Re: FW: GNUstep on MS Windows (Oh boy...i've done it now!)

[Hank Grabowski]

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 11:16:41 -0600, Mondragon, Ian
<ian.mondragon@bankofamerica.com> wrote:

>
>i'm sorry, but i don't think this is exactly true.  what will gnustep gain?
>how many people will *really* run gnustep apps on a windows box?  while the
>gnustep community seems to have grown somewhat in the past several years,
>it's still been fairly slow growth and there are a lot of people in the
>linux/bsd communities that have never heard of/paid attention to
>gnustep...and that doesn't hold much promise for the windows community at
>large.
>

People no a given platform shouldn't know whether their app was
written in Qt, GNUstep, MFC or assembler.  It should just work.  The
users therefore come because developers write the applications, not
the other way around.


>yes - we'd gain an edge by having the most extreme form of
>cross-platform-ness around, but i feel it's misleading and unfair to even
>think that we would have a sudden flock of developers and users simply
>because of windows compatibility.  as long as you stick to the
>Foundation/AppKit, most things will compile on Mac OS X, but the
>loudly-touted cross platform apps/tools in this area are few and far between
>(with GNUmail being the most notable) - and i'm just seeing it for what it
>truly is: a win, but not considered by enough people as significant as it
>should be.  so if we already have a more applicable form of
>cross-platform-ness (linux/bsd -> OS X), without the severe bump in
>momentum, why should we think that a linux/bsd -> windows application would
>give us even as much?
>

It's a question of critical mass.  Software companies are going to
write to the platforms that are most profitable.  There are more users
on Windows machines than all other platforms combined.  Their
potential market is therefore enormous.  Providing them with a tool
that allows them to most easily create, maintain and improve their
programs should be the goal.  A software company, and therefore the
majority of the worlds programmers, aren't going to write with C++,
ActiveX and COM all day, and then go home and write in Objective-C and
OPENSTEP.  Those same companies and programmers can't even choose to
program in Objective-C and OPENSTEP, because the entire Windows
platform becomes inaccessable through that mechanism.  Therefore,
adding Windows support to GNUstep allows these people to have this
option again.

That doesn't mean they will switch over however.  The new system needs
to be significantly better than the entrenched ones to win over the
minds of companies and developers it has to be shown through other
people's implementations that it is heads above what else is out
there.  I think Objective-C and OPENSTEP is heads above everything
else that is out there, especially with the Cocoa extensions.  It is
simply a matter that the tools aren't available for 95% of the world's
user's platforms.

>- ian
>
>-----Original Message-----
> 
>Besides, Windows won't die if we ignore it, but GNUstep will gain a LOT of
>momentum if it runs on Windows.
>