Re: A Critique: Getting Started with GNUstep on Windows

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

I appreciate your "interest" but not the way you are expressing it. Just 
a disclaimer "this is constructive critics" isn't enough. sorry.

Thom Cherryhomes wrote:
> Hello, Everyone. It has been a very long time since I last posted here.
>
> I have been a long time friend of Greg, and we've been talking about 
> GNUstep for many years. I have also been a passive viewer of the 
> GNUstep mailing lists.

It is not always the best of us.

> As some of you know, I, like Greg am a professional software 
> developer, and massive fan of GNUstep, and its relationship with 
> Cocoa, etc. I love what GNUstep potentially could be, the most elegant 
> of all of the free software toolkits.

I can say the same of myself.
Not only, I also develop several windows programs using GNUstep and did 
port applications to GNUstep+mingw just to prove it can be done

> It is from this love, that I am producing a series of disruptive 
> critiques of GNUstep's corrent state, the first of which, is the 
> current state of GNUstep development viability on Windows. I do not 
> pull punches, and I may make a lot of you mad, but it is all for the 
> intention of bringing to light, things that need to be addressed, as I 
> believe this community has become that deadly combination of insular, 
> and comfortable with the system in its current state. I can speak from 
> experience: this puts a project in a state of stagnation, which can be 
> very difficult to pull itself out of. I deliberately am doing this 
> from the perspective of an outsider, coming into the project, unaware 
> of the various band-aids applied to make things function, with a view 
> to constructively point out, what needs to be done, and in future 
> videos, how it can be done.
>
> Above all, the intent is to stimulate contemplation, self reflection, 
> and discussion of these issues.

Well, a video? should I go and watch 35 minutes of "oops" or "whoops, 
this is a big no" and "oh, this is kills the whole point"... blabla.
I skimmed through about 50% of it and will be very harsh. A video? no 
thanks.

Most of the things you point out are well known by me and possibly by 
others. Some of these are even fixed in the current, not yet released, 
branch.
This video helps nothing. I know about all the problems you point out.

You have three categories of problems:
1) Problems in GNUstep itself which will exist on a classic Linux 
environment
2) Problems specific to Windows
3) Problems specific to using the WinUX theme (which, I continue to say 
until I have breath, is not usable generally but only in specific cases)

Problems may be bugs

Now, I absolutely have no need to watch your videos to know about these 
issues also because all of those I have seen in the video are well known 
to me and several are documented  in our bug tracker.

What is needed?
True bug reports and true patches and help in resolution.

As the harsh people on OpenBSD would say "where is your code? "where are 
your patches?"

There is no stagnation: the flow of improvement is constant. It is 
however slow and certain issues never get tacked because they are bigger 
or because there is no "one right solution".
Check here:
https://www.openhub.net/p/gnustep/commits/summary

slow, but steady!

So.. save your time with more videos and instead... try to track down 
the issues and perhaps suggest how to solve them
Do the same thing you are doing without the WinUX theme. Do the same 
thing on Linux/BSD. Does the error persist? report a bug. Suggest a 
solution, offer a patch.

If you really feel like a movie director, do constructive videos about 
how to get things done, it is far more useful for the community.
I don't think people will watch your videos and "flock in masses" here 
on GNUstep with high-quality fixes.
If they really watch a bit those videos, at most we get some more 
negative advertising.


Riccardo