Re: The Path of GNUstep (Was: Re: Gnustep + mac + windows? Possible?)

[Larry Coleman]

On Monday 23 September 2002 03:04, Jason Clouse wrote:
> Ah, but the availablity of programmers is very significant.  The reason
> Apache, Linux, and Gnome are such successful projects is because they
> have a lot of enthusiastic developers building a *lot* of applications
> and supporting the project.  The only way that GNUstep can get a large
> number of people involved is through the publicity that Mac OS X has
> brought to the table because it's the only thriving Objective-C community
> around today--everyone else thinks it's DOA.  It's the only thing that
> will cause anyone to take a look.  And even in the Mac OS X community, it
> doesn't seem like many people are aware of the project.  Perhaps more
> evangelizing and publicity are needed.  But I think that cross-platform
> portability would be a great draw.  Especially if deployment on other
> Unices AND Windows were solid AND easy.
>
As a relatively new GNUstep programmer, I have $.02 to add on this. The 
projects you mention are already very mature; it's easier for someone to see 
how they can make a significant contribution to GNUstep than to Gnome or KDE, 
which is one of the reasons I'm here instead of on a Gnome or KDE mailing 
list. The other reason is that c++ is very (some might say needlessly) 
complex, while Objective C is simple but just as powerful.

Also, people are constantly complaining about how usability of Linux apps, and 
I think that GNUstep will address this issue better than Gnome or KDE once it 
matures. OS X is pretty because of Apple's extensions, but IMO it's more 
usable even than Windows because of its *step foundation.

Larry Coleman
larry@studio1620.com