I'd like to know more about the Summer of Code project to add DXF support to Inkscape.
I've read the Proposals page on the wiki http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SOC_Accepted_Proposals
What I am really interested to know is about reuse of code. The project description doesn't make any suggestion about reusing existing code and it looks like as if the Author is going to write something from scratch (possibly including other dxf code he has written previously).
Dia already has a library for importing DXF (and there are probably other open source programs with their own custom DXF support and some with more liberal licesing than others). I would very much like to see this code generalised and turned into a library that could be shared by Inkscape and other applications to share the maintainance burden (or failing that make the new code for Inkscape so that it can be reused by other applications).
I think the only way the project can succeed beyond the Summer of Code is if it produces code that can be used by more than just inkscape. We've all seen people gradually lose interest and watched bitrot set in.
And will the inkscape developers be encouraging him to LGPL this code rather than merely GPL it?
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
P.S. Sorry to be so pessimistic about it all.