Hi
Am Mittwoch, 22.10.03, um 04:41 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Adam Fedor:
On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 01:22 AM, Philippe C.D. Robert wrote:
But to remain at least a little on-topic allow me to ask this question (as
a simple user resp. programmer who needs to decide whether to use it or
not): where will the GNUstep project be within 12 months (which will be
more or less GUI 1.0)? What is the (realistic) roadmap for the GNUstep
project anyway?
Well I've thought about that question a lot, obviously, but I don't have a
really good answer. Most of my goals revolve around the concept of the
GNUstep Desktop. That is, I can have a lot of individual goals about the
GNUstep development platform, but it's hard to know what's really important
without a consensus of what the "reference" GNUstep Desktop would look
like. Will it be "all GNUstep", with our own Window Manager, or do we need
to give up our small town mentality and try to integrate better with KDE
and/or Gnome. What are the really important things that people want to
accomplish with GNUstep?
I don't much care which way it goes. I've been working on GNUstep for over
10 years now, and I just keep going for the fun of it, not because I have
any aspirations that it will become some wildly popular, unbeatable
project. My one hope is that it will be useful before it becomes obsolete
:-)
I dare adding my 2c… For me, Gnustep are first of all the libraries. Not a
filemanager, nor a desktop, nor a system, nor development tools (apart of the
libraries, obviously). So I personally regret a lot, that so much effort is
spent in things, that are not especially unique, but are already implemented,
maintained and evolved by so many others. I mean something like GDL2 is
unique and just "insanely great", isn't it? But ProjectCenter compared to
KDevelop is just way, way behind and unfortunately will probably never be
even half the way of KDevelop. Though I would prefer having ProjectCenter,
Gnustep-Filemanager, Gnustep-Desktop,… I just think, that we anyway don't
have the resources to catch up with those people. So why not spend these
resources more into what makes Gnustep unique and just invest, what we
absolutely need, in order to reuse (KDevelop, KDE, Gnome,…) what others
already have done? I mean the idea behind OO is reusability, not reinvent
the wheel over and over again?
Don't misunderstand me: me too, I would prefer having a complete
Gnustep-system, but we just do not have the needed resources for it, I'd say.
So in my eyes, the most important things would be:
1. Complete the already offered libraries. Especially in GDL2, where a lot is
missing.
2. Debug them.
3. Improve the Windows port! (This is the second unique part of GS: Cross
platform)
4. Implement some plug-ins or other ways to make KDevelop or any other well
maintained development tool, compatibel with Gnustep.
5. Dito for a desktop environment. Preferably KDE.
Or to attack the same problem from another point of view: Why might somebody
move to GS? I don't think many people do that because of a filemanager or a
desktop. Especially not now and the future won't change that, because we just
do not attract enough people so far to push such a project. I think the main
reason, why GS might be used in the future, is because software companies,
mainly from the Apple world, will want to sell/use their software on three
platforms: MOSX, Linux et all. and Windows. This is a tremendous opportunity.
The other reason, I can imagine, is that somebody knows, that OpenStep has
great development libraries though unfortunately the rest of the development
tools are missing…
Now of course, why I just don't do it myself? I would love to do it, but how
do I survive? I'm doing a PhD without a boursery or any savings – and I just
can't find a job in the GS world. There's just no time at all left. But I
would love to!
Just my 2c!
(another) Phil
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