Re: OpenOffice.org on OS X and GNUstep

[John Davidorff Pell]

On 4 Nov 2005, at 05:08, Andy Satori wrote:
> Making matters worse is that GNUStep is installable on Windows, but
> ProjectCenter won't build on that install.  GORM will, but what use  
> is that
> without PRojectCenter ?.  These issues continue to plague GNUStep.   
> None of
> them are unresolvable, given enough resource, but therein lies the  
> problem.
>
> The trick is to get some of those Windows developer's along with  
> the Linux
> developers and  the Mac developer's to embrace GNUStep as a workable
> toolkit, which right now as a Windows and Mac dev who has a linux  
> box as a
> server, it's not.  I keep working with it on a casual level, hoping  
> that the
> situation will improve enough where I feel that I can contribute,  
> but it's
> simply not there yet.


Part of the problem with GNUstep, and almost every Free/Open  
application, is that there is almost never a major release in the  
same sense as a major release of a closed-source commercial program  
that works. For example, what version of Office do you have? 2003?  
XP? Ok, great. What version of GNUstep do you have? 1.11.1? 0.9xx.xx?  
x.xx.x? What about the guy next to you? He has office 2003 as well,  
but GNUstep(-base) 1.10.3? And what the heck is -base -gui -back -x11  
-what-are-you-talking-about-where-is-the-GNUstep-version? (rhetorical  
questions).

Of course, a project cannot assign solid, absolute milestones,  
prepare for them, code for them, freeze the tree, bug fix, and  
release if there aren't enough people to figure out the milestones,  
code for them, freeze anything, &c. On top of that, the mile-stone's  
release number will almost definitely be something like 1.14.6, which  
is just stupid from a user's or marketer's PoV.

Solution: 1) automagically get more people to work on GNUstep. 2)  
keep the version numbers for the packages, but release a jumbo tar  
with meaningful versions included, i.e. GNUstep release 1, release 2,  
release 3. Each one has to work, and continue working, without any  
updates until the next major release.

$0.02

JP