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

[Jamie Ramone]

I've been working on 2. It'll take a while as the system I use 4 dev
purposes is being...um, "upgraded" (don't ask) That's the bad news.
The good news is that I made serious inroads until this little
problem, so the future looks bright ;-)

On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 3:03 AM, Ivan Vučica <ivucica@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>>
>> --
>> 我的博客：
>> http://zhangweiwu.ixiezi.com/
>> 网站进化论 －－写给需要网站或后悔有了网站的人
>>
>>
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>
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>



-- 
Besos, abrazos, confeti y aplausos.
Jamie Ramone
"El Vikingo"