Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Ping

[Roger Luethi <collector@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:31:10 +0100, Charles Moir wrote:
> they are being ported to LX. But it's a pity that we don't see more
> external activity from other outside devs on the product.  Perhaps
> people think Xara LX is good enough now.

I am an OSS dev, too. I agree with Tobias that the community thing is
tricky. There is no proven way to success, but there are well established
paths to failure. AFAICS Xara is lacking in two areas: exposure and trust.

Xara is not included in OSS distributions, let alone the default drawing
program in any of them. Very few Linux users I talk to heard of it (Windows
user neither -- they seem to know mostly what everyone's pirating). The
only reason I keep track of Xara is that I was an early and happy Artworks
user on RISC OS, way back when.

Unlike Tobias, though, I'm not using Xara. I did some work investigating
the long start up time early on, but lost interest when I realized that the
Cdraw issue could remain unresolved forever. Correct me if I'm wrong, but
it appears that if you remove all the parts that are not OSS from Xara LX
you are left with a non-functional heap of code. Thus, Xara LX is not an
OSS program. Now I can't speak for all potential contributors, but in my
experience OSS developers tend to be rather finicky about such problems.

FWIW, I'd be happy to make a sponsorship contribution as suggested by
Tobias -- provided it is for an OSS program.

Roger