GNUstep Kickstarter Campaign Launched

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.

Comments

Why bother?

[zoffdino]

Why bother duplicating the exact functionality of a commercial software, only for it to be labelled open source? Are they doing this for only open-source sake? Mac OS X is certified UNIX, and with some care, applications cab easily be made to compilable on multiple Linux distros. GUI application is an entirely different matter, but there are cross-platform solutions like Qt, GTK, Java swing, etc. There are lots of technologies that are encumbered by patents in Mac OS X, like Time Machine, Core Image, or QTKit. And how the hell will GNUStep enable integration with iCloud for those applications that use it?

Re:Shooting for 10.x?

[armanox]

Because a lot of us on Macs are stuck on 10.6 and lots of OS X applications are targeting that group?

Re: Well, someone has to ask...

[smash]

And then realize that the target for API completeness is two versions, now almost three, behind where OSX is today.

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.