Re: Re: Reply To: Sodipodi / *nkscape...

On Thursday 26 February 2004 22:44, Lauris Kaplinski wrote:

In the text below, I express my personal opinion, as well as I must notify 
that I don't have the necessary knowledge concerning Sodipodi, *scape and 
this conflict(so it is possible I judge on inaccurate data). Also, I think it 
is a good idea to keep our heads cool :) and remember that all of us are more 
or less biased in this issue. We shouldn't draw too quick conclusion - we 
haven't seen it from the *scape people's viewpoint. Yet.

> Hello!
>
> [email protected] kirjutas N, 26.02.2004 kell 14:42:
> >  When you say 'Hostile', do you mean that *nkscape did
> >  not contact you before creating their Sodipodi fork ???
>
> It was probably complicated story, but I know little about
> the actual reasoning among the *scape guys. But certain aspects
> of their immediate behaviour were unacceptable in my opinion.
> - Immediately after creating fork, instead of keeping low
>   profile for a while, they started massive advertizing
>   (and vapourware) campaign to draw the attention away from
>   sodipodi to their project. Sodipodi had progressed slowly
>   to the state, where it started to draw more and more
>   attention. I had personally hoped to start making money
>   working on it, that is now very much hopeless, as I have
>   no resources to compete.
> - The for was from the start not so much about technical
>   disagreements, but about personal egos. Other than small
>   cosmetic changes, *scape is targetting exactly the same
>   audience, development and usage philosophy than sodipodi.
>   So this makes quite clear, why they chose to do total
>   rename, instead of working on 'sodipodi on steroids' or
>   whatever similar thing.
> - The main initiator of fork was at the same time working
>   for major OSS promoting organization (OSDL). This gave
>   him instant advantage by having more connections and
>   resources to promote the fork. I also find it quite
>   inappropriate for an employee of OSS promoting organization
>   to 'steal' other people's project.
>
> In brief - thay take my (plus several other contributors)
> 4-year work, branded it as their own, and started 'selling'
> it as their own. If that is, how free software developments
> turns out (the ones with more advertizing power always screw
> independent developers), I see little reason, why we should
> case about OSS more than from properietary ways.
>
> Sorry for ranting... :-(

That was not a rant but very important information. I can't just stand passive 
to this. Lauris, and the other developers - will you tolerate this? It is not 
OK to drive over people like they do, and we really must do something about 
it. Lauris, could you be a little bit specific about what you have discussed? 
What have they said, and what have you replied/said? What they do is of 
course legally correct but not morally and far from following open source 
social rules. (And I again emphasize that I don't know the full story of 
this)

I think *scape very quickly will overshadow Sodipodi - they have many 
developers and an elaborated infrastructure, their website, which will draw 
users and developers.
For both projects, but especially Sodipodi, it would be a very good if the 
projects were merged - Lauris and the other Sodipodi developers deserves the 
popularity *scape will get and it is their big chance to make a living of 
hacking on Sodipodi. Sodipodi needs the infrastructure *scape has. Merging 
the projects would probably lead to an application with the identity of 
*scape(as opposed to Sodipodi), which is of course humiliating for the 
Sodipodi community(especially considering the circumstances) but one should 
also consider the gains for Sodipodi a merge would lead to, and how the 
future will look like when forked. I am of course not the one to tell people 
what to decide in this matter - I only suggests.

This is what the FAQ entry says concerning the fork:

Q: Why the split from Sodipodi?
Mainly just differences in objectives and in development approach. Inkscape's 
objective is to be a fully compliant SVG editor, whereas for Sodipodi SVG is 
more a means-to-an-end of being a powerful vector illustration tool. 
Inkscape's development approach emphasizes open developer access to the 
codebase, as well as to use and contribute back to 3rd party libraries and 
standards such as HIG, CSS, etc. in preference to custom solutions. 

AFAIK, I judge some of those claims as insults towards the Sodipodi 
development team. It would be good if someone commented on the correctness of 
that FAQ entry.

I can just watch this - I am willing to negotiate, do background research and 
help solving this. We should try to establish a good relationship between the 
projects, clear misunderstandings, questions and try to make the best out of 
the situation, technically as well as socially. Depending on how this evolves 
it could be a good idea getting some attention in the press too.

This is of course just my ideas and suggestions(perhaps too serious and 
exaggerated, I don't know). I also think it is good if we coordinate what we 
do in this matter(for example, no one goes abusing :) or communicates in a 
wrong way with *scape concerning this matter unless Lauris and the other 
Sodipodi developers have agreed upon it).


Cheers,

		Frans



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