GNUstep history

[Scott Christley]

Hello GNUstep webmasters!

I was browsing awhile ago and happened upon the Wikipedia entry for  
GNUstep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnustep

and what struck me was that the History was wrong.  Not blatantly  
wrong as if completely incorrect, just missing lots of information and  
giving the false impression that objcX was the initial code base for  
GNUstep, which it was not.  None of Paul's and the SLAC code could be  
used because the copyright could not be assigned to FSF.  That's when  
I created gnustep-gui from scratch and the windows backend (which I  
think has been scrubbed now), and assigned them to FSF.  And later on  
gnustep-db and gnustep-make.

I really didn't think too much of it at the time, and I know it is  
Wikipedia's general policy not to allow posts about oneself, so I  
didn't pursue it.

Anyways, I've just started to look into getting GNUstep into Fedora,  
some people actually started the conversation a month or so ago.  I've  
been going through the email discussion, following the links when I  
happened across this GNUstep history page.

http://gnustep.made-it.com/Guides/History.html

Which is nice but also incomplete in the beginning days.  Though it  
doesn't say it explicitly, it give the impression that objcX was the  
initial code base for the gnustep-gui that we have today.  I also note  
that all the efforts between 1996 and 1998 are essentially blank.

I'm guessing this is because of a number of reasons:

1) The unfortunate demise of my company NET-Community in 1998 forced  
me into industry, and into a position where I could not work on free  
software for a number of years.  So about the only person still active  
in GNUstep who still remembers me is probably Adam Fedor, my time did  
not cross with Richard Frith-Macdonald who really did a great job in  
moving GNUstep to the next level.

2) The tendency I had in those early days to use generic accounts on  
my development machines (like address@hidden, or address@hidden 
) instead of my own, which means my name is missing from the early  
Changelogs.

3) Also because none of the emails for me in the GNUstep source code  
or elsewhere are valid, so maybe people tried to contact me but never  
could!

I also notice that my entry on the GNUstep who's who page is sparse.

http://www.gnustep.org/developers/whoiswho.html

Personally, I feel very silly even pointing this stuff out.  I always  
assumed it was common knowledge to everybody, but apparently not!

I wonder if maybe you are interested in filling in some of the gaps in  
GNUstep history?

cheers
Scott Christley


a little glimpse in the past :-)

http://web.archive.org/web/19970126031852/http://net-community.com/