Re: really attracting developers

[MJ Ray]

"Nikolaus Waxweiler" <madleser@gmx.de>
> [...] The wiki feels kind of empty, underattended and stump-y. [...]
> Why not move everything, except the SVN repo and bug reports, to the wiki  
> and make that the actual homepage?

You've answered your own question.  The wiki is not good enough yet,
"underattended and stumpy".  Also, remember that it seems it was the
wiki which allowed the defacement of gnustep.org recently.

> Additions, updates to, and discussions  
> of guides and other information would be greatly eased, since people other  
> than the maintainers can contribute quickly.

No, they can't.  Mediawiki has some login system that locks people out and
a strange markup which discourages old c2.com WikiFarmers like me.

> [...] you could possibly synchronize the API documentation in  
> the wiki with the source and maybe vice-versa.

The web API documentation is currently synchronised.  Why break that for
so many 'possibly'?

> Plus, a wiki is searchable without Google.

It seems like it could be fairly easy make the main site searchable
without search engines, if that's something which people want.  It's
just not been a terribly high priority.


I think a larger problem in not attracting developers is that we can't
attract users (= potential developers) because:
1. some application projects think a revision control system upload
is a release (no, use a tarball!),
2. not enough people announce interesting stuff to info-gnustep,
3. other sites seem to break their inbound links so often that it's hard
to keep a working set of links on www.gnustep.org

Then, there aren't enough easy-to-use practical guides to creating new
applications for either gnustep users getting started with development,
or non-obJC developers from other systems (Perl, Python, Ruby,
Lisps..., or the distribution packagers) looking to help GNUstep.

Just my opinion,
-- 
MJR/slef