On 12.09.2006, at 23:22, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf wrote:
however, you *should* keep in mind that originally GNUstep was
supposed to be the development (and desktop?) environment of choice
for the GNU operating system...
This is still more or less true -- with GNOME being steadily absorbed
by the proponents of the Open Source Campaign and slowly, but
permanently diverting from its initial goals, GNUstep remains as a
backup variant.
I don't think that such an advertisement should ever mention Windows
or any other proprietary platform -- after all, support for these
systems is a bonus, but not an essential goal. The purpose is to
replace all non-free software completely, not to enhance it.
This is ideological thinking. But if you want to achieve an
objective in practice you'll have to think practically and do
practically things, like give something to get something (which is
also an very good social behaviour). And it's the best if the
"something" is actually something somebody needs and gets a benefit
from. That "something" most Cocoa developers - e.g. the people that
actually *use* some kind of OpenStep today - need would be some
possibility to port their software to Windows. If we could offer
that seamlessly we would gain a huge interest in that community
without the need to convince people to use OpenStep in the first
hand (e.g. explain to them why that obscure framework using an even
more obscure language with "ugly square brackets" instead of just
"standard C++" or "standard Java" would make sense to them).
The GNU project *is* about ideological thinking, at least to some
degree. Don't forget, you would not be able to use any GNU software
if everything was only about commercial success and "practical
things". I seriously question that GNUstep (or its advertising)
should be focused on some (commercial, Cocoa) developers targeting
Windows. This would be just wrong IMHO.
As a side note, you don't have to convince Cocoa developers to use
"this obscure framework using an even more obscure language" ;-)
-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip
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