Article criticizing Linux in the Economist - large need of software support time

[Gerold Rupprecht]

Hi,

I found the following analysis most interesting:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/03/desktop-linux

Then I got to reading about your involvement with the automated testing
software called Eggplant.

The key to success is to reduce the support time needed to work with any
piece of software. Would the testplant people be willing to make their
software available on an open-source basis, or better yet the GPL ?

I really think there is a need for more/improved regression testing
throughout the linux software stack in general, but this last year shows
how difficult it is to keep GNUstep stable while adding missing
features. I think the Eggplant software might be just the right kind of
tool to do the job for GNUstep and its offspring.

What other tools are developers using for testing? Any reccomendations?

How else can we reduce the support costs for GNUstep and its
applications?

Can some projects be merged to widen the appeal of GNUstep?

I am thinking of the fork that Niklaus Shaller has been working with all
these years. His major need was to support floating point operations on
machines that did not have a FPU.

The other thing that we talked about at FOSDEM was better cross-compiler
support. Niklaus has been supporting an older tool chain (gcc 2.95 if I
remember correctly) when David Chisnell suggested Clang might be a good
replacement candidate for mult-platform compiler support. Does Clang
support the ARM chip yet?

Thanks,

Gerold

-- 
Gerold Rupprecht <geroldr@bluewin.ch>
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