The popularity of OS X among geeks in recent years has led to a lot more people discovering OpenStep through Cocoa. GNUstep provides a much-needed Free Software alternative, as David Chisnall explains.
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Member since:2006-03-08
There are some points that I wanted to clarify:
Because Gnome/GTK has a lot of momentum, while AppKit has none.
- That is (sadly) true but that's not the point, GNUstep is based on the OpenStep specification but also on the spec's clean design and philosophy. Although the abstraction layer could technically be made, I think that time and ressources needed for such as task would be better used improving the existing GNUstep solution (Foundation/AppKit, addional frameworks, apps, WM...) which is what the étoilé project guys (among others) try to do.
For GNUstep to escape the proof-of-concept phase
- While it's true that GNUstep doesn't have the attention/devs/user base it really deserves, GNUstep has passed the "proof-of-concept" phase for some time now from the technical point of view.
Look at Mono. It has achieved more in a few years than GNUstep has in a decade.
- Again this is true but incomplete because Mono fully enjoys the popularity of C# (which - as you surely know - is more hyped than ObjC as ever been/is/will ever be) then the project obviously catches attention/ressources of many people/devs/investors.
GNUstep could be just as popular as Mono
- That is not true since such a situation would require ObjC to be "as popular" as C# and unfortunately that will not happen any time soon.
As long as GNUstep remains a great tool to develop applications for WindowMaker or 12 other obscure environments, you limit the potential audience to zero.
- WindowMaker is a window manager, GNUstep can be used with about any window managers you want because GNUstep has nothing to do with WMs by itself. Use metacity is you prefer.
I'm sorry but I fail to understand how an AppKit/Gnome/GTK hybrid monster could leverage the GNUstep "potential audience".
Member since:2006-11-13
Member since:
2006-07-26
>>> Why support GTK? it's a much worse framework than GNUstep's AppKit! Besides, we have a Cairo backend, we use FreeType, etc.
Because Gnome/GTK has a lot of momentum, while AppKit has none. For GNUstep to escape the proof-of-concept phase, it needs to face reality and support either Gnome or KDE. Look at Mono. It has achieved more in a few years than GNUstep has in a decade.
If AppKit becomes GTK abstraction layer (like Windows.Forms) where apps on Linux use GTK and on OSX use Quartz, GNUstep could be just as popular as Mono. Also, by pooling resources, and defining one clear target platform, Mac developers would be presented with an extra audience for their (niche) applications.
As long as GNUstep remains a great tool to develop applications for WindowMaker or 12 other obscure environments, you limit the potential audience to zero.