Re: really attracting developers

[Philippe C.D. Robert]

Hi,

On 25.08.2006, at 12:05, Rogelio Serrano wrote:

> Whats keeping other developers from gnustep?
>
> incomplete ide?
> incomplete nextstep based system?
> incomplete libraries?
>
> i don't buy the general applications unavailability argument. we are
> talking about people who want to create apps under gnustep.
>
> i don't buy the appearance argument either.

It's funny (and sad...) that this discussion pops up every one and  
then since years ...

IMO it is because some GNUstep developers don't want to see GNUstep  
being a complete desktop solution (for X11 based systems), instead  
they favour the cross-platform API path, whereas others don't want to  
write major applications for GNUstep because it is not a complete  
desktop and thus has no target audience - sadly GNUstep apps just  
don't integrate with other desktops. It is kind of a chicken and egg  
situation (yes I am aware of Etoile, but IMO I doubt this project  
will have a big impact on GNUstep in terms of attracting new users or  
developers - unless it gets integrated into GNUstep itself).

This issue has never been resolved and as a consequence the project  
does not really make progress in terms of attracting new users or  
developers. Worse, while Java, .NET(Mono) or even gtk and Qt made  
progress in terms of installed base, functionality and maturity,  
GNUstep simply did not. Even more worse, you cannot use GNUstep to   
deploy OS X code on other OSes since the beasts are too different,  
e.g. there are many more APIs on OSX which are being used other than  
Cocoa when developing OS X apps. Not even the Objective-C runtime is  
100% compatible (which will become a real issue with Leopard, I am  
afraid).

So tell me one reason why I should write code for/with GNUstep unless  
I am an Objective-C aficionado .. (which I am, actually :). IMO  
GNUstep needs to change its focus otherwise it will always remain one  
of those many nice toolkits which will - unfortunately - never make  
it to the real surface...

just my $0.02... and now hit me ;-)

-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip