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RE: [Inkscape-devel] RE:Xara Announcement
by Charles Moir 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

> From: MenTaLguY [mailto:mental@...3...] > Sent: 14 October 2005 21:49 > > So why doesn't someone do a sort of Ultra-draw wrapper super-API library > > thing that we can both use. i.e. it provide one super-set rendering API > > that itself calls down to XaraDraw, Cairo, Quartz depending on user or > > program preferences. And then we'd both use this ultra-draw and both > > gain the desired benefits. Quartz, Cairo and XaraDraw are similar enough > > to make this not too huge a job I would guess. > > I would be reluctant to introduce yet another new API. I've been > peripherally involved in the Cairo effort, and have learned that good > API design is VERY hard in this area. Well yes, you're right the last thing anyone needs I more APIs, but on the other hand Cairo has a pretty limited feature set (but on the positive side, seems super-clean, very simple and that's worth a great deal.) > However, I suspect XaraDraw doesn't owe its speed so much to the > specific rasterization backend as to a "retained-mode" layer which can > do caching and optimization of drawing calls? Almost a great deal of the speed of Xara X1 and predecessors is the rasterizer backend (but the main object tree is designed around calling this efficiently). In Xtreme we added a bitmap caching layer which can make substantial further speed-up for groups, layers, shadows, feathered stuff, blends, etc, which otherwise an be relatively slow to render. > Cairo pretty much only does rasterization; it provides no retained-mode > layer of its own. There seems a very close correspondence between it and XaraDraw, and Quartz (and GDI+ even). These all are all non-retained rastersization engines. > My own feeling is that it would be most beneficial to take Xara's > retained-mode layer, target it to Cairo, and then write a new Cairo > backend using XaraDraw's lower-level layers (in the long-term, we would > also want to investigate merging what we could of the "XaraDraw" Cairo > backend into Cairo's normal software backend, assuming you folks were > comfortable with relicensing those bits accordingly). Yes I think there's a lot of sense in that approach. Trouble is we might not have a clear, retained-mode layer as you put it. You can see once the source code is provided. The 'viewer' that forms the core of the download we now have is probably close to this. > In case Cairo's generic API proved insufficiently rich for everything > required by Xara, note that Cairo does allow for backend-specific API > extensions. We could simply employ those in the short-term, and it is > likely that many could be incorporated into the generic API over time. Ah, OK, that is useful. Cairo certainly is not rich enough and appears to implement a relatively small percentage of the capabilities of the XaraDraw engine, and is rather less capable than the Quartz PDF engine even. But if it's an extendable API that may be the best way to go. There might be licensing issues, would need to be looked at. > Both Inkscape and Xara could then use Xara's retained-mode layer, and > both could use Cairo underneath while still taking advantage of Xara's > optimized rasterization routines. In the long run all Cairo-based > applications (e.g. all GTK and wxGTK applications) would potentially > benefit, and Xara could benefit from future third-party improvements to > Cairo directly. > > That approach would let us stick with two already well-refined APIs, and > take advantage of the principle that a rising tide lifts all boats. Yep, a lot of merit to that approach. Charles

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RE: [Inkscape-devel] RE:Xara Announcement
by Charles Moir 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: bulia byak [mailto:buliabyak@...400...] > Sent: 14 October 2005 21:32 ... > Working on shared libs is a good thing. However, for me personally the > most important thing is the UI. I added a lot of small and > not-so-small UI tweaks to Inkscape, and even though a few years ago I > was a diehard Xara fan, now I perceive Xara as somewhat clumsy > compared to Inkscape. It feels a bit awkward when I use it, I miss > lots of small conveniences of Inkscape. I would love to have an offline conversation with you about what you dislike or find awkward - I feel the same when using Inkscape, in certain areas more than others. But UI is an area I take a great deal of interest in. Of course a huge amount is that you like what you know and know what you like. I know diehard Illustrator users who defend what, to most others, appears a tortuously convoluted way of doing things. They've been through the pain learning it all once and 'sure as hell aint going to learn something else'. > Also Xara misses a few > critical features of Inkscape, most importantly clones. Yep, I agree. Been on the wish list for about 10 years. Always had higher priorities. A great example of a feature that I'd imagine little if any Inkscape code would be relevant or help us. So if we want the feature we'd have to do it from scratch. > It's up to you, but I'm not sure resisting to improvements, even > temporarily, is the best tactic. Everyone can try the complete Xara on > Windows right now, and everyone can get a good idea of what's in most > urgent need for improvement, based on that. Well you're possibly right, and we're never going to turn down improvements if they're dead safe and can be done with delaying things. But the dangers are that a) we de-stabilize the product b) we get distracted implementing new features and thus delay a 1.0 release. I think having a very clear target that is easy to describe and understand is worth a great deal. We've been burned so many times by making a 'relative small change' that turns into a huge job. For example Live Effects, was originally estimated at about 3 months works, no great architectural changes required. 14 months later we had it done to our satisfaction. Charles

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docker.h et al
by Jon A. Cruz 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

Oops I saw that docker.h and friends were just removed. :-( They're documented with this page and UML http://wiki.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?DialogReplacement The main thing is that those are what will allow us to have swatches and such show up in a pane at the bottom of the window with just a minimal amount of coding. Since their use was pruned out just before this, I guess it can wait for 0.43 to go out before putting them back. Once we release, though, we want to get to use those ASAP so we can get the dynamic UI tunable to the kind of thing Bulia wanted.

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Re: [Inkscape-user] imported files
by Jon A. Cruz 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

On Oct 14, 2005, at 11:36 AM, bulia byak wrote: > (Jon Cruz: you might be interested, as it was probably your bug; see > http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/inkscape/inkscape/src/ > file.cpp?r1=1.140&r2=1.141&sortby=date) Yes. Quite interesting. I'll have to see what we can do to minimize problems for 0.43. If nothing else, the next rev will get things reworked much better, and have more "flatten", "cleanup" and "warn" in regards to linked assets.

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RE:Xara Announcement
by Charles Moir 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Hi everyone, I got a second, so here's some thoughts. Sorry it's so long, but I picked up on a few of the points made in this thread. I apologise for not saying from whom I'm quoting. > I think Cairo is the better horse for the long term. > As the Cairo developers start moving towards hardware acceleration, > comparing them with a piece of software is simply unfair. GPUs today > are impressive, and if Cairo can tap into even a small percentage of > that it'll be crazy. I agree - we'd also like to move towards Cairo, for the simple reason it's clearly becoming a Linux standard in the way Quartz is on the Mac and it will be hardware accelerated. No matter how much faster our rendering is now, we'll not compete against hardware. But we also want to support Quartz on the Mac, Avalon (or whatever is called this week) on Windows because they are the native vector rendering engines that are also hardware accelerated. So our medium term plan for Xara was to have user switchable rendering engines. XaraDraw, Quartz, Cairo, or whatever. This would also limit the feature set to that supported by the corresponding engine. So, for example, I think only XaraDraw and Quartz can support grad transparencies and so selecting Cairo would disable that feature. But you'll be free to take our rendering engine once we make it open-source and retro-fit it into Inkscape if you wish. Should make Inkscape go a lot faster. > I've invited Charles to encourage one of his > engineers, testers, or sysadmins to join the list; if they're on, I hope > they'll jump in and say hi I think we have one or two devs lurking here, maybe others. Neil Howe, our CTO, Phil Martin our chief techy on Xara and responsible for most of the architectural stuff. Gerry and Like may also be lurking, and appear from time to time. But as Bruce says changing a company culture to be open in way you guys are is difficult. We all have to be careful because we represent a commercial company that can get sued, and because we have paying customers. Also the guys are under intense pressure to ship a brand new commercial Windows release right now and so have very limited time. Indeed right now we have very limited number of developers purely on the open-source version. Hopefully in a week or two that will improve. But they have very limited time to respond to all the posting that they might be inclined to. > As a graphics software only company they are > directly in competition with Inkscape - thus, all this code merging talk > sounds strange (I don't see Trolltech trying to merge their code with > Gtk or vice-versa - interops yes, merging no). Most successful > commercial companies in the open source community have made it thru > services: part add-ons, part support, part operations, part packaging, > part data warehousing, etc - I think to be viewed as an open source > friendly company Xara needs to operate in terms of being a graphic > design services company utilizing community software as a base - but > they haven't exactly said what they are thinking along these lines... Well that is what we hope. We hope to continue selling commercial versions, especially into our existing Windows market because there will also be a part of the market that wants customer support, those licensed elements that can't be part of an open-source product, such as Pantone, our PDF exporter includes licensed libraries, the Live Effect plug-ins, even mundane things like boxed versions, CDs and printed manuals. If there's demand we'll sell those extras into the Linux community as well. Having commercial versions of the product is not a bad thing, I believe it helps an open-source project. There's some info about this on our FAQ http://www.xaraxtreme.org/faqs.html > Well, after reading the e-mail you've forwarded, I'm not optimistic. > The reason being that they still seem focused on being in control. Now > I don't think they should release a totally random project, but if they > are going to never give an outside developer access to their version > control, the barrier for contribution is too high. We will give outsider developers access to svn, but we're not going to let any old hacker one off the street have write access without at least some checks. I think it was Bryce who mentioned you guys also have a quality control standards, as do all successful open-source projects. In the end it just comes down to trust and if a developer shows he can be trusted we'll provide greater access all the way to complete un-vetted write access. I don't think we'll be any different to other OSS projects. But we are in control of our official Xara branded tree - doesn't stop anyone building their own version with their own additions - just as, presumably, anyone can take Inkscape and do the same (you did it to Sodipodi didn't you?). It's GPL - people have the freedom to do what they want with our code. > Well, I'd say that we could steal code from them, but it is unlikely > that they'd want ours -- for the simple reason that it seems they need > copyright assignment. No we do not want copyright assignment. We think that's unfair as it take rights away from the author. More details on our FAQ under the licensing section, which has been updated recently. http://www.xaraxtreme.org/faqs.html But our best idea is that is that if people want a patch incorporated into the main Xara release that they dual license it GPL and BSD, they keep all their rights, and we, or anyone else, can use it in a commercial version. Open to suggestions as to how else we make this possible, but in order for any OSS project to really succeed in the wider commercial world I think having a commercially supported version is a good thing. If people choose to say want Pantone they should be able to pay for it. > I don't think even most current developers > could claim copyright to large sections on Inkscape. I wouldn't even > want to try and figure out all the copyright issues in Inkscape. Ah well that could be a more serious issue. We can't, any more than anyone can really, accept contributions if the copyright is not clear. Too dangerous. > In the long term, it's a bit less rosy. Only a few bits of code are > easy to borrow from program to program; most are difficult to > impossible. Merging the two programs is not too realistic. Living side > by side is more probable, but that means competition. Competition is > tough. There's only so many Linux people interested in vector > graphics, and they will need to decide which project to contribute to. > Few if any people will be able to learn both codebases to contribute > to both. This will hurt us (developers drain) and this will hurt Xara > ("hey, we went open source, why so few contributors?"). I think this is the core point, and very well put. It's hugely difficult to see how this can be done. The best I can suggest (and I'm not the first to suggest this) is that we find ways to create shared libraries, tools, palettes, add-ons, whatever. Here's an idea, just off the top of my head. Inkscape wants to move to Cairo, so do we. We also want to continue using XaraDraw for its speed and greater range of rendering types, especially in the case there is no hardware assisted rendering, so it seems do some of you guys. On the Mac we (and you) should be using Quartz because this is about to become hardware accelerated as well. They all have varying capabilities, but are based on a similar PDF 1.4 style rendering model. So why doesn't someone do a sort of Ultra-draw wrapper super-API library thing that we can both use. i.e. it provide one super-set rendering API that itself calls down to XaraDraw, Cairo, Quartz depending on user or program preferences. And then we'd both use this ultra-draw and both gain the desired benefits. Quartz, Cairo and XaraDraw are similar enough to make this not too huge a job I would guess. And perhaps that's the type of approach that could be used going forward. Eric's Uber-converter is a similar thing. We both get to benefit from that. Why do we want to do this? Well the easiest route is that we just live side by side competing, more or less. You steal our code, we steal yours. A lot of time is spent re-implementing features one way or another. Both sides will probably benefit to some extent, but is it the way to really move forward? The bigger picture is that Adobe just bought Macromedia because they are concerned, rightly, that Microsoft are going after them. So they combine number 1 and 2 to stand a better chance against Microsoft. Meanwhile if we're not careful Xara / Inkscape are like two little ants spending their tiny resources competing against each other - irrelevant and insignificant to Adobe / Microsoft *and* the majority of potential users out there. I sort of would hope combining that benefits and efficiencies of "the open-source way", with the best of what you've got and the best of what we've got and then we might be a credible realistic alternative to the big-guys. And that's not just the Linux market but the much wider market. Oh and while vector drawing might have been regarded as relatively niche in the past I don't think it should be. The whole world is moving to be vector based (all three operating systems are on the verge of using vector based UIs). Personally I don't believe there should be such a separate, and artificial separation between bitmap and vector graphics programs. Vector graphics should be the prime, first class citizen, of computer graphics. It should be the first graphics program that people buy and want to use. Rich vector graphics is inherently more powerful and flexible. Just think about the scriptable opportunities in this space. (Our Webstyle template based product takes this approach. It takes professionally designed vector template graphics and allows dummy-users (i.e. those with little design skill - and that includes me and most that I know) to customize the graphics, colors, wording, scale and in a vector way. It's perfect for creating vector UI components, such as buttons, icons etc. A hugely powerful concepts that opens Vector graphics benefits for the rest of us. We're only touching the surface on that side. Anyway having said all that, in the short term, possibly medium term even, we are going to be living side-by-side because our gaol is to get the whole of Xara Xtreme ported and working as is, and we're trying to resist making improvements, taking anyone's features. That's partly because we think it's in everyone's interest to have a compete product working ASAP, but also because only once we've got the whole lot working, can outsiders sit back and take a view on what's right and what's wrong. Then we can all sit back and see how bets to combine forces. I suppose I'd sum it up that the result should / could be greater than the sum of the parts. That way we could all benefit, the open-source way benefits, Linux benefits because it can more readily offer mass-market and professional graphics solutions to Windows users. We all benefit because there are simply more developer bodies working for the same gaols of creating better graphics software. Charles

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Xara Announcement
by Bryce Harrington 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Hi all, The big news with Xara is finally coming out today. :-) Xara has ported their product to Linux and will be Open Sourcing it. For more details, see http://xaraxtreme.org/. A press release is coming out, and is appended to this message. Charles Moir has been talking with me about this privately for the past couple months. His interest is to see Inkscape and Xara be in collaboration rather than competition, and I've been sharing ideas (such as the XAR/SVG project) along these lines. I've suggesting that merging inkscape and xara codebases would probably be impractical, but it might be possible to take the best bits of both and create something better than either, down the road. It seemed wisest in the near term for them to release what they've got, and to focus on making it work on Linux, which they've now done. :-) The key question for us is how we want to relate to Xara when the code is released. Would it make sense for us to share code with Xara? Should we merge, or remain distinct? They'd be open to sharing svn repositories if we'd like (I mentioned we've been looking to upgrade from cvs, and they already use svn)? Anyway, check it out (a Linux binary preview is downloadable, and there's also a pretty sweet movie) and share your thoughts. Bryce ----- Forwarded message from Charles Moir <CharlesM@...1042...> ----- Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:29:31 +0100 From: Charles Moir <CharlesM@...1042...> To: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...1...> Subject: Xara Open Source announcement It's happening any time soon. FYI this is a copy of the press release we'll be sending out to Linux press. Note comments about Inkscape lower down. Hope OK with you (I don't think this has anything that I've not already passed by you). The XaraXtreme.org site is also up and the FAQ has a few mentions of Inkscape.. Again nothing new I don't think. The FAQ will likely be updated to take into account feedback I've already got from some people. Some of the other links won't work until we've completed updating the website later today. Regards, Charles PS I've not contacted any of the developers you passed to me, mostly because we're just not ready to do this yet (spending all our time getting this stuff ready), but I hope to do that soon, and do intend that these be some of the first people we'll invite to get access to the codebase. PPS I spoke to a Stephen someone from newsforge recently, he was doing a story on the Uber-converter. I put him in touch with Eric, but he came back later asking for your contact details, so we gave him your email address I think. Hope OK. He maybe in touch. ---------------------------------- News Release 11th October, 2005 Xara announces Xtreme Open Source Xara plans to shake up the Linux, Mac and Open Source world with three major announcements. 1) A new product Xara Xtreme - the fastest most versatile graphics software available 2) Plans to create Linux and Mac versions 3) Plans to Open Source it. "Few companies can take the announcement that Microsoft intend to get into their market, lying down." says CEO Charles Moir. Xara, developer of popular Windows graphics software, is making a move to defend themselves against Microsoft moving into their market, and at the same time is attempting to change the graphics landscape. Xara Xtreme Firstly Xara is announcing the release of a new product, Xara Xtreme. It's built on Xara's history of developing successful, award winning and innovative graphics software for 15 years. This is a new cross-category graphics application that can handle photos, business graphics, drawing and illustration needs. Charles Moir, CEO of Xara, said "It absolutely knocks the stuffing out of Adobe and the new Microsoft product. In terms of ease of use, shear flexibility and performance. Adobe has tried for 10 years to get close to our performance levels and cannot. Microsoft are not going to be able to either. I guarantee it". Xara Xtreme is available for Windows now, at just $79 Linux and Mac versions Secondly Xara plans to create Linux and Mac versions of the graphics application. Charles said, "Many of our users are Mac and Linux enthusiasts who, often reluctantly, use Windows to run our software because it's only been available on Windows. For years we've had requests from Mac and Linux users to create versions for their platforms. Our plans are to change the graphics software landscape forever, and that means we have to be cross-platform" The Linux desktop has come on leaps and bounds in the last year or so. But there is scarcity of really slick, finished applications, especially in the graphics arena. Our goal is to create the greatest general purpose desktop graphics application that has ever existed and for this to be a first class Linux and Mac citizen. Ironically, given the percentage of graphic professionals using Macs, there are few, if any, high quality, high performance, low cost Mac graphics applications. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop dominate, but those can cost more than a new Mac. That's outrageous. With Macromedia being acquired by Adobe, choice for Mac users just took a turn for the worse. We can help address that." Open Source Thirdly Xara intends to make the new software Open Source. Charles said "We're going to a place that Microsoft and Adobe cannot go. The Open Source world is the acknowledged largest threat to established giants such as Microsoft. We felt it was necessary for us to shake up the graphics world a bit, and making one of the most powerful, easiest to use graphics applications Open Source should do the trick." To stand any chance of establishing a following in the Linux world you have to make the product free and Open Source, so despite the risks involved, that's what we're doing. We have a load of technology that's better than anything Microsoft or Adobe have. By making this Open Source (GPL) we believe we can help the Linux platform compete in the mainstream graphics arena better than it ever has before. We used to develop for alternative platforms, such as the Acorn RISC computer in the 1990s, and so fundamentally Xara Xtreme is based on a cross-platform core. Of course, we are aware of Inkscape, an existing Open Source vector graphics program that has an active developer community, but is far from complete. We've been in discussion with Inkscape people, who have enthusiastically welcomed us. Our short term goal is to create a fully working Xara Xtreme as it exists now. After that we've agreed to work with Inkscape to determine how best to create a 'best of both world's' product. Xara Xtreme, made Open Source (released under GPL) and available on Linux will make a huge difference to the platform. We believe it will significantly accelerate the acceptance of the platform as an alternative to Windows. Down the road, combine the best of Inkscape and Xara, and you've got something that has the potential to disrupt the established world that is dominated by Adobe and Microsoft. Graphics desktop applications are a cornerstone of any modern desktop OS. We have what we (and many others) believe is the best desktop graphics application there is. By making it Open Source, by making it available on Windows, Mac and Linux, we hope to change the graphics software landscape forever" Demo movie If you want to see what Xara Xtreme can do, there are demo movies available in various formats here http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/ Demo download Xara has been working on a new cross-platform version (Linux, Mac and Windows) for some time and have a simple viewer (Linux only) demonstration available. You can find more details here: http://www.xaraxtreme.org/download/ More Info See the Xara Xtreme website at http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/ Or the Xara Open Source website at http://www.xaraxtreme.org <http://www.xaraxtreme.org/> Photo http://www.xara.com/press/photos.asp Charles Moir, founder and CEO of Xara, in front of the UK headquarters of Xara Ltd This historic location is also used as a location for film and TV work, including Rory Bremner, Little Britain, Musical videos for Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Will Young and other films and commercials EDITORS: For further details please contact: Nova Fisher, Communications Director, nova@...1042... <mailto:nova@...1042...> About Xara Xara has been developing low-cost mass-market software since the early years of the Microcomputer era, in 1981. It has focused mostly on publishing related software products, starting from Wordwise, a hugely popular Word Processor in the '80s, to desktop publishing software (Impression) and graphics products in the '90s for the Acorn RISC computer. Xara's first Windows product, Xara Studio was quickly snapped up and marketed by Corel in the late '90s. The rights were acquired back from Corel and it has since evolved into Xara X and the most recent Xara Xtreme. Xara has particularly strong technology and innovation history. It pioneered many of the graphics technologies and techniques used by industry today. It was the first to introduce vector anti-aliasing, the first with vector transparency and graduated transparency, the first vector feathering. Many of its User Interface techniques have been adopted by the industry. The graphics engine that is at the core of Xara Xtreme still remains the world's most powerful. The technologies used to create Xara Xtreme have been developed by Xara over the years and incorporates many pioneering features. It has been modelled on the successful Xara X? (sold for $179) as used by many professional graphics and illustration artists but has been significantly re-engineered to open it up to third-party plug-in developers. ----- End forwarded message -----

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Re: [Inkscape-devel] about dialog copy
by Ben Fowler 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

On 10/14/05, Ben Fowler <ben.the.mole@...400...> wrote: > On 10/13/05, bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> wrote: > > On 10/13/05, MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> wrote: > > > is nearly there, but doesn't quite cut it since that sort of sounds like > > > it comes with Windows or OS X. :/ > > > > "Included with the Best Linux Distributions. Available On Request to > > the Respected Users of Windows 2K/XP and OSX." :) > > What about an echo of the phrase "available at all good bookshops". THIS _excellent_ Vector Graphics Application is recommended for the generation of Fine Artwork for use on the World Wide Web, for Print, Games, Desktop Icons, Cartography, and sundry purposes to which Scalable Vector Graphics are most expedient. Based upon the ubiquitous Extensible Markup Language, advised for graphical purposes demanding Crystal-Clear Images, Programmatic Modification or Dynamic Content Generation ; and where Scripting and Interactivity via the celebrated Document Object Model are required, Inkscape is the quintessence of perfection. PERSONS EMPLOYING BITMAPPED GRAPHICS, which are subject to Aliasing, Blurring, Large File Size, and Difficulty of Correction or Subsequent Modification, should all promptly investigate the incomparable benefits of our Vector Graphics without delay. Provided at no extra charge in the Finest Linux Distributions. ... ----------- I'd like to squeeze in something about large cats, and the 'alternative Operating System', but that would be ridiculously unfair to the Windows devs here. Shouldn't there be a reference to Gnome or GTK ... Ben (Who probably pressed the wrong reply button a moment ago)

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Inkscape as console application
by Ben Fowler 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

(This may be off-charter for Inkscape Devel, in which case I apologise). I was stepping through inkscape under gdb (on BSD without X) and found that the "sp-console-main( )" seems to have a code path that calls gdk_devices_list() (whilst loading preferences). Is this intentional? It is possible that I am talking nonsense, and I have somehow messed up the sources, but there are a number of concerns if there is any merit in what I am saying. I would certainly like to have an X-free or no-X command-line or console version of Inkscape, and I would be interested in any thoughts. Ben

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comitted: revised about dialog
by MenTaLguY 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

I ended up having trim the copy down a bit to make it fit. Also, per buila's suggestion, the closing paragraph is now: "Available from most fine Linux Distributions, or obtained direct for Windows or Mac OS X at 8 b. per byte: http://www.inkscape.org" Aside from the copy changes, I removed some leftover vector bits (namely a very fine stroked path that was interfering with the Inkscape logo), softened the '3' to match the '4', and re-enabled the coffee stains. Personally I think the stains add character, but if y'all don't like them, they're just a layer we can hide or delete. -mental

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[CharlesM@...1042...: RE: Linux port]
by Bryce Harrington 13 Oct '05

13 Oct '05

Here is some confirmation that Xara isn't expecting copyright assignment. Bryce ----- Forwarded message from Charles Moir <CharlesM@...1042...> ----- Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:55:00 +0100 From: Charles Moir <CharlesM@...1042...> To: Mike Hearn <mike@...869...> Cc: bryce@...1... Subject: RE: Linux port > >From the discussion on inkscape-devel, a sticking point for some is the > need for copyright assignment. I'm not sure about the technicalities of > this, I guess it depends on exactly what Xara want to do and what the > Inkscape guys find acceptable. For instance I doubt they'd object to you > reselling Xara with some proprietary extra bits like Pantone colours, > but reselling their code as proprietary code on the components market > (as DLLs/OCXs for instance) might be off limits. > > What I'd suggest is jumping on the Inkscape list yourselves and trying > to hammer out a middle ground - find out what you want to do, what the > Inkscape guys find agreeable and see if there's any common ground. Yep, I've seen this and they are making assumptions that we'll need or want copyright assignment (same feeling on Slashdot from some) - we've never said anything like that. I'll quote from my guy Alex who knows most about license issues; -------------- Just to clarify, we will *NOT* be requiring copyright assignment. There are two reasons for this: 1. The code will be released GPL. Not a GPL variant, but GPL. This means you can do *WHAT YOU LIKE WITH IT* subject to the normal GPL license conditions (I'm sure you guys are already familiar with them). So saying we are requiring something in order for you to use, modify, or distribute the code is not accurate. 2. We will be maintaining the "official" Xara tree (i.e. the one with the Xara name on it) - anyone else is free to maintain their own tree. That's the beauty of open source. The only sense in which we are planning to "require" anything is that if you want your modification to get into our tree, it has to jump certain hurdles. Some of those are to do with making sure at least one of our trees stays relatively bug-free and the architecture is consistent. Another will be to do with licensing. This is because we want to be able to issue a proprietary version as well. This is for two reasons: firstly, we need to continue to survive as a company. Secondly, there is stuff we simply can't open source - certainly right now - for instance commercially licensed third party components such as the Pantone library. Both of these things, we think, are *good* for the Open Source program. Having an open-source program that is able to produce artwork that is (for instance) easily printed using colour separations and spot colours (even if this involves the use of a commercial version at one stage in the process) is clearly better than being unable to support it at all. Equally, having us able to fund full-time developers means both versions benefit. 3. Lastly, we will NOT be requiring copyright assignment. Assignment means you (the assignor) would lose your rights to us (the assignee). We do not intend to ask for that, and to do so would be totally unfair. What we will be asking for is for some sort of license that will allow us to use your code in our commercial version as well, but will allow the original author to retain *all* their copyright rights. We know the question here is "well why should you guys get any special benefit?". The answer to that is that we're putting a lot of code into the open-source domain. One thing we are thinking about is asking contributors who want their code to get into the official tree to dual license the code GPL/BSD (to the extent they have copyright). That would mean if there is an independent feature someone is contributing, then it's not only us that can use it in a commercial version. We are open to suggestions on how this is achieved. I'd get involved in the Inkscape list if I had a second. Hopefully when things have quietened down a bit - getting a bit inundated here. But by all means pass these comments on, as from us. I like the idea of dual license GPL/BSD for contributions - allows us to use the code, BSD is hugely popular license, doesn't take anything away from GPL or the rights of the contributor. But as Alex says we're open to suggestions on how to best achieve this. If there's absolutely no way we can incorporate a certain feature in a commercial version, then fine it just wont ever get into our main version. But does that help anyone? We're not taking anything away from the developer, we're not asking for copyright assignment and so I'd hope that wouldn't be a problem. > Of course, this assumes the code bases are similar enough to be > mergable. Inkscape uses fairly regular C++ but if Xara is riddled with > COM/MFC idioms it might cause issues Pretty clean OO design and C++ from day one. In fact from day one it was designed to be platform portable. We just never got around to doing any port other than Windows. No COM / MFC in the core at all - that's why and how we got the viewer working so quickly (which is all the main core tree building / rendering pipeline / engine stuff). > For what it's worth I'm also a Wine developer, working for CodeWeavers. Ha, I know Jon Parshall, COO of CodeWeavers. Big Xara fan and user (does amazingly detailed illustrations with Xara actually). He's shown me Xara X working on an as yet unreleased Codeweavers Office, so Wine must be getting very near to being able to do this. Obviously not the way we want to go, but would be damn useful to be able to run the Window version side by side with the Linux version just for test and compare purposes. Anyway thanks for the feedback, Regards, Charles ----- End forwarded message -----

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