Re: GNUstep roadmap (was Re: [Suggestion] GNUstep-test for quality control)

[Adam Fedor]

On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 08:09 PM, Chris B. Vetter wrote:

> Well, I know I'm going to get bashed once again for this mail, but I
> just have to ask....
>
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 20:41:26 -0600
> Adam Fedor <fedor@doc.com> wrote:
> [...]
> > I don't much care which way it goes.  I've been working on GNUstep for
> > over 10 years now, and I just keep going for the fun of it, not
> > because I have any aspirations that it will become some wildly
> > popular, unbeatable project. My one hope is that it will be useful
> > before it becomes obsolete :-)
> [...]
>
> Would you care to elaborate that?
>
> I mean, you are the "project leader" of GNUstep and YOU DON'T CARE and
> do not have any aspirations, but just hope it won't become obsolete?

My point was that I don't have any illusions that GNUstep will be some 
sort of world dominating project. It's true that I'm not much a 
leader-type, but if anything I "lead" by consensus rather than fiat. We 
have, to be charitable, perhaps 10 active developers for a project that 
at least has aspirations to be something along the lines of Gnome or 
KDE (I mean the size of the project, not the actual goals). Clearly 
that's not going to happen at our current pace. My hope then is that we 
accomplish enough that GNUstep becomes useful to at least a small 
community of people willing to support it. My constraint then, of 
course, is that I certainly can't afford to alienate any active 
developers, and I'd like to please as many highly interested people as 
possible in hopes they will contribute as well. That's why I asked the 
original question.

From my POV, the discussion has been very valuable (despite all 
appearances) and I hope to refine the suggestions into some goals and 
ideas for future management. Of course about all I can do is make some 
suggestions to people. Most developers don't want to think about 
overall goals, they just want to work on what is important to them.

P.S. Not to you, but to other posters...I'd be more than happy to let 
someone, who is willing and able, take over GNUstep "leadership".  I 
think that it would be quite a challenge to find someone dumb enough to 
take up the position :-)