GNUstep Kickstarter Campaign Launched 131
borgheron writes "A maintainer of GNUstep has launched a Kickstarter campaign to get the resources needed to make GNUstep more complete and bring the implementation to API compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6's Cocoa. This will allow applications for Mac OS X to run on GNU/Linux with a simple recompile using new tools developed by the GNUstep team to directly build from xcodeproj project files. If the Kickstarter project is funded beyond its $50,000 goal, it's possible that WebKit and Darling might also be completed allowing applications built on Mac OS X to run without the need for a recompile... think WINE-like functionality for Mac OS X applications on other platforms... including Windows, Linux, BSD, etc."
GNUStep is pretty useful now, but increased coverage of newer Cocoa APIs would be nice, and Darling in particular is interesting by providing a portable Mach-O binary loader.
Photoshop in Linux? (Score:3)
Does this mean that we could run the Adobe suite on Linux? Maybe Dreamweaver as well? Or is this a hopeless dream. Anything is better than having to use the Mac OSX Finder.
Re: (Score:3)
Unlikely, the market just isn't big enough.
Photoshop and Lightroom would be nice. I use a Mac because I need the Adobe suite and prefer the unix underpinnings of OSX to Windows (to be honest, having used all three - Windows, OSX and Linux - for a number of reasons I'm now happy on OSX).
Not so sure about Dreamweaver. I use it, since it's part of my Creative Cloud subscription and saved me searching out an alternative, but I'm sure there are plenty of better options.
Re:Photoshop in Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
Download Photoshop here http://gimp.org/ [gimp.org]
Re: (Score:1)
I don't moderate, but that's worth a funny.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
All I'm getting is Paint.NET there.
Re: (Score:3)
Download Photoshop here http://gimp.org/ [gimp.org]
To a geek there is no joke too old and stale not to get a laugh.
Re:Photoshop in Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This means being able to run MS Office and iTunes - both of which are non-AppStore applications which can be downloaded separately and could be run with 10.6 compatibility.
Or, if you install-it on a PowerPC Linux machine, you would even be able to run IE5 :-)
Re: (Score:2)
MS Office and iTunes are both Carbon apps, not Cocoa --- GNUstep is only targeting the NeXTstep-derived OPENSTEP-equiv frameworks, so only Cocoa apps need apply --- there aren't as many as one would think, and that's a shame.
What about the C API "Core" libraries? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean that we could run the Adobe suite on Linux? Maybe Dreamweaver as well? Or is this a hopeless dream. Anything is better than having to use the Mac OSX Finder.
IIRC, Photoshop at least still uses Carbon to run. This is why Adobe threw such a big fit when Apple originally talked about not taking Carbon 64-bit and expecting everyone to transition to Cocoa.
Re:Photoshop in Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
"it's possible that WebKit and Darling might also be completed allowing applications built on Mac OS X to run without the need for a recompile..."
And that was just the summary, I didn't even have to rtfa to get that!!!
Well, someone has to ask... (Score:1)
What the hell is a GNUstep, and why should I be supporting it?
Re:Well, someone has to ask... (Score:5, Informative)
NeXTSTEP [wikipedia.org] was one of the many closed source OSes kicking about in the early 80s to mid-90s. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple he turned NeXTSTEP into MacOS X.
GNUStep is an open source API based on the NeXTSTEP API.
Why should you support it? If you really really want MacOS X software Y this will make porting it to your-OS-of-choice a lot easier.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, Apple was bought by NeXT for -429 M dollar and -1.5 M Apple shares.
Apple is a continuation of NeXT, we know this because the CEO of NeXT was the same person as the CEO of Apple after the takeover of Apple by NeXT.
And OS X is a continuation of NeXTSTEP, we know this because the class names of the API still start with the letters "NS".
NS is NeXT/Sun and also Netscape (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I do not care for OSX software and cant think of any that I would want ported off the top of my head. (I am sure there must be some that would be useful, possibly even to me if I thought about it, just saying it isnt something I worry about.) But I loved GNUStep and mourned the way that the developers years back all seem to have switched over to bloated nasty frameworks from GNOME and KDE instead of fleshing it out and finishing it.
The only concern I have is they do seem to be looking at it more as a framew
Re: (Score:3)
The only concern I have is they do seem to be looking at it more as a framework for porting, which is the least important use from my perspective. This is the tool to build the better desktop on linux everyone claims to want.
GNUstep aims to implement the APIs that Cocoa uses. This has a natural use as a porting tool, but the main reason we're implementing the APIs is that we want to use them (which has the unfortunate side effect that ones we don't like tend not to be implemented quickly, even if lots of OS X code uses them). Over in Étoilé (which, no doubt, Slashdot's early-'90s character encoding support will mangle: Etoile with accents on both 'e's) we're building frameworks for building better environments, some
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent to hear. But yeah, the site as it stands looks like there was a flurry of development up to about 12-18 months ago and then.... nothing (I've been lurking around the site every so often for a couple of years now keeping an eye on it).
Even a few token updates like "yeah we're still alive, busy working on Etoile!" would be great though, because the site does look like a bit of a dead project.
I'll try and allocate some time to check it out. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I do care for lots of OS X software, and perhaps some of it would be useful ported to Linux, but I agree the real value of GNUStep is as a cross platform GUI toolkit in it's own right. Write something using a good toolkit (nicer than GNOME and KDE and free unlike Qt) and it happens to run on OS X, Linux and other Unixes.
Re: (Score:2)
"free unlike Qt"
Are you from the past?
Re: (Score:2)
I am pleasantly surprised to see that QT was LGPL licensed in 2009. Before that it was GPL, which is really an exceedingly poor option for a GUI toolkit, unless your goal is to sell commercial licenses (which it was).
Sorry for not checking the QT website constantly.
Re:Well, someone has to ask... (Score:4, Interesting)
NeXTstep - on those black workstations - was the first UNIX workstation that I found a breeze to use in college - in sharp contrast to either the vt100 terminals w/ SunOS C-shell prompts, or X-terminals running - at the time - either Openlook or DECwindows. I could log into my UNIX account on a NeXT, and then either do my assignments, or be on Usenet. Somehow, it wasn't as easy on other UNIX terminals.
For this reason, I'd root for NEXTSTEP to be a common OS across UNIXstations, and that looked like it might happen when Sun & HP both had projects porting NEXTSTEP to the SparcStations and HP-9000 workstations. But before that could really go far, NeXT got acquired by Apple, and so that idea went away.
GNUSTEP is a way to get that dream on to any platform. GNUSTEP is OpenStep, as implemented by the GNU project. It is FOSS, and therefore, it could theoretically be ported to any platform, giving it a usable UI. The project, as w/ most FOSS ones, had been languishing, but if there is a company that drives it, it could well make some important inroads and improvements in the FOSS world. Particularly be a good alternative to KDE in the marketplace. Also, while there are X based desktop managers like WindowMaker or AfterStep, making something like GNUSTEP would enable the environment to be ported and run on any platform, regardless of whether it has X or not. One may not even need Wayland or Mir.
The biggest reason to promote this is to recreate the paradigm of RAD, but on FOSS platforms, making them more viable for businesses to adapt. Today, the main roadblock to FOSS is the lack of applications, and also the fact that one would have to hire a staff of experts to have a proper platform for the corporate environment. With something like GNUSTEP, the level of expertise required could be more on the higher levels of application development.
Once such a platform is there, it would also be easier to develop cross platform applications, and make organizations less dependent on one type of hardware or another.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GNUStep is a free, cross platform reimplementation of the NeXT/OS X GUI toolkit. Darwin is the open source kernel and command line userspace of OS X.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well, someone has to ask... (Score:5, Informative)
NeXTSTEP [wikipedia.org] was one of the many closed source OSes kicking about in the early 80s to mid-90s. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple he turned NeXTSTEP into MacOS X.
GNUStep is an open source API based on the NeXTSTEP API.
Kind of, this simplifies things a bit...
When Steve Jobs was at NeXT, the programming interfaces were standardized and turned into an open specification that any platform could implemented. This was called OpenStep. There were several implementations of OpenStep. OpenStep for Mach was what NeXTStep morphed into after the specification was released. Sun shipped a version of OpenStep for Solaris. A Windows NT port was created called OpenStep Enterprise. And then finally for Linux the GNUStep project was created (GNUStep actually started a bit before the OpenStep specification was released).
So while NeXTStep was mostly (not entirely) closed, the entire API around it was designed to be open and implemented on different platforms. GNUStep is the project to implement the open spec on Linux, still going long after that spec got wrapped into OS X and unstandardized.
There was a time that Apple considered still running with the ideas behind OpenStep. It was called Rhapsody, and it had both a full operating system that ran on both Intel and PowerPC hardware, and an environment for Windows NT and legacy Mac OS. For whatever political reasons this project didn't work out (Adobe and Microsoft had particularly strong objections to having to port to OpenStep.)
Short version: Things are a little more complicated than NeXTStep being "closed source."
Re: (Score:2)
"And then realize that the target for API completeness is two versions, now almost three, behind where OSX is today."
I really doubt anybody would go through all that work of targeting 10.6 and then never touch it again.
No doubt if they were getting close to meeting that target there would be a new target with a newer version. The thing with clone libraries like these (such as Wine) is that it isn't practical to target the latest version. You don't really get to start working on targeting a new version unt
Re: Well, someone has to ask... (Score:4, Insightful)
SO you mean, about 15 years ahead of where KDE and Gnome are today? I'm not actually trolling here. This is where NEXT application development was in 1992 [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:1)
It isn't faster to code on NeXTstep; you just have to write less of it. The revolution is "getting rid of software". -- http://www.paully [paullynch.org]
I miss the dock (Score:1)
Personally, I'd just rather have real transparency (without invoking hacks) in Window Maker. I just miss the NeXT-style dock. That, I'd donate a few bucks for.
Re: (Score:2)
GNUSTEP's graphical underpinnings? (Score:3)
Where can I find ut more about Opal? I checked out Wiki, and this was what it showed:
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Did I ever say Window Maker was part of GNUStep? Doesn't change the fact that both are part of a handful of various projects to port or clone features from NeXTSTEP.
They go together like like Bacon and Eggs. Both enjoyable and useful separately but also enjoyed together by many, including myself.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
While OSX is "certified UNIX", there's a lot of proprietary APIs and libraries layered on top of that to produce the GUI environment most OSX users interact with.
So the "With some care" you speak of to make "applications [...] easily be made to compilable on multiple Linux distros" includes a working implementation of those proprietary APIs and libraries. GNUStep is that, though it's currently more like OSX ancestor NeXTSTEP than it is like modern OSX
Hence the kickstarter
Re: (Score:2)
Like I mentioned, you won't get Cocoa framework on GNUStep anytime soon. If you write a command line app, keep yourself to C or C++, and don't touch any of the Apple's proprietary frameworks, you can port your application to most Linux and BSD distros. If there are apps important enough for you and they are only available on Mac OS X, then get a Mac. Consider that a cost of doing business; charge your client more to cover your costs.
GUI is a different matter, but there are cross platform frameworks availabl
Re: (Score:2)
Like I mentioned, you won't get Cocoa framework on GNUStep anytime soon
That makes no sense at all. GNUstep is an open source implementation of the Cocoa framework.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll take a quick stab at answering your question.
They're not trying to duplicate Mac OS X. The project started before that, to clone nextstep, or the api's at least, which were at one point being billed as a cross platform framework called openstep.
I assume these guys liked Objective-C(which came from nextstep) and liked openstep and you know then the whole thing took on a life of its own.
Now they could stick with the state of openstep when NeXT shutdown, or they could go off on thier own, or they could br
Re: (Score:2)
They could offer a choice of UIs here - either the old NEXTSTEP UI, at the time of NEXTSTEP 3.3 or 3.4, or they could offer something like OS-X. Or even something like Étoilé
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll take a quick stab at answering your question.
They're not trying to duplicate Mac OS X. The project started before that, to clone nextstep, or the api's at least, which were at one point being billed as a cross platform framework called openstep.
I assume these guys liked Objective-C(which came from nextstep) and liked openstep and you know then the whole thing took on a life of its own.
Now they could stick with the state of openstep when NeXT shutdown, or they could go off on thier own, or they could bring in the new stuff from Mac OS X(which is descended from nextstep).
They seem to want to the last one.
We've done the last one for many years now. The issue is that there are very few of us and none of us have the time to work on it full time. What I propose to do is take some time to purely work on GNUstep so that I can bring it up to a standard that everyone can live with and build on.
It's about having free software (Score:2)
> Are they doing this for only open-source sake?
They're doing it to have free software that can replace proprietary software. Being free software means the user community knows exactly what the software is doing and can decide how it will be modified.
Proprietary software locks users in, adds back doors, imposes DRM, gathers personal info and sends it to advertisers, omits features so that users can be pushed to buy the more expensive version, and omits features that users want (i.e. to protect privacy)
Re: (Score:2)
If it was just for FOSS sake, it might be questionable, but there is a good precedence for why it should exist. When NEXT got acquired by Apple, NEXTSTEP disappeared after a while, since they were now working on OS-X. Had there been no GNUSTEP, that whole thing could have been lost. Of course, there are big differences b/w the NEXTSTEP UI vs that of OS-X, and GNUSTEP is expected to look more like the former, w/ some improvements from OS-X made optional.
Mac OS X is certified UNIX, but one would have to
Re: (Score:1)
GNUStep is a reimplementation of the OS X GUI toolkit. If you want to write a Mac application that will work on Linux at the moment you can write the whole thing in C and use something like Qt or GTK. Qt is proprietary and GTK is bloated and sucks. GNUStep makes available the NeXT/OS X equivalent of Qt/GTK/etc., which is really very good.
Re: (Score:2)
QT is dual licensed as commercial and LGPL.
Thanks but no thanks (Score:1)
I'm staying away these days from anything that even remotely associates with Apple.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
GNUStep is a great project (Score:3)
I like this campaign. Objective C is continually in the Top 5 of the most widely used languages (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html). It is a very nice, simple object oriented C dialect. It is used on OS X and iOS, the latter of which is installed on hundreds of millions of devices (http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/23/apple-over-500-million-ios-devices-sold/). Both operating systems heavily utilize Cocoa as their framework
Having better or even any Cocoa support on Linux would help to get developers to target both world. Linux on the one side, and iOS/OS X on the other side. I think this is well worth for all Linux users to chip in some money (even if it's only $1).
Re: (Score:2)
If by 'continually in the Top 5' you mean 'already second year in a row in Top 5', then I can agree. But I think that compared to other top-10 languages, 'just very recently became of any importance at all' would be more honest statement.
Re: (Score:2)
If by 'continually in the Top 5' you mean 'already second year in a row in Top 5', then I can agree. But I think that compared to other top-10 languages, 'just very recently became of any importance at all' would be more honest statement.
Well, first it's a couple years, then it's a third and a fourth, then it's 20. ;)
Now this is funny. (Score:1)
You're going about it all wrong... (Score:1)
See, the best way to raise money for a cause is to tug at the hearts of the Apple faithful..
So:
"Do it for Steve.
This is the grandchild of his baby."
irrespective of ports.... (Score:4, Interesting)
GNUstep UI pictures (Score:2)
Darling == Google Drive ? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Duh! Photoshop.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Easy portability from OS X to Linux/FreeBSD.
Many programmers and server admins moved to OS X as their desktop machine because of its Unix base. You can have a nice desktop, commercial app support, and not be far away from a command line environment.
If GNUStep can get compatibility, then developers can cross target OS X and Linux with their apps.
Windows has nothing in common with Linux. All you're doing by throwing money at Wine is perpetuating the Windows Way Of Programming. At least with GNUStep it star
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Windowmaker with a modern look&feel. YES PLEASE!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Windowmaker yes!
If "modern look&feel" means what I fear it does, then no way. Windowmaker is perfect the way it is. It just needs the associated system apps finished and polished properly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mac users upgrade their os since it is dirt cheap ($30 covers all your macs)
Mavericks covers all sufficiently recent Macs. Mac mini before "early 2009" need not apply.
Re:Shooting for 10.x? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a lot of us on Macs are stuck on 10.6 and lots of OS X applications are targeting that group?
Re: (Score:1)
Not upgrading here until I get a replacement for Macromedia FreeHand --- using it limits me to Mac OS X 10.6.8.
Future Options (Score:2)
Witness all the grumbling about Apple in the "Larry says Apple is doomed" thread. If Apple goes off th
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
There is nothing wrong with your comment. Yes, at one point the grammar was slightly confused, but it was crystal clear. And made a good point. Unlike our anonymous putz.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GNU/ to distinguish from Android (Score:3)
GNU & GNUSTEP? (Score:2)
Saying "*BSD or Linux that isn't Android" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"...and saying "GNU/Linux" all the time is far more convenient than saying "*BSD or Linux that isn't Android" all the time."
A contrived problem only you suffer from. The rest of the world understands that Android isn't Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't GNUSTEP, like OpenStep, a platform independent standard? If yes, then it would work on both GNU as well as non-GNU platforms, such as the BSDs. Also, how important is the GNU userland here - is it either an important part of GNUSTEP, or necessary for GNUSTEP to even work/run? If not, then leaving out GNU out of Linux doesn't mean much, since GNUSTEP could run on it, w/o things like glibc, x11 and so on.
GNUstep is completely platform independent. The only thing it requires is a POSIX layer for some of the low level functions (which is available on Windows in the form of MinGW). It abstracts the display and the events layers. GNUstep has implementations for X11 and for Windows and can have implementations for any windowing system you prefer.
The reason for the GNU in GNUstep is largely historical. Originally, GNUstep was supposed to be *the* development environment and windowing system for HURD and for
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it runs on all those, but doesn't it need X11 to run? Especially since Opal is not in a working state? There is a difference b/w having X11 running on all those BSDs, and then on top of that, WindowMaker running, as opposed to having an Opal-based GNUSTEP running on top of the base OS, w/o any X11/Wayland/Mir (the Ubuntu display server, not the BSD distro listed above)
How about Étoilé? Does it require X11, or Opal, or some other display server? Also, how much of the underlying OS has t
Re: (Score:2)
No, Android is Android. Developers of projects get to choose the names, not you or Richard Stallman.
There is only one purpose in insisting on the term "GNU/Linux", that's to redirect credit to RMS. RMS never said "GNU/Linux" refers to a platform of "Linux + glibc + Coreutils + X11", he said that GNU deserved credit and he was going to throw a tantrum unless he got his way.
Who got confused about Cocoa Touch on Android and needed such preposterous clarification?
Re: (Score:2)
Who got confused about Cocoa Touch on Android and needed such preposterous clarification?
Some Slashdot regulars often claim that the success of Android, an operating system that uses the Linux kernel, means the "year of the Linux desktop" has arrived to their satisfaction.
Re: (Score:2)
NOTE: Some of the rewards say Linux instead of GNU/Linux. Apologies for the omission.
Sorry, I dont support projects with pedantic zelots leading them. There is "Linux" and the Linux kernel, "Linux" is a fine an appropriate generic term for the operating system as a whole. Otherwise you really should be saying stupid shit like: "Ubuntu/Debian/GNU/Linux" to be clear because GNU is just a toolchain and a collection of software but not the whole collection.
Get. Over. It.
The fact is that Debian calls the distro "Debian GNU/Linux" whether you or I agree with the philosophy behind it, that's their proper name. If you take this as a sign of zealotry from me, which it is not I was only trying to call them what they choose to be called, then you're being a zealot in the opposite direction and perhaps you need to "Get. Over. It."
Re: (Score:3)
There isn't a lot of difference in the core Cocoa API between the later versions. Many, MANY OS X developers target 10.6 because it runs fine under everything more recent and unless you're using the latest goodies, which are unlikely to be ported by GNUStep anyway, there's no difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's ARC in Objective-C for example, which is a huge difference. Not sure if that's implemented in GNUstep.
Yes, it's implemented. If you're using CLANG. GNUstep's libobjc2 runtime supports it fully. GCC, unfortunately, has a long way to go to catch up on some features since, for some reason, they don't consider ObjC to be release critical.
Re: (Score:2)
GNUstep is a lovely (and lovable) project, but "bring the implementation to API compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6's Cocoa"? Really? 10.6, when 10.9 is just around the corner? With such a huge delay, GNUstep will never be able to take off.
You expect me to be able to bring the API all the way from 10.4/5 to 10.8/9 in six months? Some are saying that 10.6 is a lofty goal, but I think it's more realistic than 10.8 or 10.9. Also, if I see opportunities to bring things up to 10.8/9 while I'm doing it, I will. It's a matter of setting a believable goal to achieve.