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Looking for GNUstep developers


From: Michael Hopkins
Subject: Looking for GNUstep developers
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:07:38 +0000
User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.3.3.061214


Hi 

We develop specialised maths/stats codes using C and optimised libraries to
support our consultancy service.  Over the last couple of years, we (I) have
been looking at ways to increase our development productivity, flexibility
and options via OOD and we have now decided to go with Objective-C and the
Foundation libraries.  We develop natively on OS X and port (with GNUstep)
to 64-bit Linux and (if ABSOLUTELY necessary) Win32.

We are a small company and I am currently the only developer, as well as
being the consultant and MD!  This does not leave me with enough time to do
everything that I want to.  I am partway through wrapping our core code in
Obj-C/Foundation objects and both enjoying the process and seeing new
possibilities as I go.  Of course, more help on both design and coding would
always be useful in terms of turning these into reality.

Until now, our software has always been used in-house only, except for small
demo programs.  All the effort has been put into algorithm development and
new techniques at the core - something where we have a significant lead over
our competitors.  However, I have ZERO background in GUI design/development
and if we ever want to license our tools for others to use only hard-core
people will want to run from the command line which limits our mainstream
appeal.  Hence, I am looking at options for GUI access to our toolset.  Main
features of a GUI would be:

- input:  getting user information about a given problem, in an attractive
          way - most Mac software gets it right

- output: producing tables, 2D plots and 3D surfaces (the sexier the better
          and possibly interactive with sliders etc)

To save re-inventing the wheel for output, I suspect that we may be looking
to use some C-based open-source graphics libraries that produce high-quality
results (e.g. R) as long as licensing issues don't become a problem.

There seem to be two main options:

1) Tk/Java/C#/Python/HTML wrappers that call the tools

2) A 'proper' Cocoa/AppKit GUI

(1) would be cross-platform, open-source and with many libraries available -
all important requirements - but probably limit the interaction with the
core tools (unless anyone knows different?).  I suspect (2) would probably
be both better and faster. I have no experience with AppKit development or
the quality of the GNUstep implementation - experience with some of the
bundled GNUstep apps is not always very encouraging from either an
appearance or stability point of view!  Crashing, errors and ugly interface
elements are not an option.

My preferred way of delivering these services is via a central (probably
Linux but possibly OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD) server where people log in using
SSH.  This would allow them to either run from command line or remotely with
an X11 server on their desktop machine (as good SSH & X11 implementations
are available on all platforms).   Having everything done centrally
simplifies many things - distribution, licensing, platform dependency,
maintenance - and is the way that software is going, in my opinion.

I should stress that any code written should work on both OS X & GNUstep so
we need to limit ourselves to the (probably pretty big, at least on
Foundation) subset that is reliably shared.  Binary & messaging
compatibility is not required (beyond NIBs etc).

In terms of what we can offer people who are interested in becoming
involved, not much (if any) money upfront, but a share in the profits
generated by the licenses and the possibility of more permanent employment
or consultancy in the future if/when revenues start flowing.

If this is of interest to anyone then we would be interested to hear from
you.  UK-based is preferred to allow face-to-face meetings etc, but I'm sure
there are talented GNUsteppers all over the globe and we would like to hear
from them too.

Please CC any replies to my email

Michael Hopkins


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