[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Re: What is the future of XSL-FO
> > In a short, it is natural to pay money for a good software > product in modern society. Or do you wish to go back a few > thousands year ago? > How open-source is related to free? There are good tools which are both open-source and free. There are bad tools that are open-soure and free. Many open-source and free tools, both good and bad, are developed by engineering teams on good salaries. Some closed-source commercial tools are developed by greatly underpaid engineers. With natural results. Many free open-source tools greatly outperform commercial ones. The opposite is true too. Many good open-source tools have commercial licenses: PDFlib, Ghostscript, Inferno to name just a few. There is an open-source tool, which, while not freely re-distributable, is distributed for free, and has no real closed-source competitor. Sun Java, I mean. > I admit open source is one method of software development > now, but it will be difficult to produce a good software > in a short time by open source development model in general. It is difficult to produce good open-source software in the same timeframe as closed-source software of average quality, with deficiencies hidden by the source being closed. Regarding XSL FO implementations, it is a pity that there is no good open-source XSL FO implementation. Both for developers of XSL FO implementations, and for users of XSL FO-enabled applications, it would be a great relief to have such a tool. Tools are released open-source for two reasons (at least); 1) because they are so well-written that releasing them open-source (with a free license for non-commercial applications) only adds to their commercial value and helps spread their use and stage out competitors. 2) because they are written so poorly that not providing the source renders them unusable. In between there are closed-source applications, written not well-enough to proudly show their internals. Too many obvious things to fix. Not too well written build scripts. Source codes not documented well enough. Sadly, open source XSL FO implementations are in the second category for open source products. Distributing them with the source is the only hope to make them actually usable. Any commercial implementation on the market which releases open source for its tool with a license suitable for free non-commercial use immediately wins competition and secures its future, since commercial use will be supported by the confidence in sustainability, code reviews and wide base of non-commercial users. Unfortunately, my feeling is none of the half-dozen vendors of XSL FO is ready for that for purely technical reasons. I hope it will eventually change. David Tolpin http://davidashen.net/ XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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