haven

...I enjoy a beautiful open source free program called Stellarium.

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Hallelujah! They've finally added useful date entry functions!

I'm glad you are here, too, Ivan. I agree with your perspective, and Stellarium is just one example of what is right about Open Source (although it took them an awful long time!). But the Xtreme experiment shows that, sadly, not everything can be Open Sourced and work well. Perhaps that is because of a bad fit between 'commercial' and OS, but at least Charles and team tried. Coxover's implication that the market makes things work, and other methods don't, was good for a chuckle.

Best wishes

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Originally Posted by David O'Neil

Coxover's implication that the market makes things work, and other methods don't, was good for a chuckle.

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Perhaps instead of chuckling you can name an alternative?

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Originally Posted by covoxer

If you are too limited to read entire sentence then chuckle. Limited people love tu chuckle.

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Please, limit your attacks only to ideas and attitudes, otherwise this thread could be closed by mods while it could be only at its beginnings ;) And a very constructive one, I am sure !

kindly,
ivan

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Originally Posted by ivan louette

Please, limit your attacks only to ideas and attitudes, otherwise this thread could be closed by mods while it could be only at its beginnings ;) And a very constructive one, I am sure !

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Yes, you are right. But how constructive is taking quotes out of context? Chuckling without argumentation?

welcome back Ivan :D:cool:

'the more things change, the more they stay the same'

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Originally Posted by covoxer

Perhaps instead of chuckling you can name an alternative?

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One alternative is already being discussed in this thread, and I've already commented on it.

I must have missed something .... What "alternative" was being discussed?

Oh, and can I please add my appreciation for you not leaving the forums Ivan. You are an inspiration to others at Talkgraphics, with some of the wonderful things that you have posted.

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Originally Posted by ss-kalm

.... What "alternative" was being discussed?

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Open source.

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Originally Posted by David O'Neil

Open source.

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No, it isn't.

John, is this a "last word" game?

;) Remi

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Originally Posted by remi

John, is this a "last word" game?

;) Remi

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No, it isn't.



:D:D:D:D

Happy to hear this. ;) :D