Sidenote: I am currently writing a long post with concrete proposals
regarding these questions and will post that in a few minutes.

Martin Wirblat <sql.mawi at t-link.de> wrote:
> Hi Göran,
> 
> >> Your magic trick with which you think you can 'avoid forking' will 
> >> not change this. You said the guides duty is not to have a vision 
> >> for Squeak and some guides may not be interested that much in 
> >> Multimedia that they want to take on such a decision and that 
> >> people should 'sell' their wish of inclusion to the guides. I think 
> >> not the code of the one who _sells best_ should be included, the 
> >> _best code_ or the _most needed function_ has to be chosen. 
> >
> >I don't think there is a difference. If a function is sorely needed it
> >sells. Just playing with words.
> 
> It is a big difference, note that I didn't say _it_ sells, I said 
> _someone_ sells and Daniel demanded this too. Look what happens in 
> reality: Some people cry loudly about inclusion of their code, some 
> others put their package quietly and humbly on SM. The quality or the 
> necessity of a piece of code does NOT correlate with the 'selling 
> behaviour' of their creators. I would even suggest that there may be a 
> slightly negative correlation. 
> 
> If you guides even demand that people have to sell to you, your 
> thoughts will swirl around what is offered most loudly and not what is 
> really good code, what is really necessary, what fits into a longterm 
> vision. 

Ok, now I understand what you mean. I am still not sure it will get
better if the Guides were to take a more "active" role and "picking" the
stuff we like. For example, looking at Python which seems to have a good
and working community - they have a system around something they call
PEPs (which I am basing a concrete proposal around - see my upcoming
post) and their process is firmly rooted in the idea that the person
coming up with the improvement proposal (PEP) should do the homework,
discussion, fighting, selling around the idea.

If you want to turn it around into some form of Harvesting scheme then I
would like to hear how that should work. As you well know Harvesting
suffers from other problems. But please read my upcoming post first. :-)

> >> It seems to be that Squeak lacks someone who wants to make such 
> >> decisions and is able to do so. Perhaps it is not appropriate for 
> >> me to make such a proposal, but after all this discussion in this 
> >> list, I must say I think Andreas ( along with Doug ) should make 
> >> these decisions. Of course with previous discussions with the rest 
> >> of the world. 
> >
> >Eh, well - to just throw out two names and then think the problem is
> >solved feels a little naive to me.
> 
> Andreas noticed that there are packages out there, which are of high 
> quality and which functions are needed for a universal long term 
> success of Squeak. He then nailed down exactly which packages he 
> thinks of. This looks like he wants to take on making decisions and it 
> looks like that he has a vision for Squeak. Taking into account his 
> many posts I read, which always gave me the impression that he is able 
> to look at things from different perspectives and generally does so, I 
> think his vision is one which fits all different wishes of what Squeak 
> could be and what it can be used for. 
> 
> Doug is the head of the harvesters right now and I remember that he 
> expressed his joy of making such decisions in the past. 

Has he expressed joy for that? :-) I didn't know that.

> That is why I threw in two names, I don't think that's naive. 

No, sorry for my choice of words. But I don't really think we can solve
this by simply pointing at someone (*anyone*) and saying "He decides!".
Just look at the threads going on here - people are for God's sake
criticizing us Guides for making these decisions (even though we thought
we were making the decisions together on the list). Daniel got tons of
heat for not wanting to let the TrueType thingy in. Don't you think
similar sitations will arise if Daniel's name was Andreas?

> Conversely I must say I find it a bit naive to believe in a decision 
> making process which denies that a vision is needed, what is the 
> criteria for your decision than? 

I don't think I have ever said that. We are probably talking around each
other due to different opinions on what a Vision is. We do have goals
and they are stated in our mission statement.

> All ideas of having a procedure which shift the responsibility away 
> from the top to the community is in fact a decision process which 
> replaces the vision with the loudest crying salesman. 
>
> Göran, this is doomed to failure, we need someone or some few with
> a clear vision, with the courage to take on such decisions and the
> ability to do so. 

I see what you mean. My head is a turmoil of thoughts at this stage. We
Guides are just 6 of you guys, please remember that. I (or we) probably
thought that the community wanted a bit "looser" management/steering
than we had under SqC because the community was really hungring for
distributed responsibility. Now you are instead asking us to take a more
firm lead.

Please realize that we are trying to find a balance here. If you reread
the mission statement you can clearly see that it was written very
"humbly" in order to make sure people could accept us and not think we
were simply barging in and taking over from SqC. This was a very
important factor when I wrote that statement since we weren't really
"elected" or anything. And how could we have been - we have no mechanism
for that! :-)

But please, read my upcoming post and continue your thoughts from there
- perhaps it includes stuff that you like. I hope it does.

> Regards,
>     Martin

regards, Göran