Open source Jahshaka sets sights on Hollywood

How is the project being funded? Are you starting a services company around free video editing software? Why not sell a commercially-supported version?

We have been trying to work on getting sponsors since open source is all about the community and about freedom from big brother - not the need to become big brother. So currently we have no real sponsors, our sponsors mainly give us hardware or software in the hope of getting it supported and used. I have to say though that I tried everything out there to get some real assistance but I wasted a year of development work... I met with the Intels, Apples, VCs, Investment Bankers, Nokias, even Hollywood, but no one wants to help unless there's something in it for them... I may "open source" all the work we did since I think it's all a part of the experience.

Our vision for the future is more based around our network. I don't think its right to make money off free software since its being built from people's free time in the interest of the better good of society. But we hope to roll out a network that we can empower our users with powerful online functionality and services and make a commission in the process... kind of like selling gear in Ultima J. The idea is the network is free but users can buy into large online storage, online content for video, graphics, audio, custom plugins that can enhance their systems, asset management and groupware for large projects, licensing of content, custom development services, and free low-cost broadcasting versus paid high-quality broadcasting. We would charge for the things you would pay for anyway but distribute the costs across the users to make it cheaper and better. A lot of the ideas for the network we are getting from the "virtual film crew project" we are involved in with Chalmers University.

There has been a lot of talk within the open source community about the best approach to cross-platform application development. Jahshaka uses Qt by Trolltech so do you feel at this stage that Qt is the best option? Is it difficult to develop cross-platform apps with Qt in terms of programming hours and resources? What else could be used?

Qt really rocks and we are really happy with it. Since we use it only for our UI we could theoretically replace it with other cross platform toolkits. We have looked at wxWindows since its true GPL and not dual-licenced like Qt. We are also looking at moving more and more of the UI into the OpenGL space for 3.0 but that's a long way off.

Cross platform development with Qt is really easy and that's the main reason we use it. It's GPL on Linux but they charge for it on Windows... which is only fair since if you use Windows you aren't really supporting the GPL anyway. I guess our major problem right now is getting development hardware for final release packaging so we are not maintaining the cross-platform part of our code - i.e., we don't have a Mac or a SGI.

What message do you have for people and companies wanting to get involved with Jahshaka?

Please do get involved, open source is the future, we all know this. What I like about Jahshaka is multi-media has the power to reach people like no other medium in the world. With Jahshaka people can get their message built and get it out there quickly no matter what it is.

For me open source is a new way of thinking and if you don't get on the wagon you will get left behind. It's about social and economic reform - proving that we can work together for the better good of humanity and it's not all about making a buck.

The best thing is that anyone can get involved, it doesn't take coders to build good open source software, but users and artists as well since they drive the features as the tools are being built. I have seen some amazing open source projects fade away because of lack of support.