1. Look People still think GNUstep is "ugly". This has changed only recently and needs more exposure.
2. No DE People do not use GNUstep since large Linux distros don't offer a desktop environment. GNUstep apps don't feel natural in other DEs, and probably don't integrate with their services (e.g. under Gnome, address book APIs should probably use Evolution as a store) This means users do not get a Mac-like experience of the software just "fitting in". 3. No proven commercial viability Mac customers already paid for a relatively expensive, but quality machine; quite probably they are willing to pay for commercial software. Linux users are using unpaid software; does it pay off to spend time to try and sell to them? 4. Missing API Yesterday I ran into NSViewController that was missing in Debian, and unfunctional in latest SVN. GNUstep is also missing a lot of "Core" frameworks: Core Graphics, Core Animation, ... 5. Platforms do differ If you use sockets, they really do; each has its quirks. 6. Packaging and Testing To release commercial software on GNUstep platforms, you need to test on each one. There are a lot of Linux distros. Some methods for packaging software for commercial distribution increase in difficulty as the number if libs you use grows. After you package on an OLD distro (doing so makes it probable that it runs on newer ones) you need to test on at least a several major ones in various releases. Mac has three major releases that you need to support commercially today in game market: 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6. If you don't need a publisher, you can do well by covering just 10.6. 7. No marketing venues With Mac App Store, another marketing opportunity has opened. There are many nice blogs out there that write about commercial Mac software in a positive light. If I tried to sell, for example, a blog authoring tool for primary GNUstep platforms (GNU/Linux and BSD), where would I get a positive review that would reach a significant amount of users that would actually pay? Or would they complain that I didn't give it out for free, and race to clone my software for free, out of anger? Look up for how much that kind of software sells on Mac. These are the primary reasons people don't do it. They may be a thing of perception. Some of the things might not be true, but the perception is that they are. Commercial vendors are commercial not for the fun of it or to be evil, but to pay to their workers so they can feed their wife and kids. If the market would not be sufficient or would be unreachable, and the effort seems significant, well, ... Suggestion: Take a look at some popular commercial (or even just proprietary) Mac software: Socialite, Reeder, Twitter for Mac. Do you really think porting them would involve just writing GNUmakefiles? Regards, Ivan Vučica via phone On 24. sij. 2011., at 05:21, "Zhang Weiwu, Beijing" <zhangwe...@realss.com > wrote: > Hi. I have one question as a stupid user: why there is no commercial > Mac > OS X application that was ever offered also offer GNU Step binary? > > I had been using Mac OS on one computer and gnustep on another for 5 > years without coming across one application that runs on both. I dimly > remembered around 3 years ago I even wrote to one of the vendor asking > them to port to gnustep saying "it's just a re-compilation" and they > replied they didn't know gnustep could do that and yet it's not a > priority now for them to test if what I said is true, but would be > happy > to do that when they got the time, which usually means forever. > > No criticism. I am too stupid to know the detail to comment > insightfully > on any topic being discussed here. I am juts being curious why it's > not > already happening that a lot of Mac OS applications (and AppStore > applications) water-flow to Linux users like they did in Apple's new > world. > > Best regards > > -- > 我的博客: > http://zhangweiwu.ixiezi.com/ > 网站进化论 --写给需要网站或后悔有了网站的人 > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss-gnustep mailing list > Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep