Re: Advertisement for gnustep

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

Am 12.09.2006 um 15:49 schrieb Yavor Doganov:

> В Sun, 10 Sep 2006 12:30:14 +0200, Chris Vetter написа:
>
> > however, you *should* keep in mind that originally GNUstep was
> > supposed to be the development (and desktop?) environment of choice
> > for the GNU operating system...
>
> This is still more or less true -- with GNOME being steadily absorbed
> by the proponents of the Open Source Campaign and slowly, but
> permanently diverting from its initial goals, GNUstep remains as a
> backup variant.
>
> I don't think that such an advertisement should ever mention Windows
> or any other proprietary platform -- after all, support for these
> systems is a bonus, but not an essential goal.  The purpose is to
> replace all non-free software completely, not to enhance it.

This is ideological thinking. But if you want to achieve an objective  
in practice you'll have to think practically and do practically  
things, like give something to get something (which is also an very  
good social behaviour). And it's the best if the "something" is  
actually something somebody needs and gets a benefit from. That  
"something" most Cocoa developers - e.g. the people that actually  
*use* some kind of OpenStep today - need would be some possibility to  
port their software to Windows. If we could offer that seamlessly we  
would gain a huge interest in that community without the need to  
convince people to use OpenStep in the first hand (e.g. explain to  
them why that obscure framework using an even more obscure language  
with "ugly square brackets" instead of just "standard C++" or  
"standard Java" would make sense to them).

Or to cut a long story short: If you want to make people to use your  
stuff you must offer them a purpose to do so (for instance I don't  
use a flat iron since I have mostly tees and sweaters).

Cocoa developers have a huge need for a porting solution to windows  
(just listen to the discussions on cocoa-dev. If we could get them to  
use GNUstep for that, at least some of them will send in bug fixes  
and patches, that is for sure (/me points at Andreas Hoeschler  
here ;-)). Maybe the one or another would stick then. And as a  
surplus we also would get some more apps for GNUstep (even if some of  
those would be commercial ones).


> I suspect this "ad" is for the "Take Action" section, so how about
> something like this:
>
> ,----
> | Please contribute as user and developer to GNUstep[link], a free
> | object-oriented framework for application development, and help it
> | achieve the status of a complete and featured desktop environment.
> `----


Just good will and appealing to it alone is not enough. Thats maybe  
makes you feel better but you won't reach a single target that way.

> FYI, I have write access for www.gnu.org so I can help if needed, once
> you agree on the wording and RMS acks it.
>
>
>
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