Re: Cocoa/Windows parallel dvlpmt

[Florent Pillet]

I think you have given both the question and the answer. Many Mac 
developers would jump on GNUStep if it could help them port to Windows. 
That makes sense: a porting effort to a platform you don't use is 
interesting only if you're going to benefit from it -- that is, port a 
commercial or shareware product.

Mind you, the interest in porting to Linux is certainly very limited. I 
won't open a debate about market share, respective platform qualities, 
etc. but if you're making a commercial product for Mac OS X, your 
primary porting target is Windows.

So it's somewhat a "chicken and egg" problem. There definitely exists a 
large number of *potential* GNUStep adopters, but the prerequisite is 
that porting to Windows is possible and viable. Once porting is 
possible, you'll probably see a large number of apps compiling with 
GNUStep, and this will also increase the number of apps that become 
available for other targets (ie GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, etc)

Florent


On 4 févr. 04, at 12:51, Philippe C.D. Robert wrote:

> Interesting to hear, could you explain this huge interest a little 
> more? I at least do not see any concrete interest of any Mac OS X 
> developer to port real apps to GNUstep, so I wonder what you mean 
> exactly?
>
> Besides, porting alone is not sufficient. In fact the possibility for 
> a port is just a prerequisite, there must be some potential user base 
> on the "other platform" in order to justify a porting effort. 
> Otherwise it just does not make sense to port, it would probably be a 
> wasted effort. Unfortunately - for most Mac OS X developers - there is 
> no or at least it seems that there is no such user base (marketing?). 
> Again, what would be needed to change this fact (or perception)?
--
Florent Pillet, Code Segment       florent.pillet@wanadoo.fr
Developer tools and end-user products for Palm OS & Mac OS X
ICQ: 117292463               http://perso.wanadoo.fr/fpillet