On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 12:13 -0500, Jesse Ross wrote: > > Yes.. I'm a bit uncomfortable with some of the thing we want to do, > > because, frankly, it really looks like Squeak, and using Squeak would > > probably be easier and more sane. And if we want an operating system, > > it's possible to run squeak as an os (well, some did ;-) and without > > even saying it's an os, just running a livecd with a barebone linux > > system that automatically launch squeak wouldn't be very complex :-) > > > > On the other hand, we've got this great framework (openstep), and > > really, really great development tools like Gorm, and they are > > available now -- that's definitely an edge. > > Not only does GNUstep/Objective-C provide us with a great development > environment, the fact that OS X uses a similar setup provides us with a > huge amount of high-quality open source software to draw from. We're not > going to get that with Smalltalk/Squeak.
I agree. In other words: much less energy required. > Using the same environment as a major software vendor also means that we > have a larger pool of potential developers to draw from. And we need all > the developers we can get right now. > I agree too. In other words: much less energy required. > While using Smalltalk/Squeak might appear to have more of what we want, I > think it would be a short term solution. We know for a fact that OS > X/Cocoa is not going away any time soon, and will only keep getting > better. We also already have an investment in Objective-C, and I think it > will continue to provide us with a flexible development environment for > quite some time: GNUstep will be better for us in the long run, even > though it will mean more up front work. > True. > >> Also an advantage of this "portable solution" is, that it puts almost no > >> barrier on trying the Etoile, where full-featured OS is large barier. With > >> portable solution someone can start by tinkering around in his free > time without > >> requiring to give up his work. Nice way for attracting people. > > > > Frankly, at the moment we should not divert our efforts with that. I > > think the best thing would be to focus *one* environment (preferably a > > livecd, but could be debian, or whatever..), and provide tgz for the > > courageous that want to use étoilé outside that "official" > > environment. > > I think both of you guys are right, but I'm going to have to side with > Nicolas on this one. We don't have the resources to build 3 or 4 virtual > machines and do extensive testing on them. We need one, perfected > solution. All open source environments I've tried are a far cry from the > simplicity and usability of OS X -- based on that, I feel very strongly > that we should pick one architecture and one platform and build for that. > That doesn't say that we wouldn't expand out as we got more resources, but > I would rather we do one really integrated project where we can focus more > of our energy on features, instead of trying to make Etoile run everywhere > and spreading ourselves thin just trying to gain compatibility. Also, I > think a LiveCD is a great idea, because it does offer some of that > portability (not as easily portable as Stefan proposes, but it's still > less of a commitment then making someone do a full install just to try > something out). > Ok, i'll stay on my side then :) I think that it is not bad that we have different opinions on this topic. To be clear, I am not against OS solution, I only think that it is too early for such thing. I say, I will not switch to such environment unless it will provide me alternatives for all basic tools I am using now. I can provide a list, however I do not think that it belongs to this topic. Perhaps to some other thread with contents of the OS... Or in other words, I would welcome kind of transition period where I would be using Etoile with my current environment and later switch to Etoile based OS. Concerning the portability of packaged solution... Of course that I have depicted it in kind of ideal way, however, that is the state where I would like to get. I know that it would not be as easy as it seems. Regards, Stefan Urbanek -- http://stefan.agentfarms.net First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi
