Göran Krampe wrote:
... So although I share your basic view of cross pollinating forks being a "Good Thing" and something we should embrace (see OLPC, Squeakland, Croquet etc etc) such forks need to have a specific goal.
IMHO Pharo is not such a fork, Pharo is still very much "generic" as is Squeak.org. Pharo is more like "Squeak.org going agile" or "Smalltalk, with less talk" :). And thus it resembles XOrg much, much more than OpenBSD. ...
This is the key issue here.
At least Pharo has an agenda. Squeak needs an agenda badly. Something along the lines of the old "Where is Squeak headed" from Dan. Without that, Squeak can't advance in any direction at all. People choosing a Smalltalk for their projects can not know what to expect. Forks can not know if they are needed or not.
Most forks have clearly defined objectives. Etoys, Croquet, Cuis do have them. The objectives for Pharo are broader, and less defined. But Pharo guys know where they are going, and they have some developer time and organization to advance.
Squeak has nothing of this.
The Squeak community needs to define objectives and an agenda for Squeak, or decide that we don't have them, and that the Squeak branch will not be developed further.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich