The double-face of GNUstep

Yesterday I had a long call with Gregory and we smoothed out many details about what GNUstep is, where it is and where it should go.

I noticed really a lot of confusion about what GNUstep is, everybody seems to have his own ideas, some of them are indeed correct but just a part of the whole pictures, others are just plain wrong. This ambiguity doesn't help us as a project, it confuses the prospective end-users, it confuses potential developers and also stirs up quarrels and useless polemics inside the group.

Thus I may sum up what I consider GNUstep is: essentially I see a double use of GNUstep: the base for an environment, a workspace inspired by OPENSTEP and a cross-platform, portable framework that enables developer the deployment of their application on Unix (Linux, BSD, Solaris...), MacOS X and Windows. I consider these goals absolutely not conflicting and they should be both taken care of; furthermore one reinforces the other.

As an environment GNUstep needs to offer a working framework which is solid and well working on most of the major Unix systems. Features that some people could find useful refer mostly to the look and feel, a comprehensive set of applications and utilities (either provided by the GNUstep project, or, more aptly, by affiliated projects like GAP, Backbone or Etoilé) and their integration.
People who see in GNUstep an OS should find what is needed by this environment and supply the remaining by themselves.

A framework that enables portability needs to work on more operating systems and needs to be even more flexible: it needs to be able to blend in to the Look and Feel of the host OS (as an option of course) but it also needs good ways to deploy the application; for example if the installation of more GNUstep-based applications is intended, the installation of the framework plus the different binaries should be an option, while if GNUstep is used just for one single application, everything should be self-contained and GNUstep itself should be unnoticed by the end-user.
If a Desktop Application of a certain project can be considered useful standalone, it shall prove interesting to support it both as part of the Workspace as well as a single application ported, say, to Windows or Mac.

I feel positive about the GNUstep project offering a set of applications, like it does now, which could be considered as a reference implementation. What should be taken in account by the developers is never ever to take the existence of these applications as granted: this would make a real portable core impossible. These application should be considered an option and other projects shall be able to replace one or any of them. Still, their sheer existence should prove the point that GNUstep is more than a mere toolkit.
At the current state of things, there should be no official appointed "Desktop Project" and the end-user shall be granted the freedom of choice