Re: The future of GNUstep (was: Open URL in NSWorkspace)

[Gregory John Casamento]

Haim,

I disagree with Fabien 100%.    Mac OS X compatibility is essential to GNUstep. 
  Naturally, getting everything stable takes priority.   However, as you can 
see from my previous responses, he was wrong about there being no Roadmap... 
there is one.... he was wrong about there being no direction... I have said on 
my blog and on the ML what I think GNUstep direction should be.  I said it 
today and I said almost a year ago.

> But before - great many thanks to Fred who did not give up and continues
> to work on GUI, it is an essential effort that we all need and I myself
> very much like the way how Fred prefers to do it right and not do it fast, do
> it just now, make it work somehow.

No one has given up on GNUstep.  I agree with and share Fred's philosophy of 
doing it right.   
 
> In my mind, people who focus on Mac OSX compatibility believe
> the best programs are written by or for Apple and the best thing
> open source can do is to make the available for Linux etc.
> They do not expect independent development.

You would be wrong.  GNUstep can have a great many of it's own applications.   
There is no harm in striving for as much compatibility as possible to allow 
developers from Cocoa to port their apps... but no one believes anything like 
what you're saying above.

I would like Cocoa compatiblity, but I also want GNUstep to improve on several 
aspects of Cocoa...  for instance... in Gorm, GNUstep has already exceeded IB 
in one very important way: Gorm can read and write any format as long as you 
write the reader/writer for the app.   Reader/writers can be added to Gorm via 
a palette.

The currently supported formats are: gorm, nib, gmodel...

but it's possible to add support for others.

GNUstep isn't just about creating something that's Cocoa compatible.   It's 
much more than that.   That is just one of the goals... our aim is to do things 
better than the other projects.   Even if we do it differently.

> I, on the contrary, believe that we can do better, even much better.
> And that there is a possiblilty of a breakthrough in several areas.
> Therefore I ( and, I guess, Fabien, too ) would prefer elegant,
> powerful, but focused and lightweight framework. I do not care
> about Mac OSX compatibility, because I do not expect to port their
> programs. I expect it other way around. Nor do I care about Windows.
> I promote Unix.

You could be more specific...

1) What breakthroughs?
2) Focused and light-weight how?

Later, GJC

--
Gregory Casamento

----- Original Message ----
From: "Vaisburd, Haim" <HVaisbur@Advent.COM>
To: fabien@sonappart.net
Cc: Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de>; Discuss GNUstep <discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>
Sent: Friday, August 3, 2007 3:05:23 PM
Subject: The future of GNUstep (was: Open URL in NSWorkspace)

Riccardo wrote: 

>Fabien:

>> On Fri, August 3, 2007 10:00 am, Fred Kiefer wrote:
> 
>>> As currently I am almost alone working on GNUstep gui (and back for 
>>> that matter), it will take some time for these things to happen.
>> 
>> And GNustep is still running after Cocoa.
>> 
>> With no short term objectives.
>> 
>> It is a no way.

> Could you please keep such idiotic comments for yourself?


Hey, how about elementary politeness?

>> Congrats to not have give up !
> Congratulation for spreading FUD.

I do not think it's FUD. Moreover, I agree with Fabien.
But I had to read the whole thread and it took me a while to undertsand
his position.

But before - great many thanks to Fred who did not give up and continues
to work on GUI, it is an essential effort that we all need and I myself
very
much like the way how Fred prefers to do it right and not do it fast, do
it just
now, make it work somehow.

Now, back to Fabien - if I only understood him correctly -
I have a very similar position that "Max OSX compatibility"
and "best possible framework" are different, and, moreover,
unreconcilable goals. I saw GNUstep first time around 1998,
then people were talking about OpenStep not because they
wanted to port OpenStep applications to Linux, but because
it was the best framework so far - but the best they saw
in their whole life. Some comments about it were rather impressive.

In my mind, people who focus on Mac OSX compatibility believe
the best programs are written by or for Apple and the best thing
open source can do is to make the available for Linux etc.
They do not expect independent development.

I, on the contrary, believe that we can do better, even much better.
And that there is a possiblilty of a breakthrough in several areas.
Therefore I ( and, I guess, Fabien, too ) would prefer elegant,
powerful, but focused and lightweight framework. I do not care
about Mac OSX compatibility, because I do not expect to port their
programs. I expect it other way around. Nor do I care about Windows.
I promote Unix.

We had a rather extensive discussion about that with Richard,
and I understood that most GNUstep developers (including Richard)
have the opposite point of view, that is, OSX rules.

So I do not expect any change here unless somebody dares a fork.

Thank you,
Tima


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