Linux.com article

[jedfrechette]

Over the weekend Linux.com posted an article discussing lessons learned over the last two years of Xara's open source adventure.

http://www.linux.com/feature/119790

Best,

[con]

I'd say this is a perfect case of live-by-the-sword-die-by-the-sword, for both sides.

[jbus]

The article is dead on... there is absolutely no way Xara can expect developers to volunteer time on a project that can easily be pulled from under the developers feet at any moment. That's exactly what the problem is here. By keeping a crucial part of Xara Xtreme under wraps, they are putting doubts in developers minds about the willingness of Xara to continue supporting the project. If Xara were to pull the plug on the project, what would the developers have to show for their work? Nothing. They couldn't fork it without reworking everything and why would anyone want to do that when they could contribute to Inkscape or other projects?

Ultimately Xara wanted developers to volunteer with no guarantees that their work would amount to anything. That's laughable and shows the lack of understanding Xara has for the open source community.

On a side note, Xara could have their way with CDraw as well as save this project and their reputation by having Xara developers start a port of Xara Xtreme based on Cairo or (much faster) QT that is fully open. In any case, it would have to be a serious effort, minus the stagnation and lip service.

[remi]

Come on guys, the project is dead - so what? Whining about the fact that a company isn't willing to give their jewels out to "the open source community" is a waste of time.

The Linux.com article (together with the additional comments from the author within the Xara Developer mailing list) makes me feel, that this kind of "open source community" seems to be a Kindergarten - another lesson learned from this project.

Remi

[con]

I totally agree with you remi. Alot ppl are definatly acting very childish and giving the whole (FLOSS, GNU and so forth) community a bad name. And the stuff on the mailinglist from the last few days is infact embarrasing, I dont even wanna show my sig

[Soquili]

I agree Remi and Con. I read through the current dev mailing list at xaraxtreme.org and was very disappointed in Philipp Schmieder's attitude and rather poor understanding of Open Source.

Linux has been around for over 15 years and the concept of Open Source Software is over 30 years old. It is suprising how many people appear to think that Open Source is a relatively recent innovation. The Free Software Movement launched in 1983 was not associated with the older custom of some software vendors to supply the source code along with the binaries. In the mid 1970s Digital Research, makers of Control Program for Microcomputers (CP/M) provided the source code when you bought the software directly from their company.

Historical Note: CP/M was developed to be a Unix like operating system that would run on the *new* microprocessor systems. Almost 20 years later Linux was developed to be a Unix like operating system that would run on an IBM compatible PC which ran DOS that was backward compatible with CP/M.

Open Source is to allow people to make changes as they need them. The code for the CDRAW core is not needed to make any changes to use, modify for a specific distro, or add features to XaraLX.

I suppose I should not be suprised that there are people that want to have everything for free. I see people accept a job then complain when they are required to actually work for a pay check.

[stuseven]

+ every time I see this "argument", one important
example comes to mind - and, I'll say, the linux com
article cannot be taken to represent most linux users...
anybody can start a website with linux in the name.

In truth, Linux has grown, NOT by following the suggestions
of that article, but, instead, by being as flexible as possible
in including packages, as they are made available from
whatever source.

As for the example, look at Adobe's totally without cost to
linux users, Acro-read... tens of thousands of happy linux
users... but Adobe did not hand over their code, or right
to their product... they simply shared a useful tool with the
linux community.

[Dai]

Pity this project is no longer being developed for Linux. I've just found it and like it a lot. I'm not a developer I'm not a graphics expert what I do know is I don't care all I want is a good programme like Xtreme to be free. I don't really care whether it is fully open, semi open I only want it to be free and to be improved.
Now not being very good at graphics, learning xtreme is easier than learning inkscape IMHO. One contributor said that the core engine does not need to be opensource for developrs to improve or adjust xtreme to make it better. Forget the puritan view with only Gimp and Inkscape as the only two tidy graphics programs in the opensource community, can the Linux community afford not to help Xara with Xtreme. We need more quality programs and the code that is developed in Xtreme can then be used in Inkscape or Gimp and vice versa. There must be some sort of half way house in development of software even mysql has a version you can buy (even if it is only support in mysql, Even Linux it self in the form of redhat, Suse sell versions of the operating system) surely the industry can come to a good compromise on something that is proprietery and open otherwise the biggest loser will be the opensource community. Even if you end up a product at under £50/$50 that's better than Adobe for that price every one wins. Even a strategy of normal and pro (normal free, pro pay for) is better than no development in Xtreme. This is just my two peneth wort on the subject.

On February 20 Carl Worth -- the principal developer of Cairo -- volunteered to do just that. Worth excised the CDraw library from Xara LX, replaced each call with a dummy function, and posted the code to his public Git repository. Moir replied with an offer to host the code on Xara's servers, and even develop it as an official, parallel branch of Xara LX.

We have a fully 100% open version now lets run with it. We can't afford not not to!

[geminiguy]

That's my entire point.... You want it "free"?? Why should it be free for some and not for others?? Why should Xara just simply give it to you for free??
This is exactly my point with many Linux users.... they want and expect that all the software is free... This is exactly why many other types of developers refuse to format for Linux... Why should they??
Do you realize what it costs a company to format their software for Linux??? Why would they go through all that work and spend all that $$$ just to simply give it away?
Linux does not mean "everything free" This is not its basis of ideology. And this, is just one of many reasons that this project completely flopped.
There is someone still working with it though, as we continue to get updated versions, and I thank that or those people
If the project were ever to be finished / complete and Xara said "Ok, now... that will be $79.00 please" I would more than happily fork over the dough.... because it's great software... Im not gonna get mad and not use it cuz it should be free because Im a Linux user.....
But I would truly like to know your reason as to why it should be "free" for you and other linux users.... when everyone else pays $79.00 for it?? (BTW a much more than reasonable price for such a great software... compaired to up to $700.00 for others which are not even as good or user friendly)
But I guess that's not enough..... in Xara's end

[ss-kalm]

Well said Paul, I couldn't agree more!