Subject: Re: Please Read -- removed AbiWord Personal
From: Sam TH (sam@uchicago.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 17 2001 - 16:29:17 CDT
On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 12:05:10PM -0700, Paul Rohr wrote:
> Could you or someone else please explain the rationale behind this decision?
> I presume that it's more than just an easy way to close bugs 612 and 880,
> no? If that's all it is, I'd happily fix those and any other related bugs
> in order to preserve the distinction.
It's certainly not related to the bugs. In fact, I didn't even know
they existed until after I made the change. (Actually, I sort of
vaugely rememeber them from a long time ago, now that I think about
it.)
>
> I'm the original architect of the entire AbiWord branding strategy,
> especially the Personal variant, and have always viewed this branding
> distinction as the linchpin of *any* plans to eventually build a viable
> business model around the products we're working so hard to build.
> [1]
>
> As Eric can attest, I tend to froth at the mouth whenever people mess with
> "my" branding strategy, and have been known to generate countless voluminous
> emails on the all the implications of varying this.
>
> For the sake of everyone's inbox, I figured we'd be better off starting with
>
> - the "kill it" arguments (which are presumably brief), instead of
> - my "keep it" pleas (which could get *very* long).
Here are my reasons to kill it:
1. It no longer reflects reality.
---------------------------------
The current reality is that the holder of the trademark has
fundamentally left the AbiWord development process, and also the
AbiWord release process. Therefore, there are no more releases that
would be different than "AbiWord Personal". Therefore, the
AbiWord/AbiWord Personal distinction is meaningless, and deserves to
die.
It also doesn't reflect the way we build any more. Most builds are
not done at SourceGear, and are in fact done all over the internet.
We would still like the builds that Thomas does to be the "official"
AbiWord release on QNX, however.
2. It is fundamentally out of step with more permanent reality.
---------------------------------------------------------------
On Unix/Linux/BSD systems, the major way that people get AbiWord will
never be from us, as the AbiWord development team. They will get
AbiWord in one of three ways, most likely:
A. It will come with their OS.
B. They will get it from a seperate distributor, such as Ximian
(http://www.ximian.com).
C. They will compile it from source.
On Windows, the situation is entirely different. A will never happen,
B does not exist, and C is impossible for most people. I don't know
what the situation is like on any of our other platforms. [1]
But it doesn't make sense for the AbiWord you get on your RedHat Linux
CD to be different depending on whether it comes on the main CD (which
is compiled by RedHat) or on the extra apps CD (which is just random
stuff). [2]
3. The new (non-trademarked) splash screen is just damn cool.
>
> [1] I hesitate to discuss "business" issues like this on a pure development
> list, but I don't see a better forum to do so. The fact that there is
> currently no viable company willing or able to fund the work of *any*
> AbiWord developers is a very sore spot for me. Maybe it's just me, but I
> don't want to do anything which would make that any harder than it already
> is.
Well, this list is really all there is, so feel free to discuss any
issues even vaugely relating to AbiWord. I don't have any intention
of creating abiword-$$$$@abisource.com. :-)
> There may be folks on this list who can afford to continue their current
> levels of unpaid effort on AbiWord, but I'm over two years' salary in the
> hole so far, and my family can only be so understanding.
Well, as long as I don't flunk, I can keep up development for at least
another two years. :-)
[1] Actually, I think Thomas said QNX might put it on their CD.
[2] I realize that there's no chance of us moving from the regular CD
to the extra CD, but that's not really relevant.
sam th --- sam@uchicago.edu --- http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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