🚀 go-pugleaf

[already posted to: comp.sys.next.misc,gnu.misc.discuss]

Would you like to see free objects, libraries, palettes, toolkits,
etc., from the Free Software Foundation?

My question springs from the following personal observations:

	- GNU and the FSF have given the world some superb code
	  that is freely distributable
	- good free software begets more free software
	- Objective-C has not taken the world by storm outside
	  the NeXT community, but people are curious
	- the small size of the NeXT marketplace means that
	  prices for commercial objects tend to be high
	- friends have talked about this for years
	- NeXT obviously cares, if they want an Object Catalog
	- I've seen very big companies admire NeXTstep, and then
	  dismiss it because it appears to sit in a niche market
	- NeXT's many toolkits are proof that creative minds
	  can do amazing things, but we, the consumers, have just
	  not done enough producing (except for a few isolated
	  geniuses and workaholics the net knows well), at least
	  not enough to impress those outside the NeXT community

I asked Richard Stallman what he thought.  He said that this (free
objects) is the purpose of libg++.  He said that the suggested Free
Object Foundation, if you will, would never happen unless I, or
another, or many others, actually took charge and did the work.  He
also said that if we, the community, did make it happen, the FSF would
be happy to include our works in its offerings.

What do you, the community, think?
Are commercial developers threatened by free software?
What do our most successful NeXTstep developers think?
Can we write software at least as good as GNU's, or NeXT's?
Would this develop enough momentum to make a difference?
Are current commercial offerings and the object catalog enough?
Would we model objects on Smalltalk?
Would we reinvent the Appkit?  Do we only complement the Appkit?
Can we create objects that don't depend on each other too much?

I think we can appreciate what a free object world might be like, with
its advantages and drawbacks, if we can imagine it is 1989 again, and
we see NeXTstep's source code on every NeXT computer (rms would
probably say, "any computer.")

I'm not suggesting NeXT release their treasure--it would be financial
and ideological suicide--but I am asking the community, "What are we
adding to the value NeXT provides us?  Will it be enough?  Could it
possibly be that we, or NeXT, want NeXT to be the only true provider?
If so, what have we learned?  If not, when will we act?"

-- 
Geoffrey S. Knauth, Marble Associates, Inc.                Member BCS-NeXT, LPF
gsk@marble.com, (617) 891-5555 work, (617) 547-5247 home   Standard Disclaimers