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Re: Starting GNUstep (Debian)


From: Andreas Höschler
Subject: Re: Starting GNUstep (Debian)
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 12:05:53 +0200


The (old...) question IMHO is: is a development environment sufficient, is this really what users/developers expect from GNUstep? Are you as a developer confident, that an app(*) written using GNUstep (the various libs) will be accepted by users which are using the KDE or GNOME desktop environment?

We could convince them to use another desktop environment. Sun is promoting their GNOME based Sun Java Desktop System (SuSE based). I like the concept of a defined Linux system (install JDS CD, install GNUstep package, go...), so if we provided a doubleclickable binary GNUstep installer package for Sun JDS we could essentially reduce the efforts to get a GNUstep system running for the typical Windows user. Downloading sources and building is a show-stopper for 90% of its potential users. I had a look on the apps that Sun is promoting on their desktop. There is an application for mail, calendar, etc. Everything I saw looks horrible and as user unfriendly as what we know from windows apps. We could do this a lot better with less efforts.

Sun is already providing Star Office. Add WindowManager, Mail.app and something comparable to iCal to this suite, integrate this into the double clickable GNUstep installer package, do some promotion (C't, iX,..) and there we go...

I am sure this would work. It's just somebody (a business entity) has to do it. :-)

And that's why I believe GNUstep in its current form is doomed to fail, not to say it already did

I disagree. GNUstep has had no chance in the mass market so far because it was too buggy and not complete enough. Just now gui has reached a state where with a few fixes (categories) it can be used in a real production environment. What we need now is a binary installer packages for the masses. Ideal would be a CD that converts (with a doubleclick) a standard PC from ALDI,... into a completely setup and configured GNUstep machine including productivity apps like Mail.app, Calendar.app, Star Office and may be a small database based application to maintain contacts, customers,... This would be it. And it would be much more than others have to offer. We could base this on a standard Linux distro like Sun JDS to simplify things. Any volunteers? However, the bottom line IMHO is that GNUstep has a bright future. It will survive all these KDE, GNOME, .. waves and finally become the preferred system with at least 40% market share.

Regards,

   Andreas





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