OpenSourcing a project

[Abbas Zaidi <abuzz@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeremy,

I'd suggest taking this discussion offline (unless
there are people here who would like to know how this
progresses.)  

Releasing anything into open source under any
generally accepted license is most effective when at
least one champion can be identified who can (at the
very least) herald the cause, if not actively work on
it or engage others to do so.  I can certainly make
noise and raise some feelers over at the Mozilla
foundation where I became a bug-filing user and
FireFox co-publicist this year.  Other than that, I
can write at ask.slashdot.org to learn about the how
and why of taking an existing product on one platform
Open Source on others..

For certain, a lot of the usual problems (like space,
resource allocation, mailing lists, etc..) would
likely receive your blessing.  But the whole idea of
OpenSourcing something is totally giving up all
responsibility over it, (while also giving up power -
something you may want to think about.)  The
possibility that there may turn out to be a vibrant
developer (or a community thereof) that may take on
the cause of porting this over to Mac OS 9/Classic
might sound like a dream to some, but stranger things
have been known to happen in the open source world..
not to mentin among users of this most intuitive OS.. 
(Then again, a wait-and-see might also be a good move
at this point, given that we don't _exactly_ know
Adobe's intentions, in the wake of Apple's decision to
birth the MacTel platform.)

I would have to issue the disclaimer that I may not be
the herald or champion that might be needed to take
this through, and I don't want anyone to get the
impression that I am saying that I am.  I am merely a
delighted user of the product and want to see my
options remain valid options on platforms of my
choice, and am willing to assist in making that happen
to the extent I am able.

Abbas.
================================================
Life is an adventure, for those who live it!
http://www.winkinglotus.com/az -    
http://superman.naseeb.com
================================================

--- "Jeremy H. Griffith" <jeremy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Jul 2005 17:07:16 -0700, "Abbas Zaidi"
> <abuzz@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
> wrote:
> 
> >I gotta lobby to get non-Win mif2Go rights/code
> released into the
> >Open Source community so that Mac (not to mention
> *nix) versions 
> >can be developed..    
> 
> That's a very interesting idea, Abbas!  So far we've
> offered a
> royalty-sharing deal to any Mac FDK **expert**
> willing to port
> to Mac OS X (or earlier, for Frame compatibility),
> but have not
> found anyone who is both qualified and willing. 
> Maybe we could
> open-source our code for Mac and UNIX, under the
> GPL, instead.
> Any developers who would like to work on a port
> under those
> conditions should contact us...  In that case, we'd
> probably
> make the program download free, and offer support at
> $99/year,
> something the people who did the C++ ports could
> also do, with
> our blessings.  ;-)
> 
> We're not sure if it's legal to open-source our FDK
> code, which 
> is dependent on Adobe's libraries; those are free,
> but seem to
> have a rather restrictive license attached to them. 
> We do have
> the Mac and UNIX FDKs on hand from back when Adobe
> had them on
> their site... but the port is not trivial,
> especially since we
> had to step around the FDK and use WinAPI in several
> places...
> Are there any open-source FM plugins now?  I know
> there are
> free ones, but that's a different issue...
> especially with
> Adobe's (withdrawn?) Mac FDK code in the mix.
> 
> -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
>   <jeremy@xxxxxxxxx>  http://www.omsys.com/
> 
> ** To unsubscribe, send a message to
> majordomo@xxxxxxxxx **
> ** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the
> body.   **
> 


** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **