Re: OT Writing an Article about F-Spot

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Tue, 2013-05-21 at 21:22 +0200, Sven Utcke wrote:
> > > I'll go ahead with the questions:
> > > 1.) Why and when was F-Spot created ?
> > When is simple enough; the first code repo tag was created on @
> > 2003-11-08 06:52:57 (GMT)
> Although it is of course possible that some of the code might have
> existed before, and that this is simply the date some (new?) version
> control paradigm was used.

That date is from the code repo on GNOME.

And since the release Mono 1.0 was on June 30th, 2004 [and F-Spot is a
Mono application], it is hard to imagine there was much before that
point.

> > >  Was it the first FOSS photo management application ?
> > No clue, I *VERY* much doubt it.  I'd wager the "first FOSS photo
> > management application" is long forgotten, and was probably circa
> > the 1980s.  This is not a new category of applications.
> Wikipedia claims:
>  The first digital camera that was actually marketed commercially was
>  sold in December of 1989 in Japan, the DS-X by Fuji
> So before that, and probably for some years after, there would not
> have been much need for a "photo management application".  Even xv
> only dates back to the early 1990s.  And that's an early image viewer
> and sort of rather crude editor, with hardly any decent management
> functionality. 

We can get into a pedantic argument about what "photo management
application" means! :)

Scanning physical images was possible prior to the digital camera; and
there was software for storing as well as categorizing those images.
Scanners were popular in the 1990s prior to the wide-spread adoption of
digital cameras.  I logged no shortage of hours standing at a flatbed
scanner.

--
Adam Tauno Williams <mailto:awilliam whitemice org> GPG D95ED383
Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA