Andrew-

I'm planning to let this thread (and the related ones) end but somewhere
along the line the point of what I was writing may be missed (perhaps
because my original post was not concise enough). 

Here is the revised foundation purpose I suggested:
: The Squeak Foundation's purpose [could be]: 
: To support the vitality and evolution of a chaordic community
: creating, maintaining, enhancing, discussing, and using 
: an exquisite personal and collaborative computing ecosystem 
: of tools, components, infrastructure, knowledge, and content 
: derived from or inspired by Squeak or Dynabook technology 
: which are open, well supported, and freely available 
: and make use of ever increasing computing power for humane ends.

I guess I still don't see how this statement of purpose in any way
denies that people using Squeak or this list have multiple interests and
participate in a broadly defined community that has formed in large part
because of shared interest in Squeak-related artifacts with historic
roots in Alan Kay's Dynabook project, and that people in this community
will likely spend most of their time discussing a related population of
Squeak-ish artifacts and that population's evolution. In fact, I'd say
this statement of purpose affirms that. 

It certainly isn't a statement of purpose proposing a community for a
community's sake. However, it does suggest the Squeak Foundation should
put supporting the Squeak community first (as opposed to, say, only
raising funds to hire programmers to improve Squeak directly and then
ignoring handling contributions by volunteers or other needs of the
community). Organizing tutorial information, maintaining Wikis,
supporting reliable mailing lists, and coordinating contributions and
releases are all things that support the community, and are all things
that have been discussed as what the foundation should be doing.
Obviously, there may be a role to play for funded development as well --
perhaps in terms of "business Squeak" issues, and especially if such
development might directly lead to growth of the Squeak community.

Certainly you've made some good points and alerted us to several things
to watch out for (as have others in this thread) but I guess I hadn't
expected this statement of purpose to be quite as controversial as its
reception would indicate. [Probably should have known better. :-) ]

-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software 
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com

"Andrew C. Greenberg" wrote:
> 
> >> In short, the issue is, forming a:
> >>
> >>   Squeak "Community" Foundation
> >>
> >> instead of a:
> >>
> >>   Squeak "Artifacts" Foundation
> >>
> >> What do people on the Squeak list think?
> 
> As I have repeatedly noted, I believe this issue misses the point.  The
> foundation should be about the community AND the program, not some
> exclusive OR.  Anything less would be so much less as to be irrelevant.
> The community describes the program and the program defines the
> community.  Put another way, punning horribly on the various of the word
> "program" as noun for agenda, noun for computer code and nounification
> of the verb "to program."
> 
>         The program is our program.
> 
> Meaning SIMULTANEOUSLY almost every permutation of the intentionally
> ambiguous phrase.
> 
> Less is more, except when it is so much less.