Hi Andreas!

"Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Göran,
> 
> > > I guess Josh means the same thing that I mean - a 
> > 
> > Well, don't make everything so darn black and white!
> 
> I was trying to give you an example here which is black and white enough so
> that you see what is meant by it.

So you want to introduce a substantial piece of new code adding new
dependencies into the image?
Not as a package outside of the image?
Well, to me that just sounds ... dumb. But hey, what do I know.

> > Of course we are talking about judgement calls here.
> > But you must surely agree with the long term goal of
> > partitioning the image into packages with well
> > understood interdependencies? I surely hope.
> 
> You know that I do.

And that is why I can't follow your arguments.

Of course we are harvesting bug fixes and improvements. Of course we
must review them with the long term goal in mind. And of course new
substantial pieces of code should preferrably be in packages outside of
the image. And of course all this has to be balanced as good as we can.
And of course the Guides are listening to each and every post on the
subjects at hand.

For the last time - there is no dark hidden malevolent policy that we
Guides have cooked up just to make the life for everyone a pest. Get
over it! Improvements are going in. Fixes are going in. Nice visual
enhancements are going in. Cool things are going in.

And if appropriate they go into the correct package outside of the image
or into the image if no such package exists yet.
And if the code sucks we will tell people that.
And if the code creates a spaghetti mess in the image it will have a
damn hard time getting in.

Ok, I am loosing my "cool" here, sorry for that. But I am not going to
delete what I just wrote.

> > We will never get to a partitioned image if people insist on 
> > paddling in the other darn direction.
> 
> Oh, we will. Perhaps not as quickly. Perhaps not as forcefully. Perhaps
> having the time to look a little left and right and pick up a flower along
> the way.

Of course! I love flowers. But just planting flowers like SqC has been
doing for a couple of years *without taking the weed away* will just
create a damn mess! So now we remove weed AND plant flowers.

I think we are simply blabbering over nothing here.

> > > > And if noone steps forward pursuing the original vision (which
> > > > one is that btw? eToys? Dynabook?) then it simply will 
> > > > not be pursued!
> > > 
> > > The flaw in that argumentation is that you assume our 
> > > vision would be about computers per se (such as a piece
> > > of software or hardware). It is not.
> 
> [lots of stuff snipped]
> 
> What I tried with the above was explaining to you that all of the things we
> pursue are part of a larger context. Your note (quoted above) seemed to
> imply that the vision is something that concentrates on a specific computing
> artifact (like eToys, or the Dynabook). What you are missing is that all of
> these things are merely tools which mean nothing outside of some context -
> this is what "the ideas aren't in the computer" means.

When I said eToys and Dynabook I was referring to the ideas not the
artifacts.
I don't know the name on the "ideas" behind what you are doing with
eToys.

I repeat - we will revisit the mission statement (the very same that
nobody whatsoever objected to when it was posted the last time) and see
where it takes us. I am just pessimistic about it all - I just can't see
you guys being satisfied with anything we might come up with. But you
can always prove me wrong.

> [After writing a whole lot more in response I'm deciding to cut it away. All
> it most likely would do is to raise another flamewar which I have no
> interest in]

I am so tired at this point it wouldn't matter. I probably wouldn't pick
up the glove.

> Cheers,
>   - Andreas

Just tired, Göran