Re: Plans for ahead

[Adam S]

Good debate guys - just to interject and clarify on this specific post & thread ("Plans for ahead") this is very much the homage project (NeXTstep from NeXT Computers) which a small group of us are working on, and which we'll start sharing once its functional. So this is not GNUstep generic.

We've chosen Raspbian as the OS we are blending GNUstep into to create what we are presently calling piStep. I won't detail why, suffice to say functionality and usability supercede any other considerations or opinions.

Hope that helps. I could see this thread heading towards a debate which is only really relevant outside of our project.

Thanks. Adam.

On Nov 27, 2015 11:05 AM, "Ivan Vučica" <ivan@vucica.net> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:16 AM Svetlana A. Tkachenko <svetlana@members.fsf.org> wrote:

But we should not officially recommend users to do so. Right?

I'm not sure I'm following. 

Being supportive of the ability to run on some hardware constitutes actively recommending the hardware? 

And, assuming the argument against Raspbian is the same as the argument against Debian, making use of a base OS that happens to include some, explicitly marked as non-free, components constitutes recommending the use of non-free components?

While I would very much like to avoid depending on non-free software, binary blobs, etc, current reality is that GNUstep has a bigger worry: attractiveness and usefulness. Riccardo's theming work is, for example, very important here.

I'll re-state my personal position on 'the' 'official' GNUstep 'OS', because I've discussed it at the meeting and did not mention it on the mailing list.

- I believe GNUstep needs users. We've discussed on the meeting what the users are.

- I believe GNUstep needs a certain amount of 'shiny' and 'bling'.

- I believe GNUstep needs to be easy to install.

- I do not believe GNUstep needs an official OS.

- I believe GNUstep needs a reference environment.

- I believe that, for sake of ease of producing the live CD, and for sake of ease of installation, the reference environment should be initially based around Ubuntu or one of its derivatives.

  - ...this implies having a process to easily build up-to-date Debian packages

  - ...this probably means working build process for .deb packages would help build GNUstep for Raspbian

- I believe that the distinction between an official OS and a reference OS/environment is:

  - official OS implies extra support is given to a certain backing distribution (e.g. Ubuntu, FreeBSD)

  - official OS implies backward compatibility and direct upgradeability

  - official OS implies some sort of support by the core team for the software distribution, as shipped

  - reference environment implies a suggested deployment of GNUstep

  - reference environment only presents the vision of the core team (or a subset of the core team)

  - reference environment showcases what is possible with GNUstep

I don't think basing reference environment on one of Raspbian, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, MINT, FreeBSD, or any other OS, implies recommendation of that OS.

Does that makes sense?