On 7/6/07, Craig Latta craig@netjam.org wrote:
The second principle was that discussion of a shared vision could
ameliorate the lack of a short-term gain, and even hasten the implementation of the vision by attracting volunteers. There was a time in the Squeak community, it seemed to me, when we could discuss the merits of an idea before the implementation was finished. I found it useful, and inspiring. This is why I have been writing progress reports for Spoon and asking for feedback.
Aha. My personal observation has been that this principle does not hold. One piece of evidence I have is the various version control systems I have worked on for Squeak. The current version of Monticello arose through a series of very incremental and (in retrospect) "unnecessary" early versions (including "DVS" before it was called "Monticello"), but each of which was released as a working and useful artifact without any prior discussion.
For Monticello 2, on the other hand, we've released plenty of information, tried to open discussion many times, asked for volunteers at several points, but never released something that people could actually use for their daily work. Result: apart from Damien who recently got some funding to work on it, we've had no response whatsoever. This despite the fact that MC2 is a much better and more ambitious design than any of the prior versions of MC.
I've seen similar patterns with Seaside versions over the years: discussions about the future go precisely nowhere. Ditto experimental branches for people to play with. But make a deep change that still lets people get their work done and nobody blinks.
Avi