[News] Weekly Squeak Article

[Ron Teitelbaum]

Giovanni and all,

Here is a first pass at an article for the Weekly Squeak.  Let me know what
you think.


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The Foundation is Squeaking.

By Ron Teitelbaum

The Squeak foundation is off and running and already there are major
squeaker issues.  I guess most of what we see today on
squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org could be considered growing pains.
The major issue that arose this week was raised by stéphane ducasse
[ducasse at iam.unibe.ch].

The following is all paraphrased.  Let me say now that if I got it wrong
please feel free to correct me on the list.  The benefit of a summary is to
highlight ideas, and I hope I was able to do that.  Also I hope that if I
left some important person or comment out that you will correct that also.
Everyone's input is valued.

The problem: There is too much work to do to properly manage the release
cycle.  There is not enough expertise to do it right.  There is not enough
development in areas that are buggy because nobody wants to work on some
parts of the code.

Solutions: 

Stéphane ducasse [ducasse at iam.unibe.ch]: Use the money collected by the
foundation to bring commitment, professionalism, and a qualified person to
the harvesting area.  Also we could fund projects to fix code that people do
not have the time or interest to fix.

Göran [goran at krampe.se], Ken Causey [ken at kencausey.com]: Change the
structure to allow better access to package owners (stewards and Reviewers).
Allow for ownership of packages, email links to owner or group, bug
reporting to group, and repository for changes to be posted and made
available.  Move the coordinating and integration of changes to this new
group and let the group be responsible for working with Harvesters to
release code.  The greater access to groups will help to allow great
contribution form general squeakers.

Marcus Denker [denker at iam.unibe.ch]: Changes is good, but real experience is
needed to solve real integration problems.  Problems can not be ignored and
progress can not take forever or people will stop making progress while
there changes are being harvested.

Andreas Raab [andreas.raab at gmx.de]: Less control is good, we need to give
more of the control to people that actually do the coding.  Write access
should be allowed to teams (possibly like the Göran and Ken "Steward"
model).  Changes need to be reviewed and discussed with owners.  People
should resist the urge to "FIX" someone else's code without discussing it to
find out if they even properly understand the code.

Chris Muller [chris at funkyobjects.org]: Images are just that, collections of
useful code.  It is difficult to get everyone to agree what the one standard
configuration should be.  We could allow the publishing of working community
images and build tools to help integrate from one image to another.  By
allowing configuration publications, and custom images for custom purposes
the images with the most community support will grow, others may not but
overall people will pick the best configuration for their need.  This
removes the need to review and agree on a single image.

Juan Vuletich [jmvsqueak at uolsinectis.com.ar]: Bug fixes yes, major releases
no.  Major releases should be packaged up and controlled by the developer
and released separately and they can be loaded by users that want them.

Michael Rueger [michael at impara.de]: lets stop reinventing and try learning
and using the system we have.  Mantis is intended to facilitate group
discussion and coordination maybe we could write an interface to
automatically fill out forms (much like Göran and Ken's changes suggested
for bugs and repositories).  Let's use the tools we have to help fix the
problem.

So where does that leave this problem.  I think with some really great
progress.  The squeaking is loud at times but hopefully it will lead to a
better organized and more efficient community group.  The struggle over
authorship and control, time and energy, stability and innovation, are
always problems for every group.  It is to everyone credit that change is
being discussed, and it should be the responsibility of all to ensure that
we make things better.  Stef and Marcus should be commended for the hard
work and the dedication to this group.  Contributions from some very
talented people should be acknowledged there would be no squeak without
them.  This is what a community is all about, we are much more as a group
then we could be alone.  This is all about helping each other, learning,
doing, and having fun.