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Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Ping
> From: frank gaude'
> Sent: 15 February 2007 16:45
> Okay, I wonder if Xara Ltd. would issue a statement that the
> binary is not copyrighted, only the source? I wonder, once a
> company has released a binary as "free", can they ever take
> it back? Charles, what say you?
Well it's good point. I'm not sure of the actual legal situation, but
personally I'd share the opinion of the others that once it's out there
free (as in beer) we can't take it back. It's a bit like the Microsoft
I agree with this. This is the OSS rules and in the end is great, (for
the users). I know you have made a lot of work with this...
Why not to sell GDraw freedom to GPL?
You put a price, say 1.000.000 USD and let the people summit money
over some time amount, as it was done with Blender. There are people
(poor and rich people) and companies out there willing to pay the
price to incorporate this technology into Linux, and yes for
Copying-moving parts of it for other uses.
Not all OSS people like it because of the "free as a beer" part.
Seems like nobody else is watching, but only one in a hundred people
write something here, rest remain listening.
If Xara doesn't free GDraw:
Microsoft is going to release it's own graphics package, it will be
slow, but nobody cares, because it will be included in the software
installed in 99 percent computers, and maybe includes acceleration
trough Direct X. It will integrate seamlessly in Office(using their
proprietary graphic format) and people will love it.
Adobe will continue its business with Flash technology, seems very fast too.
Linux will continue collaborating with Inkscape, Krita and XXX, where
XXX is a new program done by a lone hacker in the other part of the
world, extended by a bunch of other hackers.
fonts. They released them under a free license, and try and they might
to hide and no longer distribute them, they were released under a free
license and remains available for free for all Linux users (despite, I'm
sure, Microsoft's wish they could un-free them).
Why? Microsoft earns a lot of money giving "presents" to others, in my
University, they give away licenses of Windows and Developer tools for
free.
Maybe they will prefer keep their code-work safe and letting students
use-learn another software.
I'd also point out that the binary should be pretty stable. To be honest
we barely changed the GDraw dll as used in the Windows version over a
ten year period. i.e. the product itself has evolved enormously (as can
the Linux one) without requiring any change to the CDraw binary.
The problem with a binary block is that it is a brick. Changes in
processor type(smp 64-128 bits), it doesn't work. It's like having an
old graphic card you can't use because it was compiled for a previous
version of Windows, and there is no current driver for it.
It won't be included in distros base, so not really open source.
Jose