Hello Squeakers!
First I would like to say... phew. :) We know you guys are waiting to see what the heck we are going to do and I am sorry for this report to be a day late or so. But when you read it I hope you will forgive us.
We know that the only thing worth anything is results - in every aspect of the word. So please keep your expectations at a reasonable level - we have had about 3 days now, mostly packed with communication - and while I do think we have quite a nice report here, 3 days aren't much at all. But we felt the pressure hard to get something OUT.
The last few days have been hectic to say the least - but despite our bumpy start - it feels things are now moving along nicely. Ok, enough chit chat.
Clarification -------------- I did post it separately, but here it is again.
By this leadership group being *temporary* in the announcement we *meant* it.
So hear us - 2006-02-15 at the LATEST, we will step down. We don't have the energy to go any longer than a year. Period. So if SqF hasn't delivered by then, we will either have to improvise and get a new group formed or we are all left hanging.
The more likely period for us is probably in around 6 months.
A Course Correction ----------------------- We want to make sure that we are seen as a legitimate leadership group by as many as possible in this community and Doug came up with a good idea to help doing that - by asking for the acknowledgement from the currently forming SqF... which is still forming, but we think it can be done. We will simply throw ourselves "at their feet". :) And we all like that idea.
Who and what is SqF? Since SqF hasn't yet made any real public postings and hasn't yet formed its own structure (but we think more will come very soon about that) we are taking the liberty of at least giving you an idea.
SqF (or what is called SqF formation) is currently a non-public mailinglist with 29 people. That list has a good cross section of people which includes all of the people in previous groups in charge of Squeak, the Guides, Squeak Central and several others. Of course, the list isn't by any means an elected representation of the community or anything like that, but it is the best we have at the moment.
Roughly this will be done by us presenting our group and as much as we can about how and what we want to do. This is all what we have said previously and are saying with this report, nothing else. The proposal will also include a veto mechanism in which SqF will be able to veto any action on our part, as a safety mechanism - details are sketchy.
Now, this can't be done until SqF gets a few mechanisms in place, like for example how to perform a vote :), but we are trusting in SqF to do so ASAP.
We hope this will clear up any misunderstandings about our intentions, and of course that it will turn out all for the best. It is *also* putting some pressure on SqF to actually get cracking. And if we fail to get the support from that group of people - then this initiative ends Right There. There is of course no point in even trying to lead the community in that case.
We are not stopping to wait for this support though - since as we have explained - we have no idea when that will be clear. Hopefully as soon as possible.
Organisation boring stuff ------------------------------ We have created a Swiki for our notes, todolists, simple rules on how we work together etc. We just now made it public readonly so that you all can see at all times what we are doing, but my advice is to read this report in full before going there:
http://anakin.bluefish.se/castaways
It will be moved to a more proper place on the new server when we have that geared up. And of course we have the alias to reach us all:
mysterious-island@discuss.squeakfoundation.org
Now, our group has gone through some changes. Unfortunately it seems the Mysterious Island book is haunting us a bit. In the book one person fell off the balloon (!) just before landing on the island, not sure what became of him actually. So unfortunately the same happened (not literally though) in reality so Michael Rueger will not be able to work with us in this group.
Michael is though still active in bringing the 3.8 release to a close, more on that below.
So we are now four and we will not try to replace Michael. We need to get cranking instead and there is no real point in extending the group because we are focusing on extensively using a team/task driven approach.
We also want to make clear that there is no internal hierarchy or anything like that in our group - the reason I am doing most of the talking is... well it beats me, it just turned out like that. :) So informally I might have ended up being a secretary/spokesperson, but that is ALL there is to it.
I personally do not like that I have ended up so overexposed, especially since several people have expressed serious doubts about my interpersonal skills, but I trust you to believe us when we say that there is no hierarchy at all.
Tasks and Teams ------------------- We are using a simple approach here. A task can be much anything. Each task has a team with a leader. On the castaway swiki there is a simple table that keeps track of the running tasks, who is the leader and also who of us (Doug, me, Marcus or Cees) is responsible on our side to track it. We don't keep track of who are the team members - that is just all up to the team leader.
The swiki has the current list of running tasks, but don't go there and spoil this report - read below instead. :)
Special Advisor ----------------- One REALLY good thing is that Dan Ingalls has offered to help us in the role of a "special advisor". Now, what is that? Who cares, it's Dan!! ;)
Well, but seriously Dan wants to give us his input on any and all issues so he is a full member but without the responsibilites. Which he likes fine. :) This means he also gets all our email and has write access to the Swiki etc. But he chooses himself how much he wants to do.
We are of course delighted to have Dan with us, especially since he is also joining in some of the tasks!
Contact persons ------------------ In order to get a better coordinated community "as a whole" we have also approached all the related "satellite projects" around Squeak and asked if they want to appoint a "contact person" that we can use to communicate with that project.
The current list of contacted such projects or communities are:
-Squeakland -SmallLand -Croquet, Andreas Raab confirmed -Tweak, Andreas Raab confirmed -Seaside, Avi Bryant confirmed -Tk4 -The Berne Guys, Stephane Ducasse confirmed -Japanese Squeak community, Yoshiki Oshima confirmed -Georgia Tech
The idea is that we are then able to send out questions and info and request potential feedback before going forward with certain plans that may affect the projects. The projects also get a channel for grabbing our attention if needed. We will start by sending out a general inquiry to get a feel of what the projects want in a longer perspective.
We will of course have this list published later with names of the contact persons we get. And if you know more such "satellite Squeak communities" that we have missed - please let us know.
Burning issues ----------------- We started trying to make an inventory of "burning issues" in the community. The current content of the list is known to most, but we need this list to get our bearings and to make priorities.
The list is available on the Swiki:
http://anakin.bluefish.se/castaways/2 ...and if you want to help us add more to that list - remember, this is an inventory - nothing more. Also, Ned has written quite a bit on these issues here:
http://bike-nomad.com/squeak/community2.html
I (Göran) am still distilling the above document to find bullets for the list. So again, here is a great place to help us out, because right now things are hectic and we surely are missing stuff. Just email.
Some of the issues there we are trying to deal with, but we will not remove any issue until it is solved, old and totally obsolete. Consider that list as our "collective pains". :)
Services --------- As many know we have a new community server called "box1". It can be reached at box1.squeakfoundation.org, but has no webface at this time. But lots of stuff are being consolidated to that server. Some quick facts:
- The machine is a virtual server running Debian with lots of bandwidth and disk. RAM is slightly more cramped, but no problem yet, and we can always just ask for more. - The machine is paid for using a PayPal account Cees set up a while back ready to take donations. And quite some money has arrived so the immediate need is definitely taken care of. - We are several people with root access that cooperatively maintain it. - SqueakMap, BFAV, a Subversion mirror and all new created lists are running there. - There is a file area which Bruce O'Neel has full control over (a Task btw): http://box1.squeakfoundation.org/files - There is a nightly backup running to a server at Bluefish, but we gladly add another one somewhere. - Rsync is on the box so that anyone can easily set up a mirror of the file area. - We have mirrored over the current www.squeak.org and we have Dan ready to repoint it to the new server any day now.
... and probably quite a few more things is there that I am forgetting now.
There is also an ongoing Task to create a new nice website and it will be hosted there of course. Stephane leads that task and Bruce is working on the design and a bunch of other people are also involved. The new site will be wiki-editable with a team to do the editing. But Stephane can tell you more on that. I can only tell you that the sneak peak I have seen looks SLICK AS HELL. :)
Release of 3.8 ---------------- We have talked to Michael Rueger about the 3.8 release and it is almost ready. There are only a very few items on the todo list left. Michael Rueger and Bert Freudenberg together with us 4 will try to wrap it up. I don't think we need more manpower to do that, but if so we will find it, and if you want to help - we aren't *stopping* you. :)
We have agreed together with Michael to set the release date to 1st of march.
Up, Up and Beyond ---------------------- Hehe, that heading puts on some pressure, now doesn't it? :)
So what about 3.9 and after that?
This is not a full description of everything that we think we should do - we have "only" picked two specific tasks that we are sure we want to push really hard and like us all to rally around.
Also, don't take anything here as written in stone, it is of course all up to the community to work together in all this. We just hope it sounds good and that you will join us. :)
Note that this section does NOT deal with a lot of the things already proposed for 3.9 - "Stefs roadmap". We just haven't had time to go through that yet nor foster a good discussion around it in the community - that is on our immediate todo list though and a thread will be started right after this report has been posted. Then we discuss it all together and we get those things nailed down.
Now, given all that... (deep breath) this is what we want to do.
ToolBuilder! ------------- As many have seen the recent discussions on Tweak, Morphic etc spurred Andreas to write a little abstract UI framework that gives just the functionality that most of our tools need. Then it maps to the different backends (Morphic, Tweak, MVC etc). Andreas being who he is :) quickly worked something up and people started to join the fray. This little project has a good momentum and we want to push this even harder.
Andreas started this great initiative, and we want very much for this layer to become an official package in Basic as of 3.9. This also means we want a dedicated maintainer with at least one co-maintainer of it and a team/task for making this happen.
So the question is who wants to be team leader on this? Andreas? Avi? Anyone else?
As for us - we intend to put our own efforts into this - Cees is already involved, I will start with porting SqueakMap Package Loader over to it and I think/hope Marcus will do SUnit.
This project has a list of its own that you can join at:
ui-subscribe@discuss.squeakfoundation.org
Now, we believe this package will be *emintently* important given the second thing below...
MinimalMorphic! ------------------- This part is a bolder move. We are starting a task with Cees de Groot as team leader called MinimalMorphic.
The task will run *in parallell* with the ongoing regular work on 3.9 and track 3.9 as the base. The job is to create an automated procedure that brings/shrinks the 3.9 image down to a lean and clean tools-only Morphic image. Or possibly also down to MVC, but that is up to the team.
The side product of this work is meant to be a loadable RestOfMorphic package and an eToys package. Or at least a RestOfMorphic package including eToys, that is also up for the team to find out.
This is a hard job and involves cleaning up Morphic to its original simplicity and tweaking the tools to only use that part of Morphic. Dan Ingalls wants to be a part of this work (yes!) and Juan Vuletich has already announced his interest/intentions in working on this, which is just great. And there have been quite a number of people discussing these aspects recently. Cees will contact people and get the team together and anyone interested to help should of course talk to Cees.
This procedure will not actually be applied to the 3.9 update stream, so 3.9 will be a "traditional fat" release, and exactly what 3.9 entails is that other "Stef roadmap"-thread we will start ASAP. But when 3.9 is released the MinimalMorphic procedure will be appliable to it and available on SM, which is a nice thing.
The first thing for the 4.0 release is to actually apply the MinimalMorphic procedure in the update stream. Bam! 4.0 will start its life as a lean and mean Morphic machine. :) We of course then also let 4.0 get a shrunk V4.sources and an almost empty .changes file.
Now, the ToolBuilder is a very important part of this dance - it defines the needs of the tools and will make it easier to see exactly what this small Morphic needs to deliver. So as we said before, it should enter 3.9 Basic as soon as we can make it. And since 3.9 is the last release with MegaMorphic intact as it looks today it will give the tool maintainers time to move over to ToolBuilder so that the tools will work in the new lean world of 4.0.
There are of course lots of open questions and details to all of this but this is it - this is what we want to focus hard on. Of course it doesn't preclude other ongoing things, like getting the PackageInfo bit working and getting started on TFNR (assigning maintainers to parts of the image, without actually ripping them out) - I and Doug are still very much going to focus on that during the 3.9 period.
Finally we would like to thank Avi for making us look in this direction and Dan for pushing us even further than we first dared, as Dan so well put it himself - "it's ballsy". :) But with Dan on board and the current energy level in the community (Can you feel it?) we think we can all pull this off.
Final word ------------ We are aware that there are some members of this community that don't trust us, at least not yet. We are also aware of a large number of people that have expressed their support in full, and a lot of it in private.
So the only question worth asking now is... are you prepared to give us the benefit of the doubt and work with us? We are NOTHING without you.
While we both are trying to get teams cracking on concrete things, we also will continute to look at the burning issues list and try to improve our processes. But we gotta have something to do next week too. :) :)
We are now moving over from the planning/communication phase to the "doing it" phase. We hope you join us in all the work ahead. Let the fun begin. :)
regards, Doug, Göran, Cees (Marcus, see below)
PS. Marcus is part ill, part overwhelmed by other things at this point. He is in catch-up mode and hasn't had time to fully catch up yet.