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Etoile Project Releases Mac-Like Environment
pschmied writes "Today the Étoilé Project released v0.2 of its Desktop Environment. Not only does Étoilé share user interface similarities with Mac OS X, Étoilé enjoys some source-level compatibility with Mac OS X as well. Many here undoubtedly remember NeXT, the revolutionary computer / development environment that gave rise to the first Web browser and later became the foundation of Mac OS X. Étoilé uses the FSF's own implementation of the NeXT development environment, GNUstep, making this a close technological relative of OS X. Screenshots and a source tarball are available."
Etoile may be in its relative infancy, but I believe it has great strategic potential for the FOSS movement. Etoile / GNUStep is building some great infrastructure, uniting the Mac and FOSS communities, and is building on some very interesting ideas.
If you haven't already done so, I urge you to check out David's Core Object posting. There is some exciting stuff there. Smalltalkers will find it particularly interesting.
Props to the Etoile team! This is even more reason for me to grow my Objective C / Cocoa / GNUStep skills.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
But the problem exists on that level as well. I confined my comments to the visual layer because that's what parent started with this thread. But these people seem to writing themselves into a corner and it's pretty easy to see how their frameworks are going to have to be wedged in with electronic equivalents of shims and compatibility layers to come back into the fold. They're writing a lot of their own stuff and making it, just like on the surface layer, an approximation of true interoperability.
GNUStep is reasonably compatible with NextStep which is reasonably compatible with Cocoa. They branched from a common ancestor and happen to be reasonably similar now. All the extra frameworks tossed in to this project looks to be a third fork more than a bridge between the two.