Re: question about low availability of Mac OS X applications that has GnuStep edition

[Ivan Vučica]

1. Look
People still think GNUstep is "ugly". This has changed only recently
and needs more exposure.

2. No DE
People do not use GNUstep since large Linux distros don't offer a
desktop environment. GNUstep apps don't feel natural in other DEs, and
probably don't integrate with their services (e.g. under Gnome,
address book APIs should probably use Evolution as a store)

This means users do not get a Mac-like experience of the software just
"fitting in".

3. No proven commercial viability

Mac customers already paid for a relatively expensive, but quality
machine; quite probably they are willing to pay for commercial
software. Linux users are using unpaid software; does it pay off to
spend time to try and sell to them?

4. Missing API

Yesterday I ran into NSViewController that was missing in Debian, and
unfunctional in latest SVN. GNUstep is also missing a lot of "Core"
frameworks: Core Graphics, Core Animation, ...

5. Platforms do differ

If you use sockets, they really do; each has its quirks.

6. Packaging and Testing

To release commercial software on GNUstep platforms, you need to test
on each one. There are a lot of Linux distros. Some methods for
packaging software for commercial distribution increase in difficulty
as the number if libs you use grows. After you package on an OLD
distro (doing so makes it probable that it runs on newer ones) you
need to test on at least a several major ones in various releases.

Mac has three major releases that you need to support commercially
today in game market: 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6. If you don't need a
publisher, you can do well by covering just 10.6.

7. No marketing venues

With Mac App Store, another marketing opportunity has opened. There
are many nice blogs out there that write about commercial Mac software
in a positive light.

If I tried to sell, for example, a blog authoring tool for primary
GNUstep platforms (GNU/Linux and BSD), where would I get a positive
review that would reach a significant amount of users that would
actually pay? Or would they complain that I didn't give it out for
free, and race to clone my software for free, out of anger?

Look up for how much that kind of software sells on Mac.

These are the primary reasons people don't do it. They may be a thing
of perception. Some of the things might not be true, but the
perception is that they are. Commercial vendors are commercial not for
the fun of it or to be evil, but to pay to their workers so they can
feed their wife and kids. If the market would not be sufficient or
would be unreachable, and the effort seems significant, well, ...

Suggestion:
Take a look at some popular commercial (or even just proprietary) Mac
software: Socialite, Reeder, Twitter for Mac. Do you really think
porting them would involve just writing GNUmakefiles?

Regards,

Ivan Vučica
via phone

On 24. sij. 2011., at 05:21, "Zhang Weiwu, Beijing" <zhangweiwu@realss.com
 > wrote:

> Hi. I have one question as a stupid user: why there is no commercial
> Mac
> OS X application that was ever offered also offer GNU Step binary?
>
> I had been using Mac OS on one computer and gnustep on another for 5
> years without coming across one application that runs on both. I dimly
> remembered around 3 years ago I even wrote to one of the vendor asking
> them to port to gnustep saying "it's just a re-compilation" and they
> replied they didn't know gnustep could do that and yet it's not a
> priority now for them to test if what I said is true, but would be
> happy
> to do that when they got the time, which usually means forever.
>
> No criticism. I am too stupid to know the detail to comment
> insightfully
> on any topic being discussed here. I am juts being curious why it's
> not
> already happening that a lot of Mac OS applications (and AppStore
> applications) water-flow to Linux users like they did in Apple's new
> world.
>
> Best regards
>
> --
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> http://zhangweiwu.ixiezi.com/
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