Folks -

If you have been following Squeak Foundation mail, you will know that we've been assembling a bootstrap structure for the Squeak Foundation.  We have included a couple of volunteers in various positions, drafted a few others (who may or may not be happy with this), and generally tried to flesh out enough structure to serve as a seed crystal.  It is a jump-start to get us going, which can later be morphed into the Perfect Thing once we know what that is.


Here's what we hope to see over the next little while:

1.  Dave Thomas, Cees de Groot, and anyone else with recommendations will suggest a good set of, eg, bylaws for the formation of a legal entity adequate to represent us and to accept and disperse funds (we're thinking positive here ;-).  Andrew Greenberg, if he has time will help us to adapt these and then adopt them (he is adept at this).

2.  Yet to be addressed are the details of how features get blessed for inclusion or not, how code gets reviewed and accepted or not and various other issues of serving the common good.  You can see some context for moving in that direction, but it will take more than a week to settle this, and I don't feel qualified to lay down the law in this case.  Hopefully proposals based on similar and successful organizations will help here.

Items (1) and (2) are the content of the Squeak Foundation project

3.  For those projects enumerated here, the various chairmen will
	announce their projects to this list, adding their own
		slant if they wish, and call for volunteers
	develop a plan
	ratify or choose a new chairman
	put out a report on or about February 1
	get to work

4.  For other projects that may occur to people, they need only propose them to Cees and me (our function is merely to filter chaos), and be willing to go through the steps above in (3).

You will see that I am way oversubscribed as a committee chairman.  This is not because I am a megalomaniac, it is only a jump-start.  I plan to get myself replaced in several areas.

You will also see that Cees, by demonstrating his willingness to call me on a deadline (plus having laid lots of groundwork already), has been made Administrative Director.  The office of "Chief Whip" is vital in any volunteer organization.


I want to thank everyone who has helped this process along, especially:  Cees who really set up the framework back in May, Dave Thomas who has been a patient and generous source of encouragement from the beginning, the Stable Squeak World Tour folks who took the initiative to show that Squeak doesn't have to be always under the shadow of SqC, and everyone else who has written, volunteered, or jumped up and down and said in their own ways, "Let's get going!"

Your scribe and now Interim Executive Director

	- Dan


The Squeak Foundation
------------------------
Board of Directors:
	Alan Kay
	Dave Thomas
	Dan Ingalls
	Andreas Raab
	Ian Piumarta
	Mark Guzdial
	Tansel Ersavas
The board shall...
	provide credibility and representation in various contexts
	have no fiscal responsibility
	critique and bless a yearly "Where Squeak is Headed"
		charter which will be prepared by the Executive
		Director with input from everyone
	resolve any irreconcilable differences between the
		Executive and Administrative Directors.

Executive Director:
	Shall approve any major changes, including new
	or changed committee charters.
	Shall prepare the "Where Squeak is Headed" charter
	to serve for public information, and to guide
	in coordination of the other projects
		Dan Ingalls

Administrative Director:
	Shall see that necessary things get done,
	internal deadlines get met, etc.
		Cees de Groot

The Exec and Admin Directors work together, ie, they confirm
	every action with the other before doing it.
	This is intended as a sanity check, but it may
	be too much overhead.

Secretary:
	Shall draft an appropriately description
	for this job, and then follow it.
		Andrew Greenberg

Committees:
Each committee...
	shall have a charter
		either an ongoing statement of purpose or a
		project definition with goals and estimated
		schedule
	and a chairman
		responsible for coordinating the work and the
		contributors, and for publishing to the general
		Squeak list on the first of every even month, a
		status report
			Project summary (charter and participants)
			Recent (since last report) Developments
			Near term (until next report) plan
	Committees get created by approval of the Exec and Admin
		Directors.  This is not a veto thing, but
		intended to minimize conflict and confusion
		between the different projects.
	and dismissed (or made inactive) by internal agreement
		or when two consecutive reporting periods pass
		with no activity

Public Relations and Web Presence
	Review and enhance the presentation of the Squeak
	artifact and community so that newcomers at any level
	may easily understand and participate
		Cees de Groot

Updates
	Maintain an orderly and responsive process for reviewing
	and issuing fixes and enhancements to the current "test
	pilot image"
		Doug Way

Releases
	Assemble a stable release package  when appropriate,
	and no less frequently than twice a year.
		Dan Ingalls

Modular Image
	Introduce and refine a system for organizing the Squeak
	system image into modules that allow for addition,
	removal and analysis of subsystems with relative ease.
	Then, partition and refactor the entire Squeak release
	following that paradigm.
		Henrik Gedenryd, Stephane Ducasse

Active Web Content
	Enhance the current mechanism for publishing, downloading
	and running active Squeak content over the Internet.
		Dan Ingalls

Major Shrink
	Maintain and prepare for each major release
	a set of methods and documentation to assist in the
	preparation of simplified images, including
		Minimal MVC image
		Minimal Morphic image
	This project will track and take advantage of
	progress with the modular image project.
		Dan Ingalls

Clean up the Compiler
	Refactor and clean up the Squeak compiler to
	eliminate obsolete features
	handle comments better
	separate code optimization from parsing
	improve the effectiveness of parse trees for,
	eg, pretty printing and type analysis
		Henrik Gedenryd
		
Version 4
	Coordinate a number of changes that require a new
	image format that is not backward-compatible:
	TR's New Compiled Methods
	Block Closure support
	unify primitive index field
	unify class format field
		Tim Rowledge

XML and related facilities
	Assemble or build, test and release a coordinated
	set of facilities for working with XML in Squeak.
		Michael Rueger

A Type System for Squeak
	Specify and implement an optional type system for Squeak
	to improve the development process and assist novices.
	As with the Modular Image project, much work will remain
	even after the system is designed, to supply type information
	for parts or all of the system.  It probably makes sense to
	include in this project any work on type inference.
		Dan Ingalls

The Squeak Foundation
	Get incorporated as a non-profit corporation.
	Based on what we learn in the first few months,
	ratify or change, and record, the structure and
	process drafted here.  Bring this to a final form
	by June 1, 2002.
	All committee chairs should probably be
	members of this project through June.
		Cees de Groot

A few more I haven't had time to summarize...
Better Font support (several directions)
Support for VM construction on all platforms
	Tim Rowledge
Clean up Streams and convert to Craig Latta's FLOW
	Luciano Notarfrancesco
Clean up events
...and I'm sure there are more on the SWIKI and in various people's minds