When we started the development of SciPlore MindMapping about a year ago we decided to use FreeMind as code base. That means we used FreeMind`s source code, modified it slightly, and added some new features. It was a straight forward decision: for many years, FreeMind was bascially the standard choice if you wanted a free open source mind mapping software and it was written in Java, our preferred programing language. However, time is changing and FreeMind unfortunately is not. Since a long time, the FreeMind team is releasing new versions very slowly, not to say the development of FreeMind almost pauses.
Therefore we decided to switch to Freeplane as code base in near future (around July 2011). Freeplane was founded by Dimitry Polivaev, one of the core developers of FreeMind. Under his lead Freeplane became a really, really nice mind mapping software over the last years. We also got many emails from our users who prefer Freeplane over FreeMind and we are sure that this is a huge improvement for all SciPlore MindMapping users.
What does this mean for you as a user? Well, Freeplane is much faster and less buggy. So, hopefully, with switching to Freeplane many bugs (export problems, wired path names, …) will be fixed and due to Freeplane’s very nice development concepts, less bugs should occur in the future and new features will be implemented faster.
What do you think?