Surprise! Your Favorite Application Is Now Open Source
How would you react if Adobe or Quark decided to make an application that you relied on for your graphics or publishing work open source? To start, the entire code base would be released under the GPL (GNU General Public License), which would not only place the code in public hands, but make ongoing development completely transparent. While there's little chance Adobe or Quark will ever go this route, that's exactly what Xara Corp., a small British developer, has decided to do with its Xara illustration application.
Xara can trace its personal computer software origins back to the early 80s, with the initial release of its Wordwise wordprocessor, followed by the Impression desktop publishing software and graphics products in the '90s for the Acorn RISC computer. Xara Studio, a Windows-based vector illustration application, was marketed by Corel Corp. as CorelXARA in the late 90s, with the rights later reverting to Xara Corp., which went on to release the more advanced Xara X and the recent Xara Xtreme.
Xara has always been a Windows application, to the extent that significant parts of it were written in assembly language (!) to ensure it was as fast and compact as possible. Being a vector guy myself, I have always been impressed with the program, since beyond being fast and tiny (always a good combo), it introduced many of the capabilities we now take for granted in current illustration applications, such as anti-aliasing and bitmap transparencies. In 1998 it was the first product I sold via electronic download on the i/us graphics community site that I co-owned and operated at the time, and the enthusiasm of its small but loyal user base gave it a cult status that seems to have continued to this day. Or at least until last Sunday.
I was attending the first Libre Graphics meeting in Lyon, France, when Xara CEO Charles Moir made it official during his presentation—that after preparing the source code over the last few months, the first release of Xara LX (the open source version of Xara Xtreme) was now posted for public download. While small software firms abandon commercial projects from time to time and make them open source to give them a chance to survive and grow (Blender is a notable example), making a graphics product with a long track record of success available under GPL is, I believe, a first. It's an audacious move, that as Moir indicated during his presentation involved "putting the company on the line."
It's risky, because Xara developers are now focused on the open source code (goodbye assembler), with the hope that the project will catch the imagination of the development community. The involvement of dozens (ideally hundreds) of developers will be essential to ensure that the application continues to evolve. Moir sees this as one of the main benefits of the initiative—to leapfrog the limitations inherent in being a small firm and increase the capabilities of Xara faster than the majors (Adobe, Microsoft and, to a lesser extent, Corel, which doesn't seem to know quite what to do with the once-mighty CorelDRAW.) To get new developers up to speed, Xara has made all its internal development email of the past six months available online, as it will be doing with all ongoing dev email. That takes nerve.
In discussion with Moir after the presentation, I was told that beyond the ability to add functionality and squash bugs quickly, another major opportunity is to finally be able to deliver a Mac version of Xara. Corel tried this with CorelDRAW and soon gave it up, but Xara just might catch the imagination of the Mac graphics crowd, thanks to the firm's independent, quirky history, the app's speed and functionality, and the cool open source nature of the project. The single code base will also be used to generate future Windows versions.
Which brings us back to the question I posed at the beginning and raises the biggest risk of all—how will current Xara users feel about their application going open source? Will they see this, as Xara hopes, as a positive move that will speed the arrival of new, feature-laden versions? Will having the app be available cross-platform be a real benefit to them? Moir emphasized that the open source route could ensure the very survival of the .XAR file format itself, no matter what the eventual fate of Xara Corp. Will this give current users a warm, fuzzy feeling? Current discussion on TalkGraphics.com, Xara's graphics forums, seems to indicate that opinion is divided.
Xara has a lot of work ahead of it, to build a large, effective open source development project that meshes with its own team. It also has to convince its current user base to stick around for the ride and eventually move to new versions generated from the open source code. And to opt for the Pro versions that Xara is counting on to monetize all this time and effort.
Can Xara zig when its competitors are zagging? It will be fascinating to watch the answer to that question unfold in the coming months, as the firm tries to shift its flagship application from cult favorite to the mainstream via open source.
Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com
The thinking behind open source for Xtreme makes a lot of sense. IF people will create applications specific to the needs of the Xtreme community. Several members of the Xara community are talented programmers who have created some ingenius non-open source mini-applications for Xara X, such as Dmitry Malutin's SPX spiral generator which opens in a separate window but the results of which can be dragged and dropped into Xara. John Horn created a splendid bitmap editing additon called XEUS that adds a lot of Photoshop bitmap editing features to Xara.
But so far none of these folks have developed open source versions for Xtreme.
So, the real key to success for Xtreme's open source will be when these members of the community create specific filters and mini-applications to fill and/or suppliment the needs of the Xtreme users.
Gary Priester
Host of the Xara Xone
The next step is the pro version which should bring back the CMYK & spot printing options. Minor bug fixes & perhaps some tool upgrades.
In the future we could see; XaraCadd, XaraFont(Gallerys), XaraPrint & perhaps the integration of Xara3d with XaraXtreme as one seamless package. Knowone knows all the possibilities, but there will be many plesant surprises down the line for Xara users.
I for one am looking forward to it, as are the many others that have fallen in love with this "cat like" vector graphics program! And what a Graphics Package it is. Way to go Xara Group Ltd.!
I can see the light!
wW Xara DieHard
It's a great idea but ofcause it raises some questions:
From where will the money now come? People will be able to download a free version - why buy one from Xara Ltd?
I only see a Linux version! What is that - not progress IMHO... Actually makes me sad...
In the old days I ran Artworks on my RISC PC, I loved it... But eventually I had to switch to PC's... Now do I have to install Linux!!!?
Sorry.. Not me!
So when will the Open source version of Xara Xtreme be there for normal pc users who run Windows?
Sten--Xara plans to generate revenue from selling Pro versions that extend the functionality of the open source versions. For example, for licensing reasons they can't include PANTONE support in the open source version, but they can in a commercial Pro version. As I mentioned, they will be generating future Windows and Mac versions from the single open source code base. To respond to your last question, I'd expect a new Windows version before the end of this year, given their current rate of progress. If you're a longtime Xara user, you will remember that there were often long periods between new versions, so I imagine the prospect of more frequent, feature-rich versions should be an attractive one.
Ok... so they're going to sell a commercial version and use free software version to squash bugs and add features...
So how are they going to do a commercial version when the code is GPLed? Are they going to get contributors to sign (C) for their contributions to Xara?
Because otherwise linking GPLed code (in the form of the main source base) to proprietary non-free code (in the form of the pantone module, say) would break the GPL.
If they own the (C) on all the code, then they can do it. But they won't own the (C) on the code of contributors unless they sign over rights...
They'd do better to sell support and training courses and maybe custom extensions.
Anyone want to try 'embedding' this into one of the smallish Linux distros to publish it for use in VMware player? That way it would also work for the windoze masses...
For you windows users out there: with VMware player you can bascially run linux as a program window in windows - complete with applications etc.
- Marco
"They'd do better to sell support and training courses and maybe custom extensions."
-Nic
That's probably what they're going to do.
I love XX. It's all I use. I'm not all that thrilled to hear it is going GPL. I know, I know - lots of benefits to it. Just kind of hate to think of the old dudes in the castle giving up. They must have seen how an obscure program like XX could eventually disappear unless they made the change. Anyway, I preferred the cult status - felt good to be a pirate!
Mike
Will there be an open source version for Windows? It seems the files are currently only for Linux. I was pretty impressed by Xara as well, though I am not very artistically skilled.
David: Yes, they need to get the Linux version right, before moving on to Windows and Mac versions based on the open source code. Although, a little bird told me that another commercial release of Xara for Windows in 2006 might not be that surprising...
I remember when they first announced this last year their website said that they wouldn't be offering a pre-compiled windows binary of the open source version from their website and would be discouraging others from offering it too, in order to funnel the Windows users towards the pro version. Has this plan changed?
This (offer the Windows binary to paying users only) is the same revenue scheme as one (of many?) MySQL used for a while. I think they stopped because MySQL got so popular amongst everyone (not just its original Linux users) that there were lots of Windows users willing to go to the trouble of compiling their own copy and share it with others. I'm not sure what that means for a piece of software starting out with a large base of pre-existing Windows users, some of whom presumably know how to use a compiler.
Xara Xtreme is a fantastic program. User friendly, flexible and fast.
ron
XaraXtreme is my all time favourite package, it has detailed antialiasing,is extremely fast and affordable especially for a starting (web)design company. It can export to illustrator, eps, pdf and supports all industry standards.
For the record, it's perfectly OK to charge anything you want for GPL'ed code. RedHat does that. As does Novell, Mandriva etc, from code contributed by a zillion different people. It's just OK, you can do that, too :)