For your reference, records indicate that Dan Hitt <[email protected]> wrote:
> Much better if the valuable parts of the stack (Gorm/IB, > ProjectCenter, copy-paste apparatus, dock, window manager) > were tuned to a particular OS that the gnustep developers control. Absolutely. But I question if that is a realistic aim, given the resources currently available. I don’t even see a documented reference platform (closest thing appears to be what’s on the downloads page), which would be a reasonable starting place. Then on top of that I could see building an umbrella package that had all the necessary dependencies. After that you could probably put together a custom OS distribution. And that’s just on the Linux side, where you actually *could* control all the pieces. > They should never be in a position of having to respond to > a change in the kernel, or a change in the compiler, > or a change in the XYZ utility. Instead, they should choose > the kernel, the compiler, the utilities, and accept updates > only when it makes sense for the top of the stack. I think that’s wishful thinking. External dependencies will always exist, and bugs and security issues should *not* be ignored just because someone wrote some code higher up on the stack that wasn’t encapsulated properly. > I think Apple has only rarely put itself in a position > of producing software on a stack it didn't control. > And when it did (quicktime) it was for a very definite > reason, and of course they had enormous resoucres > to do it with. Apple has enormous resources to work with regardless. GNUstep can’t match them; I’m not sure any company can. It is an endless source of amusement for me as a developer when a client asks how Apple does something, because I get to answer with some variant of “They build a second campus for $5 billion and fill it with people.” > I sure agree with the approach --- "modest and calculated" --- but > i think running on somebody else's stack is neither of those :) I’d love to see the calculations that show that managing the full stack is more modest. :-) Apps already exist, OSes already exist. Let other people do that heavy lifting. The task of getting Cocoa to function on *any* non-Apple platform is burden enough for one project. > Well, they do --- i mean, the page you see when you visit gnustep.org > is very clear (imvho) about what you're getting into: you're > getting into Middleware City. I don’t think it’s clear at all. Especially not to a newcomer, who has absolutely no idea what the history of the technology is. The web site remains a muddled mess, because there is no vision that can actually be communicated to a visitor. > Maybe i should pose this as a question: if you were writing > a "specific stated vision/plan" for gnustep, what would it say > (just briefly, as an overview, not detailed)? GNUstep is a project to bring great software from the Mac and iOS to other platforms, like Linux, Windows, and Android. It is also a way to portably develop software for those platforms using the same technologies that have turned Apple into a juggernaut over the past 10 years. > What would it say if it were to reflect what you want? What I want is measured by what can reasonably be achieved. There may be some future where GNUstep is bigger and can do more, but it has to attract a substantial number of developers if it wants to shoot for the moon. > What would it say if it were to reflect the reality of gnustep today? > (Would it be different than what's there today?) GNUstep is a project that mimics something from the 90s that you’ve never heard of. Here’s some code; you figure out what to do with it. -- "Also . . . I can kill you with my brain." River Tam, Trash, Firefly _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
