Hi James, Jumping in here ...
> This discussion would be absolutely hilarious if it were not so sad. To call > elementaryOS a rip-off of OS x is a bit of the pot calling the kettle, > GNUstep started life as an almost pixel-for-pixel copy of NeXTStep 4.2. > elementaryOS is a very usable and viable operating system which is also easy > to extend and customize. It has quickly become my choice of OS, as I would > much rather build up to my desired state than need to remove a bunch of > useless resource hogging garbage. It is well thought out and extremely > attractive in its default incarnation. The way an operating system looks is > important to me or I would never have had an interest in GNUstep. I have 4 > Mac computers and all but one of them are running elementaryOS, with > best-of-class software including LibreOffice, FireFox, Gimp and Acrobat. The > systems boot in 15 seconds and each of those rather large programs starts in > 2 seconds or less. I have a wide selection of Gnome and GTK applications to > choose from that are ac tually USABLE. > > GNUstep is not an OS, it is not even a desktop! GNUstep is a nearly useless > framework that NO-ONE uses for productive work on a day-to-day basis. The > developers dedicate their time to developing new back-ends (what is it now 5 > or 6, none of which actually work well), and chasing esoteric OS X > capabilities which invariably break the few, very few, GNUstep applications > that almost work. Look through the archives; time and again the "developers" > admit that they DO NOT use GNUstep for anything except possibly developing > GNUstep. > > A new look for the website is NOT going to make any difference! GNUstep is > dead and has been for a very long time. Who is going to load a massive set > of libraries that do not even conform to modern filesystem standards, try to > figure out how to source an environment, locate some applications pretending > to be folders in /opt/GNUstep/system/applications (or wherever they are > located) just to play with a couple of programs that halfway work. > > Riccardo, Phillipe you guys have worked hard to make GNUstep actually usable! > You both should find a project where your talents and hard work can be > appreciated, a project that has a user base bigger than ZERO. > > GNUstep could have been THE Linux desktop and should be the alternative to OS > X for people who actually have a brain but it has been chasing its own tail > for so long (nearly 20 years now) there is no hope that it will ever amount > to anything. Users have GOT to drive application development and application > development has GOT to drive core development. That does not work for > GNUstep because there are no users and core developers have always tried to > force application developers to adjust to their whims resulting in all of the > good application developers giving up and moving on. > > Goodbye GNUstep, you could have been great. I can't let this slip without a remark! I agree that it is impossible to base a productive system on the always latest and greatest GNUstep code (intended improvements tend to break things). However, if you grab and freeze a GNUstep tree and do some minor bug fixes to get the tree into a usable state, GNUstep can very well be used in a productive environment (not only base but also gui). We actually have productive database applications (GNUstep based) in the field that are used by dozens of users on a daily basis. GNUstep is extremely important!!! I never thought Sun would go out of business but they did. I hope Apple will never go out of business but what if they do!?? Being able to simply recompile complex database applications on Solaris/GNUstep or Linux/GNUstep is key (absolute must). Our source tree is 100% cross-platform compatible and deployed on MacOSX Intel and Solaris/GNUstep on a daily basis. I wouldn't call this dead and "no users"!! Thanks so much to all that contributed to GNUstep in the past. GNUstep is very alive and should be considered so! Best wishes, Andreas _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
