> Is there anyone familiar enough with Gemstone here to know if I'm
> bonkers for wanting Squeak to eventually have this power?
>
> I know that we can download an evaluation copy of Gemstone, but it
> doesn't run on my mac. :)
>
> Thoughts?

There are probably a lot of people on this list that are very familiar with
GemStone.  I very much like the idea of having some GemStone like qualities
in Squeak.  There is even an opportunity to improve upon some of the aspects
of GemStone.

It all really comes down to giving Squeak more operating system and database
like capabilities.  Because any such system requires the precise control
over the synchronization of replicated objects (objects replicated in memory
and on disk in this case), a solid model for transactions is required and
probably a pre-requisite.  Ideally, this transactional system would
transparent to most users, and accessible to those that want to modify it or
hook into it in some way.

Another pre-requisite is a good security model.  To make Squeak multi-user,
you have to start thinking about securing objects.  A lot could be taken
from the Unix multi-user approach (and of course enhanced).  Wasn't someone
working on this a while back?

Once Squeak is multi-user, persistent and secured, you really have a full
operating system.  If done right, it could even be a good operating system.
;)

Also, it would be interesting to work at this problem from another angle by
designing the object file system, and then figuring out what it would take
to activate those objects (i.e. bring them into memory and have them start
interacting with each other).  This is sort of the opposite problem that we
currently have, which is a lot of active objects in memory and a lot of
non-ideal ways of getting them on disk.

I think improvement in these areas would greatly enhance the platform.  It
would sort of make Squeak complete in the sense that it gives Squeak the
legs it needs to move forward in many directions.

- Stephen