Re: Cocotron

[address@hidden]

Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:
> > It's unfortunate that all of these efforts are going on in parallel
> > with GNUstep (libFoundation, Cocotron, AJRFoundation) instead of
> > people getting together and collaborating on one project.
>
> I very strongly agree with that ... it always saddens me to see
> people re-inventing what GNUstep already does and duplicating effort
> rather than joining in.  I wish I know how to persuade people to
> contribute to a joint effort.  Perhaps we should try posting requests
> for volunteers to all these projects and to any other mailing lists
> where objc developers might hang out?  I guess we would need to
> figure out *why* (assuming reasons other than simple ignorance)
> people do their own thing rather than a group effort, and try to
> address any mistaken impressions of the project in any email we sent
> out.  However, my impression is that unfortunately the reason is
> often either religious differences over licensing/copyright or simple
> desire for total control over their own project, and no reasoning
> will convince people in those cases :-(  Even so, it's probably worth
> a try.
>
> > In conclusion, GNUstep is a much more mature and complete project
> > than Cocotron is.
>
> Yes.  We should try to get them on board.

In my experience (from other discussuions about GNUstep and even with
my mySTEP project), I think the reasons are manifold. What I have
collected is:

* there is no clear roadmap/release plan (which would indicate project
acitivity and agility)
* it is unclear who is working on what (sometimes, great
individualistically crafted building blocks appear on the surface)
* there is no regular call for patches and an organisation that visibly
collects and merges them (giving the impression that working on a fork
is faster and easier to plan than participating)
* it is unclear how to contribute major changes that affect several
parts (this also opens risk to fork)
* sometimes GNUstep appears to want to be the best and only solution
per definition, i.e. is embracing everything (like this discussion
shows to some extent)
* tied to a license (this argument I personally don't understand -
Linux is *very* successful with GPL&LGPL)
* issues with GNUstep makefile
* issues with Window Managers
* there is no regular *distribution* to base experience on (would
convice people easily that it is worth looking into the latest GNUstep)

So, I think the GNUstep project needs a little more discussion about
directions and project organization - and needs some active marketing
utilities. FOSDEM 2007 will be a good chance to start that.

Nikolaus