Re: [Fwd: Re: really attracting developers]

[Helge Hess]

On Aug 27, 2006, at 17:51, Doc O'Leary wrote:
> > Summary: having Cocoa compatibility (which is getting harder every
> > day as MacOS advances, just think ObjC 2.0) for Linux is _not_ a
> > selling point. The majority of Cocoa developers simply don't want to
> > deploy their desktop applications to Linux/BSD.
> I agree with your premise, but not the conclusion.  Yes, the Linux
> market is tiny, but as a developer I would gladly deploy there if the
> effort were also as tiny to port my Mac software.

Hm, ok. Why would you want to do that?

> It currently is not, and that is what makes GNUstep not as  
> attractive as it could be.

As a proprietary software developer, why would I port to a system  
which isn't used? It doesn't matter how easy it is. Lets say porting  
Delicious Library to GNUstep/Linux would take 30 hours which would be  
a very tiny effort. Let assume that a developer hour is just $100,  
this would make just $3000 for a port. Not much at all if the  
software makes a few hundred thousands of bucks.

You would need to sell to just 75 people to break even ($3000 / $40).  
You'll have a hard time finding 75 people using GNUstep on a desktop.  
And it will be even more difficult to find 5 people actually willing  
to _pay_ for the application.

Now of course it could be done by a few Cocoa devs as a marketing gag  
or just because they can. But still it wouldn't be any significant  
motivation.

PS: if you would make it possible to port such Cocoa applications in  
less than a week to GNOME or KDE, it would certainly make sense for  
small scale developers.
So feel free to add this to my list :-):
c) reasonably easy and convenient KDE/GNOME porting for Cocoa developers


> > IMHO there are two spaces which can be explored if you want to
> > advance the GNUstep community:
> > a) reasonably easy and convenient Windows porting for Cocoa  
> > developers
> > b) server stuff
> I completely agree here.  I will note, however, that in getting to
> Windows it *should* be an easier first step to run Cocoa/Mac apps on
> another Unix system.

I don't think its more difficult in itself (possibly porting Aqua  
effects stuff to Windows graphics stuff is actually easier due to  
better graphics support, don't know). But I do think its more  
difficult for _Unix_ developers (all current GNUstep devs ;-). But  
then there are plenty of Windows devs. Should be easy to acquire them  
to reproduce MacOS on Windows, no? ;-)

> So while Linux might not be that attractive a
> market financially, technically it makes a good target.

Hm, then you didn't get my initial/basic point :-) The former is the  
driving incentive for most Cocoa developers (as mentioned, very  
little OpenSource Cocoa apps, plenty of shareware style ones). If you  
want to get them, you need to make it attractive financially.

Greets,
  Helge
--
Helge Hess
http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/helge/