Saturday, June 15, 2013

GNUstep Mythbusting...

Myth #1: GNUstep doesn't care about or implement any of the Cocoa frameworks or classes

As illustrated by some of the comments here, people still don't understand, really, what GNUstep is all about.  Sometimes I think it's the name, and sometimes I think it's just that people are willfully ignoring the facts or just want to spew nonsense in order to sound intelligent.

GNUstep implements most of the 10.5 APIs and is currently working on some of the 10.6, 7 and 8 Cocoa APIs.   Additionally, the project has implemented CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics and CoreAnimation is upcoming.   So, please, people.  Get off of this whole "GNUstep doesn't care" thing. We care and we are implementing as much as we can.   We are roughly 20 individuals, Apple is multi-billion dollar corporation.

Myth #2: No one uses GNUstep.

Wrong again, GNUstep is currently in use in millions of devices around the world.   This company http://www.apportable.com is using much of the GNUstep codebase to accomplish this.   It forms the basis for their UIKit implementation which is used to port applications from iOS to Android.   If we were only OpenStep, this wouldn't be possible.   Additionally, GNUstep is used by a number of companies to produce ports of their applications to Windows and to Linux.   See our wiki page about GNUstep success stories for more.

Myth #3: GNUstep can only look like NeXTSTEP

Not true.  GNUstep has devoted a lot of time to theming and the ability to make applications written using GNUstep look like just about anything you would like them to look like.

I'm sure these aren't the only myths circulating, but they are the most prominent and, to me, the most annoying.   I can't seem to get it through people's heads.  GNUstep is so much more than it used to be and so much more than people think it is.  I wish, for once, that people would actually look at the project before making judgements.

Myth #4: GNUstep looks like NeXTSTEP, so it must only implement NeXTSTEP

I honestly never expected developers to judge a book by it's cover, but many people do, even otherwise intelligent people.

What Apple has forgotten...

 When NeXT still existed and the black hardware was a thing, Steve Jobs made the announcement that OPENSTEP would be created and that the ob...