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Re: really attracting developers


From: Rogelio Serrano
Subject: Re: really attracting developers
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:57:19 +0800

On 8/25/06, Andreas Höschler <ahoesch@smartsoft.de> wrote:
Hi all,

> Whats keeping other developers from gnustep?
>
> incomplete ide?
> incomplete nextstep based system?
> incomplete libraries?
>
> i don't buy the general applications unavailability argument. we are
> talking about people who want to create apps under gnustep.
>
> i don't buy the appearance argument either.

I doubt that any developer that got deep enough into the OPENSTEP/Cocoa
specification will ever want to work with any other environment again.
Cocoa/GNUstep is a killer from a developer standpoint. However, we do
not only program for fun. A few of us also have to earn some bucks for
their living and that means we have to find customers that use our
software :-)

I started an attempt to migrate one of our customers from MacOSX to
GNUstep (Solaris, Sun Ray). Although the Sun Ray approach has a bunch
of advantages over Macs as clients (lower price per workplace, WANable,
sessions can be bound to smart cards,...) the customer decided to
purchase more Macs instead of Sun Rays. The argument: "This looks
awful. No, I want Macs." (Footnote: We migrated this customer from
Windows to Mac a few years ago)

Of course beating a Mac in the category Look & Feel is close to
impossible even when using Cameleon. You might succeed in trying to
migrate a user from Windows to GNUstep (NeXTstep theme), but you
probably will never succeed in convincing someone to discard its Mac
and use GNUstep instead. Nevertheless we want to do exactly that since
Sun Rays and Solaris have so many other advantages. A sexy Look & Feel
of GNUstep is important if we want to convince customers to use GNUstep
apps for their daily needs.

Regards,

   Andreas

Thats a user you were asking. Its the developer who delivers what the
customer wants. Its looks like a chicken and egg problem but its not.

Somebody needs to add more to gnustep to get the ball rolling. You
have nice looking mac because somebody worked their ass off and asked
if its good enough. When it was not good enough they went back to work
on it for a couple more months. with gnustep nobody is doing that.
Customer said its not good enough and nobody worked their ass off
until its good enough. Yeah we all have day jobs...

Maybe progress is just slow...

Just as well GNUstep is open source. Otherwise it would have just disappeared.

So camaelon is good then in a couple of months another good thing...

ball will start rolling when all the pieces are there. when the time is right.

GNUstep has no deadline!

So we should not be thinking about attracting more developers. We
should be thinking what small improvement to add next weekend.

Ok I get it.

--
things i hate about my linux pc:

1. it takes more than a second to boot up
2. keeps asking about filenames and directories
3. does not remember what i was working on yesterday
4. does not remember all the changes i have ever made
5.cannot figure out necessary settings by itself

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