What is Squeak? (Was Re: A roadmap for 3.9)
Mark Guzdial
guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
Sun Dec 12 19:20:17 UTC 2004
On Dec 10, 2004, at 3:25 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:
>
> It shouldn't come to anyones surprise that if you leave a community
> that this community will go into a different direction.
>
> Marcus
I think that Marcus is dead-on with this comment. People shouldn't be
surprised if parts of the system that they contribute get abandoned if
they're not there actively promoting and maintaining them. (And I
disagree with Andres: Andreas is actively promoting and maintaining
his pieces of Squeak, and as an active developer, it's certainly part
of that role to critique what others do and encourage what he wants to
see.)
But I think that Lex's point is also quite valid: What about the
newcomers to Squeak? What is their expectation about Squeak, and do we
them (and the community) a disservice by not making some effort to meet
that expectation? Expectation failure doesn't encourage people to join
a community. The important question for the community, then, is to
define: What is Squeak? By answering that, we can more effectively
promote that definition and encourage the appropriate expectation.
I'm biased here, but I think that one of the ways that people discover
Squeak is through the OOPSLA paper by Dan et al. and the White and
NuBlue books. We certainly don't want to let EVERYTHING in those
publications define Squeak -- that would completely limit the
community's ability to change. But I do think that the NuBlue book's
title, "Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia" is a pretty
good definition, and one that the other publications agree with.
Squeak is about open personal computing and multimedia.
That's what concerns me about the current process in Squeak -- it's
setting aside the personal computing and multimedia aspects (for now --
I do understand that) in favor of improving the underlying base. I
understand that current members of the community consider those
"goodies" (such as Wonderland and eToys) to be "hacks," but those
"hacks" brought in many people to Squeak.
I do appreciate what Stef and the Berne group have brought to Squeak,
and I think that the environment that they propose for 3.9 sounds like
an exciting one to work in. But here's my suggestion: It's not Squeak,
at least not as it has been defined and communicated in the past. When
the base is improved and the personal computing & multimedia "goodies"
are ported back (if they are), then it might be Squeak again. But as
Marcus points out, that will only happen of the multimedia developers
are still around then, and they might not be during the interim -- it's
not clear that people interested mostly at the level of the base image
are the same kind of people who want to build things like eToys and
Wonderland.
I make two concrete proposals -- they're alternatives:
A. Call the new thing something else. Let "Squeak" end at Version 3.7
or 3.8, unless someone wants to continue it as a tool for personal
computing and multimedia. Don't let the expectations of "Squeak" limit
where the current community wants to go. Use the new name to attract
new attention (maybe get Slashdot to notice?) and to signify a new set
of emphases.
B. Or, call the 3.9 version "Squeak 4.0," and make it clear that there
is no promise of compatibility or multimedia features across the
boundary from 3.X->4.0. Say that clearly on the Website, and make the
final 3.x version forever available. If people want "personal
computing and multimedia," they can download the final 3.x. If they
want the coolest open source Smalltalk on the planet, with the base
hooks to grow one's own personal computing and multimedia (like the
really interesting eToy/Wonderland substitute whose URL Marcus sent
around), then let them grab the latest 4.x version.
If a day comes when the "goodies" get folded back in, maybe we can
re-merge. But nobody should hold their breath waiting for it. The
Georgia Tech group and Andreas' Croquet group can decide which
version(s) they want to develop from, and perhaps fork if they want.
(FYI, the "Scratch" project at the MIT Media Lab is building on Squeak
2.7 -- the forks are already happening, so we might as well be honest
about it and stop battling over the name.) But by making a clear break
with the past, Stef and the Berne group have a freehand to take the
base image in the directions that they want, and people who come to
Squeak with the "personal computing and multimedia" expectation can
make a choice.
Mark
__________
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing/GVU
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Collaborative Software Lab, http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~mark.guzdial/
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