On 16.12.2006, at 23:24, Gregory John Casamento wrote:
I now ask these questions: What was the original goal of NeXT with
their OS? Should that goal not also be the same for GNUstep?
The original goal of OPENSTEP was to create a crossplatform set of
libraries which could be easily used. These platforms consisted of
Windows (OPENSTEP Enterprise 4.2/Windows), Solaris (OPENSTEP 1.1/
Solaris), &
Mach (OPENSTEP 4.2/Mach) were the implementations of this created by
Sun and NeXT while NeXT was still in business. There were
proposals to
have an OPENSTEP implemented under HP-UX on the PA-RISC architecture,
but that didn't happen prior to the buyout by Apple. On each one
of these
platforms, mainly windows, OPENSTEP was made to look/act like the
operating
system it was on. As you can see, GNUstep's purpose is
*precisely* the same
as OPENSTEP's.
And NeXT clearly failed with this strategy ;-)
I guess the difficulty here is that there are some who understand
GNUstep as something like OPENSTEP Mach 4.x, an entire OS or at least
desktop environment running on a Unix/Linux OS, whereas there are
others who understand GNUstep as an implementation of the OpenStep
API specification (with some - but not all - Cocoa additions/changes)
which integrates seamlessly into its host system. In this case a
Windows port is what probably matters most (business wise). Right now
GNUstep is a mix of both which makes nobody completely happy.
-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip
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