Re: Kickstarter was not successful... but it did help things...

[Doc O'Leary]

In article <mailman.6924.1385227387.10748.discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>,
 Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:

> On 11/22/13 19:11, Gregory Casamento wrote:
> > MyStep is interesting but an implementation of uikit is needed in some 
> > form to attract that segment of developers.
> >
> do we really want to attract them? for what purpose?

Uh, how about "yes" and "for the general need to increase the adoption 
of GNUstep, both by developers and users"?  Also, possibly "because 
there are some really kick-ass apps that have been made for iOS, and 
it'd be cool if I could run them without the walled garden getting in 
the way".

> Where would this 
> "uikit-gnustep" run? do you want to have it running on Android do port 
> iOS stuff?

Is that a joke?  Of *course* that would be useful for that!  Similar 
things are apparently worth thousands of dollars:

http://www.apportable.com/pricing

> or on some free hardware? which one?

Why limit it at all?  It's just a different GUI API.  I'd love to be 
able to more easily port my iOS apps back to the Mac and/or get them 
running on Linux or Windows with a simple recompile.

> Of what use would it be? 

You somehow see use in the AppKit framework, but none in the UIKit 
framework?  That makes no sense.

> GNUstep allows to develop like you do on a Mac or NeXT box, but on your 
> operating system of choice and on hardware of choice (most notably, x86 
> commodity hardware).
> 
> But for a mobile computing it looks dimmer.

Exactly the opposite.  Everyone with an eye for the future understands 
that mobile is a shining star.  It's still early and rapidly changing, 
which makes it a hard target to hit for non-commercial development; that 
only points to how great the interest is.

But it's not even about mobile.  It's all about software interfaces.  
For ObjC, the WIMP interface was/is AppKit.  It got a new coat of paint 
when things started going online in the form of WebObjects.  Now things 
have gotten all touchy, so there is UIKit.  I don't think GNUstep is 
served by ignoring the trends.

> Mobile stuff is, sadly, much more retrograde in terms of freedom than 
> desktops.

GNUstep could be in a place to give people that freedom back.

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