[scribus] My own small winter revolution...

[a.l.e]

Hi

If you've been reading this list for a while you must know about it: in 
the last few years I got more and more involved in the Scribus community 
and, more generally, in the world of free software for graphics. In 2013 
lot of things will be different! A "small revolution" -- for me -- that 
follows two unrelated events from the last few months of 2012.

The first event was Femke's announcement of the device for the LGM 2013: 
"Future tools". I must admit that my first reaction has been: "Where do 
you see any future tool?". Please, don't tell her. With the time I got 
used to it, started liking the idea and even got so far as collecting 
thoughts about Future tools for publishing. It's still just a bunch of 
wild ideas and all I currently know is: an Epub plugin for Scribus is 
not enough for the future of publishing. I wanted to dig further.

A bit later, towards the end of last year, we got an email from 
Christoph announcing  the plans for a release candidate of Scribus 
1.5.0. Two things stroke me:
- He plans one full year to get to a release candidate for a development 
version (after two and a half years of work on the branch!)
- None of the features I care about were among the tasks to be achieved 
until then.

I started wondering if, with a year of work, a motivated team couldn't 
produce something that -- while obviously not being better than Scribus 
-- would better meet the publishing needs for many more people.

Short before the end of last year, I've taken the decision: During the 
next few months, I won't do any support nor community work for Scribus. 
I won't make sure that on the Mailing List and in the Forums questions 
are getting an answer. No checking of the new bug reports each morning. 
I won't be testing the new commits in the git branches or the svn trunk. 
And I won't keep an eye either on what's happening in the IRC channel.
No, I won't disappear: but I will use those channels for my needs and 
won't be there to help other people with their sorrows.
I will certainly finish the tasks I've started (the Epub plugin, the 
translation into Italian of the Scribus book, ...), but I want to 
reserve much more time for experimenting with new ideas and new 
technologies. More details will follow very soon! You're welcome to 
follow my adventures on Google+ and on the http://impagina.org/blog/  
(to be created).

See you soon
a.l.e