[Clipart] Open Source Software

Jonadab the Unsightly One jonadab at bright.net
Fri Feb 3 06:00:52 PST 2006


Chad Smith <chad78 at gmail.com> writes:

> > Open source or open standards?  I know I'd prefer Open Source but
> > experience has shown me that badly documented open source is far
> > inferior implementation is not Open source).
> 
> what does this mean?  I don't understand what you are saying.

His wording is less than 100% clear, but I think what he's saying is
that support for open standards (i.e., protocols and formats) is more
important than open source per se.  

As far as that goes, I agree.  I'd rather, for instance, use a
closed-source vector graphics editor with good SVG support than an
open-source vector graphics editor that only saves in its own custom
format, all else being equal.

However, I am not sure this is really relevant to OCAL.

As far as web browsers, Firefox 1.5 displays SVG as well as any
browser I have yet seen, but what good is that to us right now?  In
practice, it's no good putting clipart on a web page if only users of
one or two very recent browsers can see it.  In the long term, the
situation will hopefully get to where we *can* put SVG on the web and
expect most users to be able to see it, but that is not today.

In the here and now I think more users are more immediately concerned
with finding ways to use the clipart in office software.  Office
software that can embed SVG directly would IMO be much more worthy of
a link from us than a web browser.  Unfortunately, I don't know of
any such.

-- 
Open Clip Art Library:  Drawing Together
http://www.openclipart.org/




More information about the clipart mailing list