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Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Xara PR

2007/1/5, Martin Wuerthner <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

In message <1168011772.3840.14.camel@xxxxxxxx>
          Paul <paulf.johnson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> An about community support, people know that today Xara Linux is not
>> free source, if the kernel lib is not at least GPL, then it's not
>> free. I understand how hard this decision is for you, but is hard for
>> other people to give their time for a company for free too, instead of
>> giving it to their studies, families... The GPL gives them something
>> in exchange, GPL makes it "their" code too.
>
> The problem isn't so much this, it's more that Xara was (and still is
> for Win32) a commercial product with the kernel having chunks of code in
> which simply can't be released under GPL (licences, copyrights - it gets
> sticky).

Just for the sake of correctness: We are not talking about the XaraLX
kernel here, we are talking about the drawing engine GDraw. The kernel
has been fully open sourced.

And I do not think licences and copyright have been mentioned as being
the main problem with open sourcing the drawing engine.


Seems clear for me. GDraw is a very powerful engine that works very
well. If they make it GPL the entire code is visible, parts of it can
be copied by other companies.
There is a hight risk involved and Xara people were expecting, what
people reaction were to be, the problem, people are expecting as well
that what they said (words)is real(facts).

Remembers me the first meeting I had with a friend of a friend of me:
He:Says nothing.(is expecting me to talk first)
Me:Says nothing(I'm expecting him to talk first)
Output: No communication.


Licences and copyright have been mentioned in other contents: Various
components that are part of the commercial Windows version (e.g., PDF
import and export) have been licensed from third parties, so these
cannot be open sourced and they are simply not part of XaraLX. The
drawing engine, on the other hand, is required and is currently
included as an object file without source code.


I don't think this is so important, just remember what happened with
the Netscape code with the same problems. People in the open source
work can buy code as well (like blender) if necessary.

    Jose Hevia