[Seaside] The Weekly Squeak Summary No. 17: Jan 13 - Mar 22, 2008

[Ron Teitelbaum]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Philippe Marschall [mailto:philippe.marschall at gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 2:24 AM
> To: Ron at usmedrec.com; Seaside - general discussion
> Subject: Re: [Seaside] The Weekly Squeak Summary No. 17: Jan 13 - Mar 22,
> 2008
> 
> 2008/3/28, Ron Teitelbaum <Ron at usmedrec.com>:
> > > From: Miguel Enrique Cobá Martínez
> >
> > >
> >  > Giovanni Corriga wrote:
> >  > > Philippe Marschall ha scritto:
> >  > >> 2008/3/24, Michael Haupt <mhaupt at gmail.com>:
> >  > >>> Hi Philippe,
> >  > >>>
> >  > >>>
> >  > >>>  On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 5:40 PM, Philippe Marschall
> >  > >>>  <philippe.marschall at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  > >>>  > Sorry but this is the Seaside mailing list, not squeak-dev.
> >  > >>>
> >  > >>>
> >  > >>> that Weekly Squeak Summary e-mail was sent to the following
> lists:
> >  > >>>  announcements, beginners, seaside, and squeak-dev. Just like all
> >  > >>>  before. ;-)
> >  > >>>
> >  > >>>  The News team agreed on this bunch of lists when the Summary was
> >  > >>> kicked off.
> >  > >>
> >  > >> Very well but the news team does not run this list. We would
> >  > >> appreciate it if we could keep the mails on this list about
> Seaside.
> >  > >> People with an interest in Squeak can subscribe one of the
> mentioned
> >  > >> lists or read the Weekly Squeak.
> >  > >>
> >  > >
> >  > >
> >  > > Hi Philippe,
> >  > >
> >  > > the decision for sending this summaries to the Seaside list goes
> back to
> >  > > when Seaside was pretty much a Squeak-only framework. I remember
> asking
> >  > > the mantainer of this list (at the time, it was Avi) for permission
> to
> >  > > send the announcements. Noone ever complained before. Do people now
> feel
> >  > > that's not appropriate anymore?
> >  > >
> >  > Of course it is apropriate.
> >  > I think that Seaside is an entry point to Smalltalk in general and to
> >  > the Squeak world in particular. So, if people are comming to
> smalltalk
> >  > by means of Seaside, this kind of messages can show the other
> >  > *interesting* things that are part of the squeak world. We have to
> >  > remember that Seaside is just a part of a bigger set of technologies
> >  > and, the more people know about them, the better for us.
> >  > It is very difficult already to convince *enterprises* to use
> >  > alternatives to java/php/.net, but if we can reach a critical user
> base,
> >  > as the ruby on rails did for ruby, we can have a better chance to
> bring
> >  > this technologies to them.
> >  > By not allowing the spread of information like the squeak new are
> trying
> >  > to do, we are just working agaist this goal.
> >  > So I vote to allow and to contribute to the spread information by
> this
> >  > and another means.
> >  >
> >  > Cheers,
> >  > Miguel Cobá
> >
> >
> > I'm glad somebody finally said something.  I was just going to let this
> go
> >  figuring if nobody says anything than I guess it doesn't really matter.
> >
> >  I was personally offended by Philippe comment.  It is really hard for
> me to
> >  believe that after all the work I put into trying to keep Seaside in
> the
> >  news that this community would deny us the opportunity to promote the
> Weekly
> >  Squeak on the mailing list.
> >
> >  I think that if Seaside doesn't value our promotion enough to help us
> in
> >  return, that's fine, we can just go away.  Although I'm not the Team
> Lead
> >  anymore, so I really shouldn't be speaking for the team.  Still I take
> this
> >  as a personal attack, and I am offended.
> 
> That was not intended to be a quality rating about about your work,
> indeed I find the weekly Squeak of high quality, there is no need to
> be offended. The reason I wrote this mail to the list instead of the
> news team directly is that we can have a discussion in public and
> everyone who is interested can post his opinion.
> 
> What made me write this mail is that to me:
> - Seaside is not about promoting Smalltalk
> - Seaside is not about the Squeak "environment" (EToys, Shopie,
> Croquet, Scratch, OLPC, SqueakLand, research project X, ...)
> to me Seaside is a web framework for Smalltalk who runs on Squeak. Period.
> 
> Who ever is interested in the Weekly Squeak can read it directly or
> via RSS feed. If we have a weekly Squeak on this list, shouldn't we
> have a weekly Cincom Smalltalk, Dolphin Smalltalk, Gemstone Smalltalk
> and GNU Smalltalk as well? If we had all these would that still be
> appropriate? What's the reasoning for not posting on the Magma and
> Exupery lists as well?
> 
> Or to make an other example. Would you find it appropriate if the Sun
> news team would post the weekly Java in the mailinglist of Tapestry?
> 

I certainly understand your point and I guess I would agree more if any of
these potential abusive posters actually had something to post.  We have had
updates from Cincom and Gemstone on this list.  We had a nice debate
somewhere about Dolphin (might have been squeak-dev) We even have had
updates from sun about Lively Kernel.  There were no abusive posts.

I appreciate your comments about the weekly squeak, but your response just
doesn't hold up in my mind.  This is not a large community that needs strict
policing.  I don't think our posts were excessive, nor do I think it is
setting a precedent for others to abuse the list.  

I like posting to the seaside list because it might help draw someone that
learned about seaside into the larger Squeak Community.  I think it helps
make a more friendly environment and brings us all together as a larger
family of communities.  I like writing about all the communities even
outside ones like Strongtalk, or Ian's Reinventing Computing, or Gilad's
Newspeak, because these are the things that interest our communities.  I
don't think what we have been doing is just fluff.  

I really do feel like you place too little emphasis on our promotion of
Seaside.  I think you undervalue the benefit the content we produce brings
to your community.  I would think you would appreciate our efforts.

Ron