I hesitated long to jump into this discussion because I wanted to learn the arguments.
The purpose of this discussion is to see if there *is* a shared aim that
can be cooperatively achieved.
Yes.
If there isn’t, the GNUstep project
should explicitly state that it will not welcome code or coders that
work with Apple platforms.
I was unaware we are refusing them.
Seek professional medical help.
This kind of language should be unacceptable in a polite society no matter the context.
You have not made a point, but just demonstrated you are unwilling to encourage polite discussions.
Impolite wording depends on the context and is usually a reaction to what was said before.
So please cite and criticise both sides. It was a reply to: "That -- that's /insane/."
> I mean, who would ever do that?
People who have enough sense to *not* code something from scratch when
perfectly useful software already exists that solves the problem. That’s
the reality when it comes to Mac and iOS software: it exists in volumes,
often with GNU licenses (or one’s even more free), and can serve as not
only a test for the completeness of GNUstep frameworks, but as a ready
introduction to large numbers of people who could contribute to the
project.
You are shooting your own argument in the foot.
OS X also exists. People who have sense enough not to "code something from scratch when
perfectly useful software already exists that solves the problem" will be happy to use it.
OS X only exists on certain hardware. If you don't own it, you will not be happy to use it :)
Your inconsistencies and aggressiveness demonstrate your participation in this mailing list exists solely to facilitate conflict.
Hm. What is better with that statement than the ones you criticise?
Conflict arises because people have different interests and stay on their point of view. Not because someone "wants to facilitate conflict".
Conflicts are solved by talking and listening to each other and trying to understand their motivations. And finally finding a compromise or consensus.
Yes, there are trolls who want to tease others by *pretending* they have a different opinion, while they have *no* opinion. But this discussion IMHO does not at all fall into this category.
Your participation is not helping.
Please reconsider your approach.
Now for an alternate approach to responding to what you propose: exactly. We want that. In many cases, however, grabbing a single GPL app and "making it work" is a multimonth effort.
You mention iOS. The Hollywood-style handwaving you've done there is scary. Making iOS apps run absolutely requires well-greased Core Animation. At that point you can consider looking at implementing the new main loop generating events etc. Then you start working on elementary UI elements. Only some of these are actually parallelizable. We also discussed and keep in mind the option of using Chameleon, if we have CA in AppKit.
How would you run such a project in a company, when you're paying people for 8h/day of their attention? How long would it take?
Now cut that down to (in my case) weekends and, at that, only some weekends. This weekend, I chose to finally visit a friend who lives in a suburb of Dublin. On Sunday, a friend who lives in different suburb visited me. I was sufficiently drained that I didn't touch much of any projects.
You are conflating lack of interest and goals with lack of manpower.
I would like to see a mobile game I wrote run on Android. It's one of the reasons I am interested in having well layered implementation of relevant frameworks done.
To attract people, I would *like* to write an IDE that can work with .pbxproj files in a *correct* fashion. This means implementing way more than a reader for .pbxproj format and a simple build system; the proprietary counterpart IDE has a pretty neat plugin infrastructure.
My goals are published.
Our goals are published.
What are your goals?
Because they sure seem like "try to de-motivate the few people who are interested in improving the project,
I would say from following the discussion that Doc is as well interested in improving the project and not to demotivate anyone. He just proposes a different approach (which I know that it does not fall on fruitful soil because we discussed that many times before).
IMHO,
for their own or others' benefit".
*this* is what appears not at all clear to everybody.
In my observation, there are two sides in this discussion:
a) we do coding only for our own benefit. If others find this beneficial, we are happy, but we do nothing for them, especially if they demand. They can do themselves, because we need more manpower.
b) we should learn about what others outside of our little world think and need and do at least a little for them. This will attract these "others" to really use what we do. And if we are lucky, there will be good coders amongst them who start to contribute and we get more manpower.
I am not yet decided which side is the better one.
BR,
Nikolaus