> It's viable in a lot of other ways but it's not financially viable. well, you have a point. but looking at swfmill, the many other ways shine brightly, imho: initial public release release was on april 6th last year. when you google swfmill now, you get 55.200 hits (<http://google.com/search?q=swfmill>). many use it, i don't know any recent numbers but last time i heard download statistics they were quite impressive. swfmill support just got into se|py (<http://www.sepy.it/?p=19>), which i believe will introduce many new users to it. that it's open source means that, even though Dan is too busy at the moment, anybody with either c++ or xslt knowledge could pick it up and submit patches.
for me personally swfmill in combination with mtasc meant i could switch to linux, with which i'm very happy now after more than half a year of constant use. likewise, it makes SWF development for linux users possible. this will become even more important once gnash, the FSF supported open source flashplayer (<http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/>) becomes stable. that Dan is very busy at the moment to ensure he can pay his rent doesn't make swfmill any less usable. most users only use it to build libraries anyway -- i consider everybody who ever used the <place/> tag a power user. there still are a few bugs, but even though i don't know c++ or xslt many others do and can send in patches, or even introduce new features. i hope to find some time to learn xslt in a few months, then what Michael tried to do the other day would be something that interests me (<http://osflash.org/pipermail/swfmill_osflash.org/2006-January/000354.html>), especially as far as glyphs are concerned -- it would open a whole range of new effects that would become possible, and wouldn't be that difficult to do, thanks to swfmill. it also would be a nice way to contribute in another way than to write documentation which i honestly didn't have the time to keep updated in the past few months (bear with me, it's on the top of my list as soon as i can justify spending a day or two on it). anyway, since i'm one of Dan's house mates, i know he has spent *significant* time on sawmill's development. far more than actually using it -- he isn't a flash developer and most, if not all on this list have used swfmill more than himself. maybe we can work something out to make swfmill development more viable for him or somebody else. i'd love to see more of a community process here, and frankly, the Dan-is-away-to-make-some-money-situation might just be was it takes to make it happen. like Kwesi already asked, what are the features the community would like to see (<http://osflash.org/pipermail/swfmill_osflash.org/2006-January/000370.html>)? where would you like swfmill to go? maybe everybody is happy to just use it to build libraries, but i believe it has much more potential. Dan has been working on experimental SVG import, that would be nice to have, imho. improving it requires c++ knowledge. the same goes for teaching swfmill new tags (i.e. more flash 8 functionality). much of its functionality comes from xslt, though. it's used to convert swfml-s ("simple") to swfml-l ("low level", formerly "basic"), which supports pretty much everything SWF v7 has to offer. new functionality usually means extending the built-in "simple" style sheet. so maybe if we specify what new "simple" tags should do, somebody will find some time to have a look and implement it. mark On 1/16/06, Chris Colman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Yes that's the problem with open source - someone has to do a whole lot of > work for very little money. I reckon a more appropriate software development > model is "almost free" software (very cheap licenses) or maybe dual > licensing. > > > > Except for some very major projects (like of the size and popularity of > Linux or MySQL) where there is the huge potential for a lot of associated > consulting money coming in then I think open source isn't financially > viable. It's viable in a lot of other ways but it's not financially viable. > > > > Open Source is a nice idea but intelligent, funny, stable, single (the > qualities needed by a programmer to develop significant software but also > coincidently the same qualities girls like!) males who may have always had a > lot of spare time and no mortgage end up getting girlfriends and then they > get married and then get mortgages and kids and suddenly they have to work > on commercial products during the day to bring in money and any after hours > spare time they may have had for open source goes out the door as they play > dad and become soccer coaches or play ball in the park or teach their kids > to ride a bike or swim etc., unless of course they pretend they just don't > have a family. (Now there's an idea.... no, stop it!) -- http://snafoo.org/ jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ swfmill mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/swfmill_osflash.org
