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I like the original idea behind AfterStep - to make an open source implementation of Obj-C and the Foundation, and Appkit frameworks to make porting OpenSTEP applications to Linux or other open source operating systems easier.

You're thinking of GNUstep (which by the way is not limited to OpenStep's original floating menus).
AfterStep started as a configuration file and some applets for fvwm, before forking.
Window Maker was written from scratch, and they wrote the WINGs toolkit for it. As the toolkit name says, WINGs Is Not GNUstep.
I'm writing this on a Window Maker desktop :)

Indeed this is so. You can also compile Objective-C using clang/llvm . See: http://clang.llvm.org/compatibility.html#objective-c . The clang implementation is at feature parity with the Mac OS X 10.7 version of the language, and based on my limited understanding of some comments I've read in various announcements, supports some additional features as well. Use of those features requires the GNUStep Objective-C runtime (libobjc2), rather than the GCC runtime. A high degree of Cocoa compatibility is available using the GNUStep Base (Foundation) and GNUStep GUI (AppKit) libraries, for numerous Unix platforms as well as Windows. A version of CoreFoundation is also available which wraps GNUStep Base, with a rewrite coming very soon that implements CoreFoundation in plain C. Various other Cocoa and iOS-compatible libs are available in disparate states of implementation. As always, GNUStep could use more developers and more users. Companies wishing to port their MacOS software to other platforms are encouraged to investigate GNUStep; previous porting efforts have positively contributed to the project by discovering and reporting bugs and sometimes by providing direct improvements.

GNUStep was recently used to port the Mac-only racing game CoreBreach to Linux: ( http://corebreach.corecode.at/CoreBreach/About.html ). Other visible examples of Cocoa/Objective-C applications ported to Linux from MacOS include the 'eggPlant' automated testing tool from TestPlant ( http://www.testplant.com/ ), and plenty of previously Mac-only Free/Open-Source software such as Bean.app ( http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2qH5zqXu7wQ/TRi6sNiNZjI/AAAAAAAAADM/i8RwqzQ6OYE/s1600/bean-gnome-theme.png ).

The parent is correct that you do not need Apple kit to develop in Objective-C. To work with most examples you will find, you will need Cocoa-compatible development libraries and tools, though. Interesting starting points include the Windows Installers, which include all of the components you would need to get started ( http://www.gnustep.org/experience/Windows.html ), or the GNUStep Core packages ( http://www.gnustep.org/resources/downloads.php ) for other platforms. The Étoilé Project http://etoileos.com/ is also interesting. Those of you in Europe who are interested and intend on attending FOSDEM should stop by and visit the talks and devroom sponsored by these projects.

The code is here. The AST / back end are in LanguageKit, the Smalltalk front end is in Smalltalk (this also contains a few support things that make OpenStep classes look a bit more like Smalltalk-80 ones). The JavaScript-like language is in EScript, but it may not be working at the moment. It currently requires a trunk build of GNUstep libobjc, but I plan on releasing 1.6 of the runtime Real Soon Now.

I periodically write things about it on the Étoilé blog. You can also read some slightly out of date slides from a talk I gave about it at FOSDEM in 2009, and some more current ones from ESUG this year. Drop me an email if you've got any more questions.

Have you looked at Étoilé? Seems to be the sort of thing you're talking about, although it's apparently early days yet.

Not at the moment. I post quite often on the Étoilé blog, although I haven't posted there since October, apparently. I also write quite regularly for InformIT (their stupid new UI means I can't link directly to the articles list, you have to click on the articles tab from that link). I used to blog on theravensnest.org, but I never got around to reinstating the blog after I moved servers ages ago. I'll probably get around to it eventually...

Gnustep is a Fosdem yoyo. Each year they meet at Fosdem, then some development takes place.

http://etoileos.com/
http://io.debian.net/~tar/gnustep/

GNUStep needs a decent theme.

They should simply fork it as a MAC X Emulator and set the objective to get all MAC applications running. That would inspire developers.

I really don't know. It's an implementation of OpenStep, so it's a 'complete' desktop API and includes widgets and everything. I say complete, but it really is complete inasmuch as NeXT was complete when it was last released. Since then many things have been invented and I don't know how much GNUStep actually has evolved over time and tracked modern developments.

If instead of starting GNOME people had gotten behind GNUStep then the Linux desktop world would be a very different (and much better) place today. But, nobody wanted to write in Objective-C.

If you want to see GNUStep being used seriously, and not looking like it's 1989, you should take a look at Etoile. This goes to show that the framework is very capable if only people would use it.

GNUStep hasn't died; they just released version 2.0 of their live CD, and the Etoile project continues to make GNUStep more modern and aesthetically pleasing. The advantage of the open source world is that if the technology's still good, you can start that old girl right up when you need to. I get the impression that the project could move very quickly given some programmers backing it.

Personally, I think that the best way forward for Linux on the desktop would be to take GNUstep to the next level.

Sounds like Etoile. Not source compatible with OS X, but some of the Apple stuff makes its way over (Clang, LLVM).

I think GNUstep's problem is that porting between GNUstep and OSX keeps getting more difficult. Apple well-documented OpenStep, and it stayed static for a very long time (~10 years). OSX, on the other hand, keeps changing, and is becoming increasingly hardware-dependent since 10.2. Quartz, CoreGraphics, CoreData, etc. etc. all break backwards-compatibility. Many of the new features are also offloaded to hardware. Apple's attitude used to be that if you didn't have new hardware, the new whiz-bang stuff just wouldn't work for you, and your system would look/feel much the same as it did under the previous version. Not so these days....

As for WindowMaker, it's a legacy WM, I think. When I used to use GNUstep extensively (a few years ago), they were already seriously looking at things to replace it. Etoile (a cutting-edge GNUstep environment/in-development-distro) now uses Azalia, which is distantly-related to WindowMaker.

"If it's more convenient to shoehorn every activity into a single monolithic application than "switch between applications," then your desktop environment is built wrong."

And yes, it is.

The problem is that we have an emphasis on "applications" instead of on data. This assumes that data divides cleanly into task silos, doesn't ever share between tasks, and is only ever accessed with a rigidly defined set of operations.

And that's increasingly not true. What we need is a desktop environment that understands that data is something to be shared aggressively between tasks and views, where every window can be an aggregator of sorts.

Something like Étoilé, perhaps, as a start. If Raindrop is a step towards that then cool.

http://etoileos.com/ seems to be what you're looking for. I'm trying to get a new test box up and running with it (I'm ready for a paradigm shift so I'm setting up GoboLinux and trying to get Etoile and GNUStep running in it) and possibly getting semi-active with its development. I totally agree with you though, what I love about the command line isn't the typing but how interoperable it is. I even pull command line utilities into graphical programs I wrote, and try to at least partially expose some operations in my graphical tools to the command line.

Imagine that all the functions you can reach trough all the apps of your GUI desktop, were not one application, but small, fast, little widgets and tools. Then add a set of view and control apps to it. In a way it would be like the extensions of firefox combined with a photohshop without the main window. You could endlessly recombine the tools from one package with that from another one, and use a document viewer/controller from a third package. (Where "package" would be, what we call apps today.)

I think you're pretty much describing Etoile.

Their main site
Their page at Wikipedia

The most important GPL software in Mac OS X is arguably the GNU compiler, gcc.

Not anymore. GCC on Apple is a Dead Man Walking, because Apple won't work with the GPLv3, which the FSF's GCC project has already upgraded to.

Apple is a major contributor to the LLVM project

Of course, because this is what they intend to replace GCC with, and when this happens GCC-on-Apple and ObjC-in-GCC both go into a slow death spiral. Apple has already ceased providing any significant patches to the FSF GCC project. For example, GCC still doesn't support ObjC v2, two years after its release. There just doesn't appear to be enough developer interest outside of Apple to keep FSF GCC updated.

Apple's implementation of the Cocoa Framework is not an open source framework, but it is based on an open specification, although it has evolved past the specification.

If it has evolved *past* an open specification, and is not open source, then its not open... anything. So your point is?

There is an alternative, open source implementation

Not Exactly:

there is no hope of GNUstep guaranteeing that we shall maintain compatibility with an Apple API that is constantly changing

Cocoa is full-on, closed-source, proprietary... full-stop. GNUSTEP would have the same problem Mono has (always playing catchup to MS's changes), only worse: they can't even look at the code. So they don't even try. Ergo:

GnuStep != Cocoa

There. Fixed it for you.

Not Exactly.

What if he was a Mac OS X pundit, and asked this question of Mac OS X? "Does Apple innovate too much to be competitive in the desktop market?" What people really want is System 7, all this innovation and UNIX underpinning are just developers writing for developers. Why do we need an object oriented runtime library, and a constantly changing AP that supports concurrent processingI? Most Mac users were happy with one mouse button, why do they need their track pads to sense multiple points? Changes like this just confuse the user and make them learn new ways to do old tasks.

Clearly he has a point. It just isn't a very good one. The real problem with the linux desktop has been INSUFFICIENT innovation. And I don't mean replacing X. I mean designing software that makes computing ubiquitous, transparent, and accessible. Why I as a user should ever be concerned about files, drives, network connections, applications, processes, etc. you know all those metaphors programmers have invented for themselves, is beyond me.

What the linux desktop sucks at (and this is true for all WIMPy interfaces) is cross-task operations. When I'm working on a project that involves, text, drawings, tables, and some computations, using a system like Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X is an exercise in frustration. Each "task" as defined by the system's designers requires a different set of tools. By generating a report is only one task from my point of view as a user. As a result, I will end up using 4 or more tools, because no one tool has my work flow in mind.

There are interfaces that solve this problem, however, and they've been around since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some of us still use them today. Now there is an experimental implementation of one for linux here you can run them in your web browser here and you can package up you can roll your own tools with this here. But all of these are still from the user's point of view in their infancy.

Does WindowMaker not work for you anymore? The last release (0.92.0, from 2005) stills works fine for me. There is a beta 0.92.1 version available here, from November 2008. I have it running in Fedora 11. But really, WindowMaker is in a good, stable state and I'm not sure what else needs to be done with it, as far as development.

If you want something that's similar, there's Etoile.

In the background ? (tongue-in-cheek) ;-)
Seriously, WindowMaker is a standalone, light windowmanager that happens to be themed like Nextstep / OPENSTEP ; GNUStep is a collection of libraries that intend to bring desktop manager like capabilities to most windowmanagers, as well as OPENSTEP 4.2 / Cocoa source compatibility to FOSS systems. Both fit quite well, but GNUStep is equally at ease on AfterStep or XFCE and can be used along Gnome or KDE.
WindowMaker doesn't itself depend on GNUStep, but relies on the WING library of widgets ; WING is just about look'n feel, really, as the name suggests (Wing Is Not Gnustep).
Note that WindowMaker (like all current X windowmanagers) lacks some concepts needed to complete GNUStep implementation (there's no depth levels or z-planes in X), therefore the windowmanager of choice for GNUStep is not WindowMaker anymore (even if it still sort of works) but étoilé. See étoilé.

Mainly writing. Technical articles for a couple of publications (a few have made it to the front page of /.) and (so far) one book. I occasionally do some consulting, but I haven't really built up the network of contacts that would let me gain a significant fraction of my income from that, although I'd be interested in doing more. I also co-run a hippyware project, and do some research and teaching (short-term posts at the university).

You might be interested in Etoile (excuse the lack of accents - Slashdot eats them). We are building a spiritual successor to OPENSTEP.

There are several efforts to make GNUstep look nicer (the current one is called Chameleon), but they're all hacked together. The devs are hoping to have the core GUI library cleanly support themeing within the next few months.

You might also want to check out Etoile (or their incomplete new site), a rather nice desktop environment being built around GNUstep.