Re: Advertisement for gnustep

[Philippe C.D. Robert]

On 12.09.2006, at 23:22, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf wrote:
> > > however, you *should* keep in mind that originally GNUstep was
> > > supposed to be the development (and desktop?) environment of choice
> > > for the GNU operating system...
> >
> > This is still more or less true -- with GNOME being steadily absorbed
> > by the proponents of the Open Source Campaign and slowly, but
> > permanently diverting from its initial goals, GNUstep remains as a
> > backup variant.
> >
> > I don't think that such an advertisement should ever mention Windows
> > or any other proprietary platform -- after all, support for these
> > systems is a bonus, but not an essential goal.  The purpose is to
> > replace all non-free software completely, not to enhance it.
>
> This is ideological thinking. But if you want to achieve an  
> objective in practice you'll have to think practically and do  
> practically things, like give something to get something (which is  
> also an very good social behaviour). And it's the best if the  
> "something" is actually something somebody needs and gets a benefit  
> from. That "something" most Cocoa developers - e.g. the people that  
> actually *use* some kind of OpenStep today - need would be some  
> possibility to port their software to Windows. If we could offer  
> that seamlessly we would gain a huge interest in that community  
> without the need to convince people to use OpenStep in the first  
> hand (e.g. explain to them why that obscure framework using an even  
> more obscure language with "ugly square brackets" instead of just  
> "standard C++" or "standard Java" would make sense to them).

The GNU project *is* about ideological thinking, at least to some  
degree. Don't forget, you would not be able to use any GNU software  
if everything was only about commercial success and "practical  
things". I seriously question that GNUstep (or its advertising)  
should be focused on some (commercial, Cocoa) developers targeting  
Windows. This would be just wrong IMHO.

As a side note, you don't have to convince Cocoa developers to use  
"this obscure framework using an even more obscure language" ;-)

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