John Taber wrote:
Charles Moir wrote:
And although over the decades there is not a class of software we've not been involved in, from games to databases, spreadsheets, interpreters and compilers, even hardware design, I'd say that we've been involved in publishing software more than anything - be it word processors, Postscript interpreters (this is where our rendering engine started life 15 years ago), DTP packages and graphics software of all types. So a pretty broad background.
Sounds like you are trying to recruit the Inkscape team to work for you :) Can't blame you - it's a terrific and talented group. And I would think most of us can sympathize with you - you have a technically good product and are staring in the face of gorillas that want to own the market and have the resources to roll over anyone in their way.
I think it was more of a history about their team than stating a desire to acquire ours. Not saying they don't want to utilize our team, but, that will go both ways.
BUT, your analogy to the ants cannot survive somehow reminds me of Darl McBride saying there can be no free Linux. Probably Xara can't survive but Inkscape is surviving quite well and can in the future. Kind of the way the US can beat another army - they can't beat the insurgents (oh and that's true of the Nazis vs the resistance, the Romans vs the Goths). And sorry, but your concept of purely selling a value added free software package is most likely doomed - ie Real Player or the way Red Hat gave up on the boxed distro (RH and Novell sell to the Enterprise) - on the individual side you get crushed on the top by the commercial gorillas and crushed from the bottom by the free stuff.
I don't think that attacking their business plans will get anyone anywhere. You think they'll fail, I think they'll succeed. Honestly, I have a feeling it will be a lot more successful than people are estimating. For example, when we are looking to upgrade Illustrator at my office next time... we'll be upgrading to Xara.
Even though, these days I use Inkscape for most of the Illustration I do for the firm, it STILL gets passed to Illustrator for the pre-press work. And even though I've been an Illustrator user for over a decade, had I actually /tried/ Xara a few years ago when we purchased our last copy of Illustrator, we would have opted for Xara instead because it provided the features we need for a MUCH more reasonable price (and a better UI to boot). Unfortunately I was stuck in a fanboy bubble at that point.
And don't forget that RedHat and Novell have still found ways to remain profitable (every company has ups and downs), and my guess is that Xara will as well even if this won't do it for them.
-Josh