When Xara Studio was released it caused real consternation among the businesses that were producing vector art packages because it was years ahead of the competition in both features and (most importantly) speed. The main competition (Corel) was so worried, that it licensed the product and released it alongside it’s flagship “Corel DRAW!” product.

It beats me how they’re going to keep paying the bills though…

I had used Xara Studio’s predecessor (Artworks) on a friend’s computer so I knew Xara Studio would be good, and it’s reviews confirmed it. Artworks was released 15 years ago; way ahead of it’s time.

I also owned a copy of Impression Publisher, a DTP product of the same company and used it throughout my undergrad years for submitting assignments. So over the years Xara has done me proud, and they’ve taken some cash from my pockets for their efforts. I bought CorelXARA, and I upgraded as new releases became available: Xara X, then Xara X1.

Each upgrade costs costs money, and although each upgrade offers new capabilities or performance improvements, not all of the new capabilities are useful to all users. What is most surprising is that despite 15 years of development, the basic toolset of X1 is remarkably similar that of Artworks in 1991. By no means is this a story of “money for old rope”; it’s more an example of brilliant user interface design from the outset.

Open Source Xara

Last year Xara released the source code to Xara Xtreme under the GNU Public License, which means anyone can download the source, build the software, and use it, or change it -all free of charge. I’ve experienced this from the inside, having once worked for a company that open-sourced it’s flagship product, cutting its revenue by 50% overnight. Xara are in a slightly different position because they are still selling the Windows product, but giving it away on Linux. There must be a sustainable business model behind Xara’s open-source decision, but it’s not immediately obvious.

An Upgrade Quandary

I now find myself in the curious position of wondering whether to upgrade to the latest release, Xara Xtreme, or perhaps I should jump ship entirely and become a 100% Linux user. Xara is (or was) the last thing that’s keeping me on Windows. I now find myself wanting and needing to edit SVG images, but the windows version can’t do it, and crucially the linux version appears to have this capability.

To pay, or not to pay

So there’s now an imbalance:

1. I can pay for Xara Xtreme on Windows, or
2. I can switch to Linux and get it free, or
3. I can download the source code and build it for Windows (!), or
4. I can wait for someone else to build the GPL version for Windows and then download that.

There’s nothing in the GPL to prohibit the re-engineering or release of a free windows version, and Xara must know this. I suppose Xara might be making more money from their bells+whistles one-click-website software, so the decision to open-source Xara Xtreme may have been a strategic self-destruct move to exit a market that was becoming infiltrated by open-source competitors such as Inkscape. It was probably a sensible decision to quit whilst ahead, and maybe make a few final windows upgrade sales as the market dies.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about when I mentioned that I harbour concerns about the open source business model, there are times when it hurts companies (Xara has lost a revenue stream on a fantastic product) and there are times when it hurts consumers (because Linux users get the product freely, whilst Windows users pay $80 for it).

Goodbye Windows?

So, aside from:

1. code stability whilst the open-source version matures, and
2. a little performance loss (because generic code can never be as fast as platform specific code), and
3. a general good natured financial appreciation for Xara
4. and the aquaduct…

…I can’t find an obvious reason to pay for the Xara upgrade any more, and with Windows Vista around the corner, I think I’ve found my exit point from the world of Microsoft OS’s.

Google have good reason to be concerned, because something Microsoft are already keen to promote is how Vista will help to “manage digital memories”, which to the layman means “show Photos and Videos”. To this end Microsoft look set to include “Windows Photo Gallery” when you buy the operating system.

Google have a photo management system called Picasa, and it’s now possible for Google advertisers to earn revenue by referring potential Picasa users to Google.

Previously Google only paid for two kinds of referrals: (1) to their advertising services and (2) to their own version of the Mozilla Firefox Browser, so the introduction of Picasa to this small group could be interpreted as a move to grab as much of the “digital memories” market as possible before Microsoft can use their monopoly to swamp the market.

Déjà Vu

Folks who’ve been around computers for a while will see strong parallels with the denouement of the “browser wars” of the the late 1990′s.

The main worry that Microsoft had about Netscape was that the Netscape web browser provided a means for thin client computing to become popular again. Thin clients had been common during the mainframe era, when the client was a simple box that did data input and output, with little or no processing. As the Personal Computer took hold, the processing moved from the mainframe to the client, and Microsoft made it’s money by selling an operating system for every client.

Microsoft feared Netscape because their browser re-introduced the concept of the thin client, and to mitigate the risk, Microsoft wanted to control the browser market. To this end they (unlawfully) gave away Internet Explorer freely with the Windows operating system in an attempt to “cut Netscape’s air supply” [Maritz]. The US Department of Justice ruled that “Microsoft’s dominance of the personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to the monopoly.”

Changing the game

That was 10 years ago. Today Microsoft see Google in a similar vein because they are starting to deliver on the potential that Netscape opened everybody’s eyes to. Google’s web based applications make the operating system irrelevant, so they destroy the foundation of the Microsoft monopoly.

That’s the potential, but it can’t happen without there first being a free, open source alternative operating system for people to use instead, which is why Google’s recent push into the Linux market, and this most recent of advertising twists is an ominous foreshadowing of the corporate battle ahead.

In his message Chris discusses the BBC Domesday Project that was compiled 15 years ago; and highlights the huge task that was required in order to rescue the data from digital obsolescence. The rescue is documented here. Chris argues that such obsolesence is built in to all digital content that is not stored in open document formats, and points out that hundreds of years from now, this content will be an archaeological goldmine, if it is accessible.

For governemnt documents, this may be particularly important, and Chris likens the process to reading the handwriting and decyphering the language written in archaeological documents that have been found that date back many hundreds of years.

There are two critical differences between open and closed standards from an archaeological point. Firstly, there is a greater likelyhood that the specifications will survive along with the documents, because copies of the standards are disseminated worldwide. Secondly, because more people have to work with the document standards, there is more likely to be open discussion about how they work – as opposed to the more limited discussion that may be contained within the opaque corporate walls that govern proprietary standards.

Recalling the BBC Domesday Project

I recall the Domesday Project very well because my sixth-form college was fortunate enough to have one in the library. In the days before the Web, in the days even before CD-ROM encyclopedias, when the floppy disk was still more than enough for holding several school assignments at once (including code, libraries, and the essay), the Domesday Book, with it’s laserdisc crammed full of explorable data was the ultimate in interactivity.

My college was a 2 hour walk from home, so I used to catch a bus. The picture here (which is extracted from the online Domesday Book project) shows the village of Dunvant, and the postbox where we used to stand whilst waiting for the bus to arrive as it snaked it’s way from Bishopston to Gorseinon. In the background of the picture is the Ebeneezer Congregational Chapel, the birthplace of the Dunvant Male-Voice Choir.

The fact that we could sit in the library and see the place where we caught the bus to get to the library seems commonplace today, but back then there was nothing like it. The BBC Domesday Project was the future, it suggested how amazing and information-rich that future might be. It’s now almost 20 years since the project began and it’s sometimes a little hard to grasp how far technology has developed.

The internet has provided an information source that’s millions of times times more complex, with millions more authors than the domesday book could have ever dreamed of, but what’s beautiful about the domesday project is that it is a snapshot in time, and (thanks to a lot of work converting the data to open standards) it is today, as Chris alludes, available online for everyone to enjoy.