Update and news from Charles Moir

[Skadge]

Some interesting news on the dev-list :

I was asking some update on the status, and I got within 5 min this answer from Charles:

The project is not stopped. We continue to check in any submitted patches and improvements as always and do daily builds etc. Our internal developers are tied up with other priorities right now, but of course we welcome and will support all and any external developers willing to contribute to the project.

I hope to have a more detailed statement about the future of the project soon.

Charles

Then, concerning the closed source CDraw:

But why is this the big question?

The source code of all the product is available with the exception of
CDraw rendering core. This doesn't stop the product working. We make the
binary of this available for free to be distributed with Xara Xtreme.
(And increasing numbers of distros are distributing completely closed
source products such as Flash Player and Adobe Reader, and most Linux
users have these installed even where they are not distributed as part
of the OS). The lack of CDraw source code certainly doesn't stop Xtreme
being progressed and developed by any interested developers if they were
interested in helping us progress the product.

So isn't it a bit of red-herring to be focussed on this small part only?

We've held back on CDraw partly because it's simply not necessary to
have the source code of this to develop, improve, fix bugs, add new
features or all the other things that I'd imagine most users would be
looking for. It's obvious this part is complete, and works perfectly
well (as you can tell using the product), so why the fixation on CDraw?

The original plan and hope was, if you recall, that *together* the
community and Xara would help create a world (and Microsoft and Adobe)
beating product. Well Xara have put a huge amount of time, money and
effort into the product so far, and we've got great result, but there's
not much 'together' in this so far.

So we still hope and look forward to the time where the community can
help us develop the product and achieve that original goal to create the
best graphics product that has ever existed on the Linux (and other)
platforms. We're still working very hard to make that happen.

Charles

Nice to know that people are still alive, working on the project. I think the Xara team wasn't enough thanked for what they've accomplished. Their application is great ! So: thank you !

[con]

So theyre waiting for outside devs...damn, if I had the skills I'd start hacking right away...Guess I could do some translating...is there a page where I could find out what languages Xara is already translated to?

Thanks for posting Skadge

[fjgaude]

Personally, Charles Moir's feelings about CDRAW as a binary is valid. Consider what has happened with Novell joining forces with Microsoft, and Ubuntu joining with Linspire: we see a blend of proprietary and open source.

What does it gain us to be pure, pure OSS? The world needs more folks working together to achieve a goal. Everyone has to make a living one way or the other. The folks at Xara Ltd. that did most of the coding to get Linux version to where it is deserve our thanks, even though they were working on salary during the time.

There is nothing like Xara on Linux. I've worked with Inkscape off and on and even with its latest update, Gaussian blur, and it is almost an embarrassment to go from using Xara to Inkscape, because of the loss of speed, quickness, and increase in key strokes and complexity.

So let's give Xara team a big thanks for what they have done so far, and ask others who have the ability to help, to please help, in creating a most worthy design software.

frank

[eobet]

And again, not a word about the OS X version...

[Soquili]

I think people are missing the point about Open Source Software. Linux and/or OS X developers other than Xara Group Ltd (now owned by Magix) employees should not be expected to produce all the work.

Developers from the Linux and OS X communities are required for any Open Source program to prosper. Waiting for Xara to dedicate develpers and money is not what Open Source is about.

The fact that Xara Group Ltd was bought by another company is a very good indicator they do not and have not had assets that allow them to devote a lot of time and money they cannot afford.

Charles nor anyone else can say work on OS X or the Linux version can be expected to have a deadline. Reading through the mail lists there have been few OS X developers available or willing to give of their time.

Just my 2 cents (USD) which is worthless for anything today (even a gumball costs 25 cents ).

[StevenWWinters]

Has Xara ever stated whether source for cdraw will be released? I thought the plan was for it to be, but perhaps that has changed...

[ajdlinux]

It *is* important to have an open source CDraw because until then Xara is Free Software that depends on non-Free Software. This means, for example, that Xara must be in Debian's non-free repository, rather than 'main'. If CDraw was open sourced there's a much bigger chance that Debian users and users of other 'completely free' distros would install it.

Projects that run on an open source platform (Linux), are open source in themselves (like xara) but depend on a closed library (CDraw) generally aren't all that well received by the community.

If it's such a small deal releasing CDraw as open source then why doesn't Xara just do it? It could get more attention then.

[ThomasHoward]

Ahh, so this is why progress has been so slow, seems to me that its Xara that isn't coming to the party regarding Xara LX being open source, the fact that it isn't being open sourced in its entirety will repel many people who would otherwise work on it.

I hope this project using Cairo instead succeeds, because otherwise Xara LX probably wont get very far.

[Avatar]

I hope this project using Cairo instead succeeds, because otherwise Xara LX probably wont get very far.

Any news about this?

I'm really excited to try this version of xara, sure that will get a powerful help from the commuinty

I read that the fork is hosted on Magix servers

[remi]

The only news are, that there is no progress with Xara Xtreme for Linux. It's also not the goal to create a fork. Instead, the work should go into the current code base and Charles said, that Xara Ltd. is willing to support this (the server is the good old www.xaraxtreme.org server). The only problem is, that there are no developers known, who are working on this project.

Regards,
Remi