RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] Ping

[Alex Bligh <alex@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tamlin,

--On 18 February 2007 21:52 +0100 tamlin@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Anyway, if this is your view of free software developers wanting to
> improve LX, that they are to be accused of "jeopardising the revenue
> and jobs of the staff working on the product" I find it amusing you're
> dissatisfied with the amount of interest you got from external
> developers. Perhaps you should go public with this view to really make
> sure all pointential free software developers know about it. I'm sure
> they would just _love_ Xara after this is made clear.

If you had contributed just one line of code to the project so far, I might
feel inclined to give your arguments some credibility. If I've missed a
commit, please do tell me, but as far as I know, you haven't. I have,
rather a lot. On that basis, I get to say the following:

There is a certain type of OSS developer who spends more time arguing
about licensing, who might or might not have libeled whom (clue: if
you think you have been libeled, it's YOU who should be consulting
a lawyer), and arguing about other people's motivation, than actually
contributing any code. I suppose there's a parallel here with Godwin's
law. Right now, you appear to be the epitome of this caricature.

Charles is (perhaps was, after the Magix buyout, I don't know, and it isn't
relevant) a director of Xara. Given every recent message from you has
referenced the law, you should also know that in law, a director has a duty
to the commercial interests of the company. Like several other projects
(but unlike many others), LX is supposed to be a *collaboration* (you may
need a dictionary to help you with that one) between the open source
community and a commercial entity. If you didn't understand that from the
start, then you are quite right, you have wasted your time. A collaboration
means that both parties work for their combined benefit. Equally, for a
collaboration to continue, both parties have to contribute positively
(which I think was Charles' point)/ It is surely obvious Xara aren't going
to do things with the open-source version that they believe will jeopardise
their own commercial future - pick one commercial company working in the
open source community who does this? Sure, this means they have an "agenda"
in that respect; but even without involvement of commercial entities,
people are only too willing to criticize people for having "an agenda".

As for making his intentions clear, I seem to remember Charles spoke for
about an hour at Libre in Lyon on precisely this subject when the project
was launched. I believe he's given other interviews too. His line has
always been (as far as I can recall) that CDraw would be released when the
open-source project gained some traction, and he didn't want the code flow
to be solely one way. Seems to me he's always been clear he wasn't
going to actively help people port the code to Win32 when Linux & Mac
were the target platform. Why should he?

Don't get me wrong, I wish CDraw source was released too (mostly because I
do think it acts as a barrier to getting LX into distros, and in attracting
other developers). And I suspect an impartial observer might suggest I have
a rather larger stake in this than you. However, I am grown up enough to
understand other people's points of view, and their own constraints and
motivations. Hence I don't throw my rattle out the pram, accuse people of
acting in bad faith, of copyright infringement, libel etc. etc.

Alex