Re: Known MacOS programmer about WO/EOF

[Nicolas Roard]

Le 30 mars 05, à 11:42, Frederico Muñoz a écrit :

> Let me just intrude in this thread to share my personal view on this.
>
> I don't want to rain in anyones parade, but Apple's marketshare, while 
> great for Apple stockholders, isn't in direct relation with more 
> developers for GNUstep. Just a cursory look at the threads sent by 
> Manuel - and that is just a sample, I have had personal talks with 
> people that develop for OSX - makes it clear that there is an enormous 
> gap between the mindsets of the traditional Apple developers (I''m not 
> even mentioning users...), including those developers that used to 
> develop for NeXT and made the jump, and the GNUstep project and 
> community. I've personaly saw the unhiden scorn in the words of OSX 
> developers (read: people that develop for OSX, not OSX core Apple 
> developers) when refering to GNUstep and related projects. The 
> portings aren't there not because of technical inadequacy (which 
> sometimes exists), but mainly because it isn't something that most of 
> them care.

Sad but true :-)
Mostly, they relay on old 3rd persons accounts about GNUstep and don't 
try it themselves; and many don't see the point "as they already have 
Cocoa". The remaining won't help the project "until it will work"
(that's it, until everything will be smooth and all, they won't even 
try)

> There is bound to exist some spillover, but mainly because of Unix 
> users that convert to OSX. And, since this was your point, let me just 
> add that I've seen an interest effect on people that "switch" from a 
> free Unice to OSX: they stop caring about their previous concerns like 
> "portable". Their new found heaver provides everything they want (and 
> that's great), but they to become rather indiferent to everything 
> non-Apple. I've heard *many times* the "now that there is Cocoa, why 
> care about GNUstep?" speech, that disregards the true objective and 
> spirit of GNUstep. Even free software projects made for a Mac are many 
> times indiferent to the possibility of making it work in GNustep.

I witnessed the same behavior..

> Don't take this as an attack on Apple, OSX users or developers. I, 
> given the opportunity, would probably also own a Powerbook. I'm just 
> taking a realistic look at the idea that more Apple share == more 
> GNUstep exposure. There are people that will be attracted to GNUstep, 
> and this mailing-list is as example of people that recently became 
> interested, many of them with a Mac background. But one doesn't 
> immediatly follow the other.

Well, effectively we can't say "all the ex-linux people who discover 
Cocoa will be interested by GNUstep" -- that's rather naive. On the 
other hand, there's a few percentage of ex-linux people now using OSX 
that are interested -- strangely, more interested in general than the 
old steppers or Cocoa devs. And Cocoa gave us exposure anyway -- 
particularly on Objective-C (books, etc.). A couple of years ago 
Objective-C was completely under the radar, but now, it's start to be 
on the map.

--
Nicolas Roard
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
 -Arthur C. Clarke