Re: elementary OS

[Andreas Höschler]

Hi James,

Jumping in here ...

> This discussion would be absolutely hilarious if it were not so sad.  To call 
> elementaryOS a rip-off of OS x is a bit of the pot calling the kettle, 
> GNUstep started life as an almost pixel-for-pixel copy of NeXTStep 4.2.  
> elementaryOS is a very usable and viable operating system which is also easy 
> to extend and customize. It has quickly become my choice of OS, as I would 
> much rather build up to my desired state than need to remove a bunch of 
> useless resource hogging garbage.  It is well thought out and extremely 
> attractive in its default incarnation.   The way an operating system looks is 
> important to me or I would never have had an interest in GNUstep.  I have 4 
> Mac computers and all but one of them are running elementaryOS, with 
> best-of-class software including LibreOffice, FireFox, Gimp and Acrobat.  The 
> systems boot in 15 seconds and each of those rather large programs starts in 
> 2 seconds or less.  I have a wide selection of Gnome and GTK applications to 
> choose from that are actually USABLE.  
> 
> GNUstep is not an OS, it is not even a desktop!  GNUstep is a nearly useless 
> framework that NO-ONE uses for productive work on a day-to-day basis.  The 
> developers dedicate their time to developing new back-ends (what is it now 5 
> or 6, none of which actually work well), and chasing esoteric OS X 
> capabilities which invariably break the few, very few, GNUstep applications 
> that almost work.  Look through the archives; time and again the "developers" 
> admit that they DO NOT use GNUstep for anything except possibly developing 
> GNUstep.  
> 
> A new look for the website is NOT going to make any difference!  GNUstep is 
> dead and has been for a very long time.  Who is going to load a massive set 
> of libraries that do not even conform to modern filesystem standards, try to 
> figure out how to source an environment, locate some applications  pretending 
> to be folders in /opt/GNUstep/system/applications (or wherever they are 
> located)  just to play with a couple of programs that halfway work.
> 
> Riccardo, Phillipe you guys have worked hard to make GNUstep actually usable! 
>  You both should find a project where your talents and hard work can be 
> appreciated, a project that has a user base bigger than ZERO.
> 
> GNUstep could have been THE Linux desktop and should be the alternative to OS 
> X for people who actually have a brain but it has been chasing its own tail 
> for so long (nearly 20 years now) there is no hope that it will ever amount 
> to anything.  Users have GOT to drive application development and application 
> development has GOT to drive core development.  That does not work for 
> GNUstep because there are no users and core developers have always tried to 
> force application developers to adjust to their whims resulting in all of the 
> good application developers giving up and moving on.
> 
> Goodbye GNUstep, you could have been great.

I can't let this slip without a remark! I agree that it is impossible to base a 
productive system on the always latest and greatest GNUstep code (intended 
improvements tend to break things). However, if you grab and freeze a GNUstep 
tree and do some minor bug fixes to get the tree into a usable state, GNUstep 
can very well be used in a productive environment (not only base but also gui). 
We actually have productive database applications (GNUstep based) in the field 
that are used by dozens of users on a daily basis.

GNUstep is extremely important!!! I never thought Sun would go out of business 
but they did. I hope Apple will never go out of business but what if they do!?? 
Being able to simply recompile complex database applications on Solaris/GNUstep 
or Linux/GNUstep is key (absolute must). Our source tree is 100% cross-platform 
compatible and deployed on MacOSX Intel and Solaris/GNUstep on a daily basis. I 
wouldn't call this dead and "no users"!!

Thanks so much to all that contributed to GNUstep in the past. GNUstep is very 
alive and should be considered so!

Best wishes,

 Andreas