Re: I wrote about the new GSDE package on the Register

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 at 03:04, Gregory Casamento
<greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:

> Which part?  Also, who do you believe reads your articles?   It is important 
> to play to both parts of the audience.  Developers, while not the majority, 
> are extremely important because without them you can't create the engagement 
> needed to build the environment.

Apple does not sell iPads and Macs by talking about the elegance of their APIs.

GNOME doesn't get users by talking about the ease of development in Javascript.

Microsoft doesn't win corporate sales by telling people that .NET
fixes the complexity of Win32 in a 64-bit memory model.

Ubuntu didn't become the biggest Linux by talking about the range of
languages GCC supports. It doesn't even include GCC in the base
install.

You need to appeal to the masses, not the few.

You get users, you get a community, by making something pretty and
easy to use so that people want to try it. You need to get it out
there, in front of people's eyes, so they know it's a thing and an
option.

As I have been saying for about 10-15y now, GNUstep is not just a set
of programming tools any more. It's a desktop.

The way to get people into the community is to make it visible. So
they know about that desktop and are curious about using it.

So bundle binaries with a distro and get it out there.

Get it in Debian, get it in Ubuntu, get it in Fedora. Get remixes and
spins that default to it. Make it visible.

I had reader comments along the lines of "oh wow, does that still
exist? I remember that from the '90s!"

You will kill the product and destroy the community and any hope of
success by talking about APIs and version numbers. *ESPECIALLY* by
talking about obsolete APIs that were deprecated a decade or more ago.

Promote the whole not the part. Talk about the most visible bits not
the least. Talk about the stuff users can see and try, not the weird
arcane bits programmers talk about.

If you must talk about macOS, then do, but I warn you, for Apple
ecosystem developers these days, that means Swift, and if you don't
have Swift, you are not compatible with Apple software development.

[Reply sent to wrong list in error; apologies!]

_In re_ the later comments about NeXTstep vs. OPENstep... I am happy
to agree to that point, but I think that even now, over 20Y later,
NeXTstep has more mindshare and more "brand awareness"... :-(


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