On Monday, September 3, 2001, at 03:00  AM, Cees de Groot wrote:

> Otherwise, Linux would still be a Finnish CS student's spare time hack 
> (after
> all, it was not *aimed* at being a commercial alternative to ...).

Are you suggesting that it is a "commercial alternative to" the 
elipsis?  Perhaps in the arena of servers (although FreeBSD seems a far 
better device for that), but where, exactly are we seeing alternative 
uses?

I agree, of course, with Mr. de Groot that the community will decide for 
what Squeak is.  However, let us take Tim's remarks in context:

>> Are you aware of a process called "configuration managment"?
>> For Squeak to be a viable commercial alternative (never mind the
>> performance issue), it must be clearly documented and well controlled.
>>> Hmm, let's see... yup, I think I might have dealt with that in the
>>> twenty years or so I've been making a living from softare.
>>> You're making a common mistake though. Squeak is not aimed at being a
>>> commercial alternative. It is aimed at being a vehicle for the journey
>>> towards an exquisite personal computing system. There are several
>>> commercial Smalltalks already. Mind you, Squeak _is_ used commercially
>>> in several places, where the complete openness and rapid development,
>>> community etc is valued even more than the qualities of those 
>>> commercial
>>> versions.

In this context, I think his point was well-placed.  Squeak, while the 
community may intend it for commercial or non-commercial purposes, is 
CLEARLY intended to be an open source communal project.  As such, it is 
unlikely EVER to be "well controlled."

So far as adapting to various constraints to make it more "commercially 
viable," that will be the work of the community -- but only those in the 
community who actual do the doing.  If the community believes it needs 
documentation, there will be documentation.  If it needs modules, there 
will be modules, and so forth.

But it won't ever happen from the suggestion that some feature, trait or 
methodology is required to make Squeak a "commercial alternative."