Re: Windows and GNUstep

[Jon Brisbin]

On Thu, 2005-07-07 at 13:37 -0700, rkm wrote:

> I hate to admit it, but Windows is where I need GNUstep the most.

I think there are a lot of people who feel the same way. I want to use
GNUstep for ObjC<->Java stuff. I can't develop very well on Win$ right
now because the support for it is through MingW, which works okay, but
is not something I could sell to management for a production environment
on which the business of the company is dependent. I'm using SUSE and
JBoss right now, which works fine, but I'd like to optimize as much of
our portal apps as possible by using GNUstep/ObjC. 

Although we are already using Linux, there is no guarantee whatsoever
that things will stay that way if I were to get hit by a truck tonight.
It was a hard enough sell to begin with. The threat of redeploying our
applications to Win$ is an ever-present one. If I purposely deploy an
app that is pretty much platform-dependent (keep in mind, we use Java
now and you can simply drop your app on another architecture and away
you go) then I'm not doing my company any favors. But if I could run
GNUstep on Win$ as easily and efficiently (i.e. *natively*) as it does
on Linux (and without in-depth knowledge of compilation environments--I
do, but my coworkers absolutely do not), then I would feel much better
(and less selfish) about any decision to incorporate GNUstep into my
existing applications.

Being a passionate devotee of OpenSource software, I worry that I pick
up on an air of "well why would you want to run it on windows" and "just
run linux" as an answer to an implementation question. Unfortunately, I
rarely have the power to make that decision and when I do, it's wholly
dependent on my ability as a salesman to show the benefits of using
Linux. I try and convince executives of the superiority of Linux when
they don't even understand the fundamental differences between the two
(that's an exaggeration for my current employer, but not for previous
ones.) To them, it matters not what it runs on, but that it RUNS and
runs well and that their Help Desk crew can troubleshoot it and maybe
restart the damn thing if need be. With night Help Desk folks not even
able to spell Linux (or pronounce it ;-) there is virtually no way to
sell a bigger Linux deployment than what I've already got. With GNUstep
on Win$, I don't have that problem :-)

Now if I just had the same flexibility of database access (we use MySQL,
Postgres, and DB2/400) and scripting (JavaScript), I would jump ship to
GNUstep right now :-)

Jon Brisbin