Folks,

it's time to get our hands dirty in this community. (note the use of
Dan's favourite greeting, I am sneakily using it to improve my chances
here :-) )

First some quick notes:

1. We have a harvesting system and it works "somewhat". Not terribly bad
(depends on who you ask) and not very good either. But it is in place at
least so we need to use it to its fullest extent until we get something
else. But we *need to do something*, that I think and hope we all agree
on.

2. The Guides (of which I am one), we, have been trying to keep a low
profile and to act as... well, "guides" more than "rulers". The
mechanism of the Guides has been misunderstood and discussed at length.
I don't know if we could have acted better, differently or whatever. But
it doesn't matter - let's focus on NOW and the FUTURE.

Marcus kickstarted me into this by posting about the Harvesting process
(Marcus is one of our best harvesters) and there have been discussions
going on about what problems we have and what we can and should try to
do.

I am now going to try to actually *DO* something. And to make everybody
understand that I am serious - I am betting my position as a Guide on
it. If what I am about to propose (and *do* if noone objects too wildly)
fails - then I am stepping down as a Guide. At least this puts pressure
on *me*. ;-)

Are you with me so far? I hope so - because this is important.

In short I propose the following course of action:

Step 1: I will take the rest of this week+weekend to form a "task force"
of say 3-4 good respected dedicated Squeakers. I will be one of those
3-4 people.

Step 2: This task force will during the next 3 weeks:
	- Figure out how to define areas of Squeak. This involves
PackageInfo/SM2 etc.
	- Then go ahead and define these areas.
	- Make sure one or a few dedicated, committed person takes official
charge of each area. This is what has been referred to as "Stewarding"
or "homesteading" in past discussions.

Step 3: The task force will then present a final concise report about
the task (problems encountered, solutions decided) and then pop out of
existence in a puff of smoke. :-)

Then I/we leave it up to the community to declare either victory or
failure and if we fail utterly - I will step down as a Guide. Because if
I can't pull this one off, or it turns out to be a bad call - then I
shouldn't be Guiding anyway.

Now, if you have read this far - then you know the important stuff. Here
follows more details on the above.

I will form the task force by simply asking people I know should be
involved in this. Most of this will happen on this list - nothing
hidden. If you feel like you belong in this force - and that you have
the time to offer - then speak up if I missed you.

Note that the force itself doesn't necessarily need to be packed with
lots of people - the force will of course talk to everybody involved
here so it is mostly a lot of "paper work". Noone needs to be afraid
that we will forget talking to them or "steal" some area away - many
areas already have great candidates for them.

Also note that we are NOT necessarily talking about cutting out these
areas from the image. If we can, and it seems a wise thing to do - that
is of course a probable action. But stewarding an area *doesn't need it
to be cut out* of the base image - it does need it to be *well defined*
though - where are the borders of an area?

The task force will NOT take charge of the 3.7 work (see
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3491) - the goals are only those I
listed above. Of course, this may affect the 3.7 cycle, but that is
another story. I think that simply culling that list a bit, struggling
on with the harvesting and having Doug at the rudder will be enough to
steer 3.7 into safe waters. And since we have learned a bit from 3.5 and
3.6, I think 3.7 will be a bit more aggressive in terms of "stuff that
shows". I am for example pretty certain that Diego's stuff is going in
this time, etc. :)

Marcus wrote in an email to me:
> One of the things I'd like to see is to have those "in power"
> who DO. (And are trusted by the community). 

I wholeheartedly agree. What he and I mean by this is that with
responsibility there MUST be power.

By appointing Stewards we need to take the step, close our eyes, breathe
and count to 10 and then put our TRUST in those persons. They have got
to have the power to take the decisions needed for that area. Sure,
there will always be discussions on the list - just as now - the
difference is that we all will know who will say the final word. And
that is *really important*.

Being a Steward is meant to be fun and exciting - you are actually
responsible for a piece of the cake, and people will show their
gratitude towards you when you do a good job. I am currently as close as
one can get a "Steward" of SM. I try real hard to make it work and make
it much better in SM2. If I had no saying in the decisions (no power)
then the fun of it would crumble - it would turn into 100%
responsibility - and that, my friends, is no fun. :-)

Marcus also wrote:
> I personally like to take responsibility over the whole Compiler/AST 
> stuff, and anything that's related.

And without hesitation I would give him that - because I know Marcus
will do his utmost to bring that stuff into something really, really
good.

Furthermore Marcus wrote about more areas and candidates, but I will
hold onto that until we have formed the task force - one step at a time.

Ok, I don't want this posting to get obscenely long - one final thing:

- An area doesn't HAVE to be a piece of code inside the image. There are
other areas in our community that needs to be taken charge of too. We
have the Swiki, www.squeak.org etc.

End Of Big Speach.

flameSuit := AsbestCover new.
self assert: [self coveredBy: falmeSuit]

regards, Göran

PS. What the hell, let's rock the boat.

PPS. This is a personal initiative of mine. I hope the other Guides are
with me.