Re: OGo/GNUstep cooperation Re: Re[2]: Frameworks integration

[Manuel Guesdon]

Good evening,

Note: it's probably better to keep the whole discussion here, in discuss-gnustep

Just few words to clarify my position on Helge offers and I hope my english 
will reflect my thoughts :-)

First of all, I'm happy to see contributions from helge/oog/skyrix to the 
gnustep project.

That said, my position is still the same than in december 1998/january 1999, 
before starting GNUstepWeb: 
I think it's better to concentrate work on a single WO compatible library. I've 
asked Helge about 
releasing their WO compatible library. The answer was no and I don't want to 
discuss his (and mdlink ?) 
reasons.
So I've started GNUstepWeb, some other people joined the project. 

GNUstep base and gsweb have been improved and Helge/Skyrix have improved their 
product too. Great.
I can't find contribution from Helge/kyrix in GNUstep base, db, extensions, 
gsweb ... ChangeLog but, anyway,...

During 2003, Opengroupware appears as (L)GPLed. Great.

Last week, I see a message 
<<
We also have a somewhat weird situation with regards to gnustep-web. I 
think it was mainly started by Manuel because there was nothing 
available and the SKYRiX stuff wasn't yet available as GPL.
Yet with OGo we now do have a high quality and proven WebObjects clone 
and gnustep-web is somewhat obsolete for practical purposes (no offense 
intended at all!) Not sure how we should proceed on this front.
>>

Well, a strange way to start a cooperation as Helge don't know too much about 
gsweb. But OK, may be a bad wording
choice.
Funny note about testing and usability, we have a GNUstepWeb have application 
which is used by more than 40000 people each
month, serving more than 200 000 pages each month for near a year. I think Dave 
have similar exemple.

After reading last messages, I worry about the future of GNUstep project as 
Helge see it. After years of proprietary
development, he sudenly suggest to share things. Well, basically, I'm still OK. 
But I don't think it's reasonnable 
to say "hey just drop this because we have a better one" without even knowing 
exactly what we talking about.

And asserting that 
<<See Manuel, I really don't want to lower your work on gnustep-web. 
Yet a comment like "just write another template parser" is 
inappropriate for the discussion, since WO compatible parsers (and many 
more things) are already *finished and mature* in NGObjWeb and they 
were finished and mature for years when you started working at 
gnustep-web! Thats the whole point.
>>
seems inapropriate to me as Helge know, base parser is just around 500 or 600 
lines of code easyly testable (just check
your NGObjWeb/Templates/WOHTMLParser.m). Nobody  (including) me does the effort 
to write a raw html parser. I didn't
done it because personnaly I like XML parser even if it can be improved.
BTW, Helge, do you know about .gswd inclusion, automatic inclusion of 
images,... in templated mail, query path extensions,...
which are present in gsweb ?


So, after reading last posts, I'd like to be sure about the direction of 
projects. If the goal is only to give more
mainteners to OOg/Skyrix projects, I don't agree. I also don't agree if the 
point is to move some base things outside of
GNUstep tree. I trust Adam, Richard, ... because they work on GNUstep for 
years. There's also few points about
organisation, copyrights and so on but that' a next step.

To summarize, I'm open, I'm happy to see contributions, I'll be happy to merge 
NGObjWeb and GSWeb but I don't 
want to see GNUstep projects taking some out of control way and I just can't 
say to people using gsweb or to my 
customers  "hey, we'll drop  this so you'll have to rewrite and test part of 
your applications; Are you happy ?". 



Manuel