On 12/12/21 04:59, Pawel L. wrote:
Hi, I think that the blind Linux community would benefit more from consolidating the knowledge of talented programmers and creating one, but maximally complete screen reader. I am sure that it would be better for all of us to effectively support the development of ORCA, as is the case with NVDA in Windows, than to start new projects. There are many ideas out there, but usually nothing comes of it. Take care, Pawel
Just to put in my own two cents as a developer - supporting an existing project and starting an alternative project are not mutually exclusive. One of the great things about open source is that the lessons learned from one project can pretty easily be applied to a different project.
There are many reasons why it might work better to start a new project rather than contributing to an existing one. You might want to experiment with concepts that the maintainers of the existing project are not interested in, you might find the existing code base too confusing to start contributing to, you might want to simplify the code base or work in a different language that you are more familiar with.
This allows people to experiment, or at least get familiar, with the specific issues surrounding a project. The best aspects of the new project can either be implemented as a patch or pulled into the main project by its maintainers if they see a clear benefit.
I'm interested in the comparison to NVDA, though. I don't know the history of the development of that project, or what the main differences in developer acceptance are between NVDA and ORCA. Do you find Windows open source development to be less chaotic than Linux in general, or just in this project specifically? It could make an interesting history.
Thanks, Aaron