Re: ...words from the other side...

Hi Lon

> One final word...
> I did not intend to offend anyone...
> I just want to start a meaningful, yet animated, discussion...

I pick up your last words and make my statements for this discussion. I was
thinking a lot how to answer to your mail. I will try it now.

(-
For the list members who don't know me: I am working at the University of
Zurich Weboffice. We have two CMS projects running: first the «unipublic»
online magazine, and then the CMS for the whole university (corporate
website and institutes). We donated, together with the ETH Zurich and Wyona
AG, the BXE to get it open source
-)

Thing's are speeding up the last few days. The mozilla bug 97284 is finally
getting a lot of attention and it looks as - if we're really happy -
contenteditable will find it's way to Moz 1.3 (okay, I'm a natural born
optimist). That's good news and I hope this will help us leading to Holgers
and ours goal: get an wordpad-like editor for our CMS.

Then there's your mail. I understand that you're frustrated. I'm sorry about
that. But I have difficulties in understanding what exactly it is that
frustrates you.

> Despite the fact that BitFlux 'copied' all general editor ideas from
> Xopus 1 when they started building BXE, we from Q42 have build an XML
> editor that is far superior to theirs.
> Yet the market does not recognize this as good as they should. Thanks to
> Rogers excellent (and I do mean this) work in marketing BXE.

The two main reasons why we (the university of Zurich, the ETH Zurich and
Wyona AG) donated money to get BXE open source were:
- we did intensive testing of the both editors (Xopus and BXE) and found,
that in short-term (end of september) only BXE could be used for our
unipublic project (Mac-based) and ETH pilot project (Linux/Solaris-based),
since it was build on Mozilla.
- Bitflux GmbH had a clear commitment that it would open source _all_ code
and not make any distinction between open source and commercial parts.

This decision did not implement any judgement of technical superiority or
inferiority of any of the two editors. Both of them have their pros and
cons. BXE suited our needs better at that time, that's all. As far as the
university is concerned, we only made a decision for the unipublic project,
not for the corporate website project (which is by far bigger).

> We were very disappointed when the university of Zurich decided in favor
> of BXE, I admit, but we were also concerned whether the university knew
> what trouble it would find on its path by choosing an editor that does
> not support standards, forcing them to change all their XML, XSLT and
> Schema into some proprietary form, making it hard to change if needed.

I share your concern: we do not know what trouble will wait for us on our
path. The best way is to find out. And let other people find out, too. Now
the BXE code is open source, as well as most of Xopus's, and everybody can
find out for hinmself.

> Choosing also for an editor that only runs on 6% of all PCs world wide.
> I know they needed Mac support and I know Xopus on top of Mozilla Mac
> hadn't proven itself, but did the university know that a port of BXE to
> IE would be almost impossible?

It may be true that only 6% of the PCs world wide are Mac- oder
Linux/Solaris-based. But our project is for the University and ETH of
Zurich, and here the numbers look quite different: 100% of all unipublic
editor computers are Macs, and about 40% of the university computer's are
Mac or Linux machines.

> As for open source.
> So now we have two competing XML editors in the Open Source Space. Is
> this good for 'the industry'? I don't think so. People are distracted,
> confused and disoriented about what editor to choose/support/finance.

I'm an ecologist. And one thing I learned from ecology: competition is the
main driving force of evolution. And as you wrote to Holger: we're in an
internet evolution progress here.

And maybe the competition already did its job: I don't know if there was any
open source Xopus editor now without the "pressure" of BXE.

 > Can we work together then? I don't think so. The two products are so
> different at the coding level that there is no way they could ever
> integrate.

Now it's my turn to be frustrated.

> So what is left is competing and dividing. Dividing the OS Space that
> needs unity. Competing for finances that are too sparse anyway.

As a project manager I must add: it's not only finances that are too sparse,
but also time. And that's the one that worries me most.

Greetings and Aloha (in the very meaning of the word)

Roger

--------------------------------------
Universität Zürich
unicommuniation
Roger Stupf, Leiter Weboffice

Schönberggasse 15a
8001 Zürich
Tel +41 1 634 44 17
Fax +41 1 634 23 46
[email protected]
http://www.unicom.unizh.ch
--------------------------------------




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