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

[Doc O'Leary]

In article <mailman.10141.1387809424.10748.discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>,
 Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:

> GNUstep hasn¹t boomed with Apple for various reasons:

What follows are post hoc justifications rather than real reasons.  The 
actual reason remains that Apple communicates their message better than 
GNUstep does.

> 1) It has an outdated look

Nobody cares.  Or, rather, that isn't one of the primary things that 
keeps people away.  What's the use case?  I mean, most open source GUIs 
look "outdated" compared to commercial offerings.  What fundamental 
issue *actually* keeps people from coding with GNUstep vs. some other 
API?

> 2) Most developers in Open Source don¹t like Objective-C.  They consider it 
> UGLY.

Again, what's the actual use case for that?  Because, from where I'm 
sitting, ObjC interest is bigger than ever.  Are you saying none of them 
want to port their apps to Windows or Linux?  Or that every one of the 
developers who wants to start learning ObjC wants to buy a Mac to do the 
UGLY work?  I'm just not seeing your reasoning.

> 3) Many people assume GNUstep is an implementation of OpenStep only, mainly 
> because of it¹s look and feel and they don¹t go beyond that point to try to 
> discover more.

That's on GNUstep for failing to better communicate.

> 4) GNUstep hasn¹t implemented iOS/CocoaTouch APIs.

That certainly hasn't helped for the last 5 years, but what about before 
that?  What about *any* serious efforts to port Mac software?  Or ports 
*to* the Mac of GNUstep software?

> 5) in the free software world people were too concentrated on beating Apple 
> and Microsoft to even think about implementing an API which was defined by 
> NeXT/Apple.

Immaterial.  There were ObjC/Cocoa developers and many have since then 
taken an interest in the technology.  But they have not taken an 
interest in GNUstep.  You need to seriously ask yourself why that is the 
case.  My conclusion is that your code is sound, but your message needs 
work.  In response, I'm essentially told to take my empty opinion and 
piss off.  People get upset further when I point out that such a 
response actually supports my point.  :-)

> With the collapse of GNOME due to GNOME3¹s failures, the above may change and 
> now, indeed, might be the time for GNUstep to riseŠ but we shall see.

There's no real need to wait and see.  GNUstep will continue to flounder 
so long as it fails to deliver a message that people want to hear.  That 
*should* be the takeaway from the dismal crowd funding effort.  Somehow 
I'm a jerk for pointing this out.

-- 
iPhone apps that matter:    http://appstore.subsume.com/
My personal UDP list: 127.0.0.1, localhost, googlegroups.com, theremailer.net,
    and probably your server, too.