Linux.com article

[geminiguy]

Hmmm. Actually a good point. As pretty much all Linux projects use the donation idea to help along with development, even often making products related to the project, i.e. t-shirts, hats, etc.... and it actually works pretty well.. That would have been a great idea to put some perspective on the interest in the project from the outside.
It would have shown the people at Xara that there are many who use it and are interested in it. They could have done a poll too, to see just how many Linux users would like to see it move on (it would have shown the Linux devs as well). and the poll could have also asked how many would "pay" for it in completed stage.
There should have been an open forum between Linux devs / Xara / and the general public users... Maybe those things would have made a difference, maybe not.

[Vadi]

If you'll look at the usage statistics on autopackage.org: http://www.autopackage.org/statistic...vid=16&days=14

You'll see that Xara is still in quite high demand. On average, there are ~30 installs per day...

[Dai]

why should a developer spend time and effort on it?

Two very good reasons people have over looked.
1. They like the program and want to see it move on
2. To get experience in coding

These are two very good reasons why opensource coders contribute code and there must loads out there that would do so. After all what and how they use there code with other software is still up to them, it's there code.