One last try (was: RE: Convincing a harvester (was on SqF list))

Stephane Ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Wed May 7 15:17:03 UTC 2003


Exact andreas. I understand your poing. I think that there is process 
mechanism missing. With SqC this was implicit and now we should have it 
open.

So take a wiki page or send an email regularly and define a
Call For Inclusion
	Use TTF and the networking Stuff as first try.
	Put a deadline for review or feedback, shake the people.

Long time ago serge stinckwich proposed a template inherited from 
Python but this was fairly complex. But the idea was there. Use your 
own style, be short and strong.
We will learn by doing it.

We could have
	Call for Improvements

	Call for Inclusion

May be there is other ways, but I like the way we started to get 
organized (if any) around the KCP project. Everybody can see what we 
are doing, and slowly we are making progress.

Stef




On Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 04:59 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I will make one final attempt to explain matters as things have got 
> taken
> out of context in the lengthy discussion that arose from the original 
> post.
>
> First of all, a basic premise of mine: I think that all the current
> activities which are visible to the majority of the Squeak community 
> are
> entirely appropriate. Regardless of whether it's KCP, MCP, SqueakMap or
> whatever else, I think all of these activities are absolutely 
> important.
>
> However, they are not at all the only important things that are going 
> on in
> Squeakland. Of all the others, people hardly get feedback, people 
> hardly
> ever know if what they do is perceived to be important if that's a 
> direction
> into which Squeak should develop.
>
> The guides (as a group) claim that their task is to coordinate the
> community, not to make decisions. Yet, they have failed to coordinate 
> the
> community in a way that the community actually _can_ make decisions, 
> _can_
> do all the things that are needed and that the guides claim they don't 
> want
> to do.
>
> Example: As I (and several others) think, the TTF stuff is about the 
> best
> since the invention of sliced bread in Squeak. I want it to be part of 
> the
> "out of the box" experience of what Squeak is. How can I make it so? I
> can't. There is no decision process in place, there is nothing I can do
> _except_ trying to convince the guides and therefore the guides _do_ 
> make
> the decision about it. [Note: This is an example so don't respond to 
> the TTF
> stuff exclusively; the same can be said about many other packages]
>
> And whoever is making these decisions is setting a strategy for the 
> future
> of Squeak. Deny it as long as you want, but if the guides make the 
> de-facto
> decisions they also make the de-facto strategy. And it is that 
> strategy that
> drives me mad - uniquely focused on "hacking Squeak into bits" (boy, 
> am I
> glad _I_ haven't said that ;-) and by doing so, effectively ignoring 
> every
> other part of the system.
>
> I think that's the basic problem here. The guides seeing themselves in 
> a
> role which does not match the "daily facts". Add to this the
> infrastructure/communication problems and you end up in a situation 
> where
> both sides suffer. The guides, because they feel blamed for things 
> that they
> deliberately say they don't want no control over, the rest of the 
> community
> because the guides do de facto what they say they don't.
>
> I don't think this situation can last very long.
>
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
>
>
>



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