On Dec 12, 2004, at 4:15 PM, Michael Latta wrote:
>
> I do not know how long the current status-quo will remain.  I suspect 
> that just as the PARC work exploded into derivative works, Squeak will 
> do the same.  I would expect that the number of derivative images will 
> increase as various needs arise that can not be resolved in a single 
> environment.  I hope that the community can retain some unity in 
> working with this divergence.  This is more likely to produce small 
> "elegant" subsets of the current image that is Squeak.  If someone 
> produces a truly elegant core it should get attention and users, and 
> in time it might replace the current image as dominant.  So, I expect 
> evolution to win out over a controlled design effort.

I dare say that was part of the original intent of Squeak. I can't read 
Alan and Dan's mind, but I suspect that Squeak's purpose is to give 
people something they can take and transform into a system that suits 
their needs.

I think that we are becoming too fixated on the notion of "One Squeak 
to Rule Them All" and that when someone decides hey, I want to take it 
in this direction, that means the entire community must be breaking 
down. The BSD operating system, long hailed by its developers as a 
paragon of "cathedral" model development, famously underwent a 
three-way fork. There was animosity involved of course, but the 
communities didn't fragment entirely: though Net-, Free- and OpenBSD 
each followed different goals, there has been extensive 
cross-fertilization between the three (for example, OpenBSD's security 
features, and NetBSD's IPv6 implementation), and also with Linux.

Squeak appears to be undergoing its first major fragmentation with 
Croquet. I didn't necessarily see this development as "bad for the 
Squeak community". The good stuff which is in line with Squeak's goals 
will make it into Squeak no matter what, even if the code comes from a 
fork of Squeak. But you as much said all of the above already so I'll 
stop now.

Just my thoughts. Should take Stef's advice, and spend less time 
bloviating and more time hacking.

--Jeff