[Desktop_architects] Xara now has released "Xara LX" source

Bryce Harrington bryce at osdl.org
Sun Apr 2 21:55:52 PDT 2006


On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 01:15:12AM +0000, Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Xara has now released the GPL'd "Xara LX" sources. I've not yet seen
> the news hit any of the known web sites; but their website and a 
> posting into one of their public forums makes it official to me.
> 
> I assume the Inkscape folks on this list did already know in advance,
> but the rest of us are glad to learn about it now  :-)

Yeah, I've been in contact with them about it since last summer; we also
had the chance to meet face to face with the Xara folks in Lyon at the
Libre Graphics Meeting a couple weeks ago.  I also took the opportunity
to explain about the desktop architects group and make a plug for the
Portland project.  Since they're presently going through essentially
what all ISVs porting to Linux will go through, my suspicion is that
Xara could be an excellent case study since they're going through it in
the open.

As well, of course there is an even larger potential - if Xara can pull
this off it could serve as a role model for other ISVs that may want to
GPL their core software too.

> Some more details are in my blog at
> 
>    http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1872
> 
> Oh, and those of you who want a really quick testdrive of Xara (without
> having to actually install pre-compiled Xara binaries into the heart of
> your $linux system), I've updated a  klik://xara-latest  recipe (should 
> work on all major distros, and some of the more exotic ones too). More 
> info on klik is here:
> 
>    FAQ: http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/User%27s_FAQ
>   Wiki: http://xara-latest.klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/Wiki_page_for_xara_klik
> 
> Xara is an interesting example, as they are one of the first Windows-
> only companies that is porting a hi-profile software to the Linux 
> desktop environment *as* *well* *as* putting it under the GPL license
> at the same time.

This is also a rare (unique?) example of a non-free-beer product going
open source.  It will be interesting to see how having it available as
open source affects sales numbers.  I think many would assume that
people won't pay for something they can get for free,  But I will be
interested to hear how the sales numbers turn out; I've paid for GPL'd
code before (e.g. linux distros), and could imagine others would too.

Bryce




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