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

[Jeff Teunissen]

Pete French wrote:
> 
> > The fact that GNUstep *PREDATES* Cocoa is irrelevant to OSX users. If
> > GNUstep copies Cocoa, it's still going to be nothing more than an
> > inferior clone -- because if it becomes a clone, it *will* be
> > inferior. It's that vision thing: if you don't have it, you're doomed.
> 
> This is amusing as all those arguments can be levelled against Linux
> when compared to UNIX. On the other hand it hasnt died a death with the
> advent of free UNIX (much as I wish it would), so the fact that GNUstep
> will be an inferior clone doesnt necessarily doom it. The Linux
> experience shows that if you get enough people who love the inferior
> copy --- and usually because they feel some "ownership" of the project,
> and involved in some way --- then they are quite prepared to turn a
> blind eye to those shortcommings, and even end up not seeing it as
> "inferior" at all.

Except Linux is neither a clone of Unix, nor is it inferior to it.

I'll take Linux over *any* Unix, because it's _better_ in all the ways
that matter to me.

And Linus has vision. He knows where he wants Linux to go, and he's
effective at getting it there.

> > This time, you are absolutely wrong. Most OS X developers know about
> > GNUstep. Why aren't they here? The simple fact is, not many of them
> > CARE.
> 
> Indeed! Thats probably the crux of the problem.
> 
> > that most of the very things that make OS X attractive to developers
> > (like QuickTime, for example) can't become available on GNUstep.
> 
> So we need a Unique Selling Point - something we can give OSX developers
> which Apple currently isnt doing.
> 
> From my perspective thats only one thing - the cross platform
> capability which gives the OSX developers "instant" access to a much
> wider market for their code than just the Mac platform. Apple isnt doing
> that right now, in fact GNUstep is the only way an OSX developer can get
> their code to run legitimately on other platforms.

To get OS X developers on-board, GNUstep would need to give them something
that not only is Apple not giving them, but something they actually
_want_.

Portability ain't it. If cross-platform compatibility or a wider audience
was important to them, they wouldn't be coding for OS X in the first
place.

> heres another point worth making: when I joned this list and started
> taking an interest in GNUstep and contirbuting to it, I assumed I would
> find a large number of ex-NeXT/OpenStep people on here. My interest was
> in taking my existing code and having it live on beyond the end of my
> current OpenStep systems.

Many of these people weren't OPENSTEP developers, they were NeXTstep
developers. In the two years following the release of OPENSTEP, only a
small fraction of NeXTstep apps were ever ported. Most just copied the 3.x
frameworks over and kept going, because of compatibility.

NeXT didn't address that, and GNUstep doesn't either.

[snip]

-- 
| Jeff Teunissen  -=-  Pres., Dusk To Dawn Computing  -=-  deek @ d2dc.net
| GPG: 1024D/9840105A   7102 808A 7733 C2F3 097B  161B 9222 DAB8 9840 105A
| Core developer, The QuakeForge Project        http://www.quakeforge.net/
| Specializing in Debian GNU/Linux              http://www.d2dc.net/~deek/