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

[Jason Clouse]

On Tue, 24 Sep 2002 02:27:28 -0400 Jeff Teunissen <deek@d2dc.net> writes:
<<GNUstep cannot ride Mac OS X's coat-tails and still be a good thing. If
GNUstep cannot stand on its own, it does not deserve to stand at all.
That said, it *can* stand on its own, and it *can* attract developers
based on its own merits, not because it's a clone of Cocoa.>>

It can stand on its own technically but it cannot stand on its own
practically.  It has technical merit but very little practical merit for
many people.  Their thinking is:

"Gnome, KDE, Windows, OS X, or even libcurses seem to be doing the job
for me; why should I write applications for GNUstep?  I'd have to learn a
new language, and there doesn't seem to be much going on there anyway."

For some reason, though Objective-C is not a difficult language to learn,
it's a big hurdle.  Mac OS X, because of it's flashy (though, in my
opinion, distracting) GUI, has drawn a lot of developers.  In the
process, they have discovered Objective-C and Cocoa.  With a little bit
of encouragement, I think they could become interested in GNUstep as
well.  There would have to be a carrot to dangle, however.  As you say,
simply being a clone is useless.  Offering easy portability, a similar
development environment to what they're used to with OS X, and for the
politically conscious, a truly Libre environment, could be a useful
tactic in raising interest.  Even if only a handful of them became
interested, it would still be better than none of them becoming
interested.

I know that Apple and other companies have patents that make complete
portability impossible.  But there are certainly some things that can be
done.  When I read your original post, I assumed that you were proposing
that any kind of effort for compatibility between GNUstep and Cocoa
should be eschewed.  If I was wrong, please correct me.  I think that
would be a terrible position to take.

<<It also doesn't help that most of the very things that make OS X
attractive to developers (like QuickTime, for example) can't become
available on GNUstep.>>

I know that the QuickTime thing really sucks and all.  But are people
really flocking to OS X just to be able to write applications that employ
QuickTime?  I could see that for multimedia players and so forth but....

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