Action items I believe need to be taken from this discussion...
1) We need to understand what our role is within the community... I, personally, think making GNUstep a framework+Dev Env was the right decision, leave the desktop up to interested parties...
2) We need to refactor the website to be more developer centric. I DO NOT think this involves different domains. I think this involves making the website more of a reference site with easily accessible documentation and links to supported desktop environments.
a) This will be done on gnustep.github.io since we are no longer using that.
Yours, GC
On Sat, Jul 13, 2024 at 6:41 AM Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey,I apologize you guys. Many of my replies were not going to the list since I was accidentally hitting the "reply" instead of "reply all" button on gmail when I was replying on my phone. Argh!!!I am going to attempt to summarize my thoughts on this and what actions we are taking below...On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 6:58 PM Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:Hi Damianos,
Damianos Sidiropoulos wrote:
> I'm sorry if any of this has caused any ill feelings. That was not my
> intention.
> I started with that particular premise because that is what the lead
> developer of the project communicated with me.Damian, I don't think what you posted upset anyone or caused ill feelings. We are all adults here and independent criticism is a good thing and it helps the project grow because it provides a unique perspective.I need to address something that, while not mentioned here, Riccardo did say it in a previous email. When I say that GNUstep should be viewed as a framework, you seem to apply this to "PORTING" framework. This is not my intention and to make sure that's not what you were thinking. I want GNUstep to be a Development Environment compatible with Cocoa, not just a "porting" framework. That's what Cocotron was and it is now dead. GNUstep persists for several reasons:0) We love it :)1) It's independent of Apple technology... Cocotron was tied to working with Xcode, when that changed it broke2) It's got its OWN development environment Gorm and ProjectCenter as well as the ability to use XIBs and build from xcodeproj files using libs-xcode3) The license... the LGPL has helped us leverage the improvements and changes made by other organizations... most notably Keysight and Algoriddim. Their contributions are extremely important.And a few other reasons, but mainly it's the people involved who love it that keep it going. :)No ill feelings. Not on my part at least. But you know the feeling od
something which has been discussed over and over and never comes out the
same again?This is usually because no action is taken afterward. We suck at "taking homework" if you will from discussions and acting on whatever action items arise from the discussion. That will not be the case this time.>
> The GNUstep web site also communicates this message on one of the pages
>
> https://wwwmain.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.html
I know... however on the same page it specifies the destkop and
application stuff. It is confusing and I think, here, a specific term
for the "Core" could help being clearer. Perhaps we should say. We,
GNUstep, are a project and produce "GNUSTEP" as "Core" or other name
like Stairway. Also we give you tools, apps.. but we are not a... xx,
yy, zz. It would be clearer.
I had full hands with maintaining the site, but had not the feeling to
write this, since it should be discussed. The feeling of "don't know how
to touch it" without displeasing somebody.
Also the domain continues to irk me :)I need to summarize my feelings here... I think what we need to do is what we do best. We are all experienced developers. Most of us work on the frameworks and on the development applications. This is our strength, we are developers making a development environment. The talk of a "reference distribution" I think needs to be something that is handled by another group such as GSDE, Gershin, NEXTSPACE etc. They are all doing an awesome job at what THEY do best. What we need to do is to put our efforts behind supporting them... the reason is, if we create our OWN distribution then we are undermining their efforts AND we are taking on something that we are NOT good at. So, I think we need to stick to our strengths... develop GNUstep and make it the most flexible and useful environment that we can make it and leave building a DESKTOP to the people who are interested in doing that...As such, I think we need to focus the website and make it useful to DEVELOPERS. This way we bring more people over to GNUstep and we make it obvious that if you learn your skills on the mac OR on GNUstep that those skills are something you can take to almost any other platform since GNUstep aims to work on as many platforms as it can. My mantra for GNUstep has always been the same as NetBSD... "Of course it runs GNUstep". :)> I have seen some of the misconceptions that both Greg and that web
> page seem to be fighting out in the wild
> I also helped him review the recent STF grant application and there
> was never any mention of a desktop anywhere in there. It was pitched
> as a framework touting usage by 3rd party commercial developers
> to make popular apps.
That's fine.. I think STF will be mostly interested in the "Technology",
that is the frameworks. But who knows... maybe a Libre Laptop with a
GNU/Linux with GNUstep could be.The proposal mentions a number of open source projects and external entities using GNUstep. It also emphasizes that GNUstep provides a way for developers to leverage their skills on multiple platforms. This is one of the strengths GNUstep has as a development environment. If you learn how to do something on a mac, it's a very short walk to do the same thing on GS or vice versa. This was an important part of the proposal you both reviewed.> Even the page (which I had to find via search engine) which provided a
> link to download GWorkspace didn't actually provide an app. It is a
> link to the source code and users are expected to compile it.
> https://gnustep.github.io/experience/GWorkspace.html
Well it provides an App in the form of source coed and not a binary.
There is no easy way to distribute an "app" on 5 different operating
systems and who knows how many architectures and distributions. It is
not macOS on Apple silicon only. Classic opensource: wget, tar xzf
configure, make install :)Indeed, I can only agree here. It would be nice if the process provided multiple binaries, but given GNUstep's portability source seems most appropriate.> Between all that and the lack of any desktop ISO for users to download
> and install, I had no reason to believe that GNUstep was anything
> other than an app/platform building framework
That's where Gershwin, GSDE, NEXTSPACE, etc come in. It would be good if we provided links to all of them so that users can use GNUstep as an environment. The point I am trying to make is that GNUstep should be viewed as a development environment, but that we should support desktops. As demonstrated by this group's lack of action on that front that is not what we excel at. We are good at writing code for tools and the framework... we are not good at building distributions. Building a distro is NO SMALL TASK and so, as I stated above, I think it should be something that we allow others to do and do everything we can to support them. Our website needs to reflect this.This is another "sore point", at the end it is best to provide source
tarballs and git repositories: for developers and advanced users.
Indeed.all others should be able to do "apt-get install gworkspace.app" or
"pkg_add gworkspace" or equivalent. (you can actually do that on Debian,
NetBSD and more).
We could provide binary repositories... but thin what average Joe wants
to do, just install the easiest way.
>
> This was just the premise I was given. The slides were just my way of
> gathering my thoughts on how the current state of the web site is not
> consistent with that premise.
> I am of course happy to go with whatever messaging the project decides on.
The premise was not wrong, only partial.
I still think you are right that we give a lot of mixed messages or have
difficulty communicating because overloaded terms, missing website
sections, etc etc.Yes. Thank you. Mixed messages is something we don't want.
E.g.
- should we define a term, word, group of words to define our
"framework" part? You evidence that need. It would help in rewriting so
many stuff less ambiguous
- should that term have a dedicated logo?
- should we define desktop projects are somehow endorsed, affiliated..
if they can have say "GNUstep" in a correct way or they might
misrepresent us
- ditto above for distributions
- more and better organized developer documentation. I think we all
agree on the gap, just different ideas on what and how to doù
Also, I think for "unresolved issues", like desktop, distribution and
similar we should agree on what to say on the website.
It's a multi-headed hydra.. I hope I did not demoralize you.
Of course it is easier to say "we are X" and do only this and that.
Easier to market :)
RiccardoVery respectfully...Yours, GC--Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patron
Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patron
GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patron