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.

[geminiguy]

This is the biggest reason that Linux (although mainstream in the commercial / business industry)... will have a long / hard struggle to become mainstream "Home" OS... (if even ever)??
Soquili knows where I stand with these types of devs and their outlook... Too many people view the idiology of "Linux" in a "give me for free" perspective... which is "NOT" what "open-source" means....
But then they just argue that it "is" the idea... and simply dismiss those who disagree as being unequal in intelligence....
It's too bad that Linux Militants ruin all the fun for the rest of us... The negotiation table is closed, so... no big deal, I'll continue to use Xara LX "as is"... it is already quite a useful and enjoyable tool the way it stands... (I use it for more then 1/2 of my output) the rest is with Pro on my XP machine....
Who knows... maybe one day the project will be resurected with devs who are more flexible in their understanding of open-source??
And just maybe an even different engine other than Cairo can be considered, such as Pandora or FryRender??

[con]

lol...if I had a penny for every time I've read "The biggest reason linux wont go mainstream...".

I dont think there is just one reason, and I dont think that what geminiguy wrote really matters at all (no dis-respect). Remember that linux is something like 0.5-2% of the whole Desktop market. Apple has some small share and the rest ~97% is Windows with most of its users very accustomed to paying for software.

[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!