Re. CDraw vs. cairo, as I understand it:

CDraw is clever and fast, it is an important part of Xara's ability to earn money so the Xara people can eat. If it were open sourced, Xara are afraid that nobody would have a reason to pay them any more and they would starve. Maybe there is a patent in there somewhere too, or other IP rights difficulties, I don't know.

But because CDraw is not open to be modified by anybody, the free software community have a moral objection. Cairo overcomes this objection, at the cost of speed.

The obvious answer is to make two versions available:
1. An open-source cairo version, obtainable for free.
2. A pay-for CDraw version, fast enough for the professionals.

The only other way would be to convince the Xara folk that they really have more to gain than to lose by opening-up CDraw. I don't know how that could be done, though. Maybe the situation would have to change radically first, for example if the corporate user base ever gets large enough for Xara to survive on support contracts.

Oh, yeah, and another way would be to speed up cairo ;-(