Re: What would be the most complete GNUStep system?

[Ivan Vučica]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Liam Proven <lproven@gmail.com> wrote:

GNUstep really needs its own web browser and its own chat client, I
would say. Everything else is there already.

TalkSoup is used for IRC.

StepChat is used for XMPP.

I'm not sufficiently familiar with either. StepChat is developed as part of Etoile.

 

Firefox is very reconfigurable. Ubuntu has a Firefox Ubuntu extension
that makes Firefox "fit" with the Unity environment -- its single menu
bar at the top of the screen, control via the HUD, icon notifications
etc.

If someone took that extension and reconfigured it, Firefox could have
a GNUstep menu bar and fit into the GNUstep environment really nicely.
It does not even need to be written from scratch -- just adapted.

A better proposal is to make use of Canonical's poorly-specified-but-nonetheless-useful dbusmenu to implement 'a GNUstep menu bar'. And the other way around -- to add support for dbusmenu into gnustep-gui, allowing the apps to better integrate with Unity and anything else that implements dbusmenu.

Which brings to mind a question: what is, exactly, a GNUstep menu bar? NeXT-style window dedicated to a menu? An actual menu bar -- that is, a global menu on top of the screen?

And if there were a GNUstep-branded Google Search page as the
homepage, it would bring in a little revenue for the GNUstep project,
as well. :¬)

While this sounds like a good idea, it isn't trivial to get 'a GNUstep-branded Google Search page'. It also brings up a question -- who, exactly, is GNUstep project and who would collect and distribute the revenue?

Would this be taken in by Gregory in his position as the project maintainer and distributed onward?

Would this be spent primarily on hosting?

Would this be forwarded to FSF?

Would this be injected into a separate GNUstep Foundation (pun unintentional, but awesome, really) which would have to be started up?

Would this be fair to Mozilla?

And finally -- since this money probably wouldn't be enough to cover expenses of even a single additional fulltime developer working towards a 'grand vision' (the single best thing that could happen to GNUstep, and that the Kickstarter campaign, were it successful, could have supported), is it worth the effort?

--

Ivan Vučica

ivan@vucica.net