I don't necessarily think that a fork is required at this time. I
believe that in general the best interest of the community would be
better served if the issues involved were just worked out.

Part of the desire stated is that Squeak be of use for business
purposes. This requires reasonable performance and stability. These are
not undesirable attributes for SqueakCentral's goals. Especially with a
worldview of owning the machine, etc.

A business with an interest in supporting Squeak development should not
be contrary to SqueakC but complementary.

Once again the Python community provides some reasonable examples.

Python development was formerly sponsored by CNRI.
Other Python based development firms were started.
Digital Creations does almost all of it's development in Python, it does
some optimization in C.
Because of it's funding and income it was able to contribute to the
Python community and then later when the need arose, it became the
sponsor of the Python team.

Development of Squeak would not have to be a businesses primary interest
in order to be an effective supporter of Squeak. If it uses Squeak as
its development platform while performing the necessary modifications to
Squeak based on its business interest and gave back to the community
those modifications which did not bear on its business needs (ie:
competition), then Squeak in improved as an ancillary development of a
businesses primary interest.

I think we need more of these businesses in Squeak.

Case in point. If an individual or business built a competitive web app
server in Squeak and used that as a platform to build a consulting
business out of then it could contribute the web app server to the
community while sponsoring the development of web app server. If the IO
prims get optimized for this, the community benefits. If a solid Object
database is developed, the community benefits. If better connectivity to
commercial databases gets developed, the community benefits. Everyone
wins. This is exactly how Digital Creations benefited Python before
becoming formal sponsors.

Squeak is broad enough that this could occur in many areas. It is
possible that any successful Squeak based business could potentially
devote some of it's resources simply to the improvement of Squeak. It
could be a few man hours a week. Whatever? 

Another case is Exobox. According to the recent post by Duane Maxwell,
Exobox had developments in Squeak which could be of benefit to the
community. Those which are not of vital to business interests would be
nice if they were released to the community.

If all Squeak oriented businesses adopted some or all of these ideas or
principles the Squeak community would prosper and grow.

None of this needs to detract or subtract from SqueakCentral.

Business interests can come along side R&D interests and complement each
other and support each other.

This can be a win/win.

Jimmie Houchin