Hi all,
I wanted to follow up with a few comments on the reception of the article. I was mortified when I saw that the Slashdot blurb said Inkscape was my "brainchild" and that I was _the_ founder of Inkscape rather than _a_ founder. I hope no-one took offense at that. I suppose its unusual for open source projects to be true team efforts, but that is really one of Inkscape's strengths and one of the things that makes it so fun.
I also want to apologize to Bob for cratering his server! Hope that didn't cause problems beyond just the loss of the machine. Hopefully with Artemio's help, that problem will be stimulating us to gain a better solution in general for the future.
Despite the problems, I think it went quite well. The main goal had been to raise awareness of Inkscape and what we got exceeded what I'd been hoping for. Also, I noticed that a number of the points I wanted to make were conveyed and received by the audience. A couple of the points sparked some interesting discussions; I think our "patch first, ask questions later" policy got people thinking. Big thank-you to mental or whomever suggested emphasizing we don't _blindly_ accept patches, but do check licenses, etc.
I again want to thank everyone that helped with editing the article and rejon for giving me a deadline to get it done by; as much as I grumble about deadlines, it was useful motivation. Nathan - it turned out we missed one of the erroneous "it's", as several readers pointed out to me. :-)
I'd also like to return the favor. I think with this general "What's Inkscape" piece out of the way, there is an audience for more focused articles, and if anyone is interested in writing one I would be more than happy to lend a hand. For example, I'd bet an article giving advice about usability would be well received. An article about Inkscape internals as they relate to SVG rendering would as well. I also think a usage-oriented "secrets of Inkscape" article would be appropriate. So if anyone is interested in authoring an article on any of those subjects, I would be happy to help in any capacity.
Bryce