croquet - closed for open "business" ?

Jim Gettys Jim.Gettys at hp.com
Fri Feb 13 19:56:10 UTC 2004


Dave Reed is down the hall from me a lot these days, so I've
been an interested spectator of Croquet's upheaval.

What Andreas says is correct: they've been doing major architectural
surgery while it is still possible, and are trying to get a release
together as fast as they can now that they have the new stuff
running; but the revised version wasn't running until quite recently.

I know first hand that sometimes you have to bite the bullet
and just do it, and that making changes after a given point
can become literally impossible. 
                        - Jim

On Fri, 2004-02-13 at 13:56, Andreas Raab wrote:
> Croquet has always been available - we simply didn't run around and
> advertise the location. The reason this is that in doing our work we had to
> break lots of code in lots of places (and by lots I mean LOTS!!!) and the
> line of development simply hasn't stabilized enough yet for people to be
> able to work with it.
> 
> Also, we broke these places because we are in the transition to a
> fundamentally changed model. The old code, the old examples are
> fundamentally flawed for the new model but giving it to people means
> teaching people this fundamentally flawed model. It's just a really bad
> idea.
> 
> Hope this explains matters a little.
> 
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jecel Assumpcao Jr" <jecel at merlintec.com>
> To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2004 7:51 PM
> Subject: Re: croquet - closed for open "business" ?
> 
> 
> > On Friday 13 February 2004 14:41, you wrote:
> > > I don't agree with you Jecel,
> >
> > Oh, that wasn't my opinion but my guess about the possible motivations
> > of the Croquet group. Personally, I would be glad to have Croquet,
> > Scratch and other fun Squeak projects developed in a more open fashion.
> >
> > In fact, I have made a special effort to release any code or information
> > in my projects as soon as I have them myself (except for stuff owned by
> > others which won't be released at all).
> >
> > Others prefer to work in secret and surprise us with the final product.
> > Or are just afraid that work will halt and they will have to deal with
> > "it complains about xzio.h not found in my system, please help" all day
> > long. Check out the early 2003 part of the Croquet list if you don't
> > think that could be a serious problem.
> >
> > Anyway, we actually agree but the opinions that matter are those of the
> > OpenCroquet group.
> >
> > > I've already helped with Croquet,
> > > before it was made 2 years ago. As I said "viewpoints".
> >
> > I doubt they read my 1991 paper about 3D GUIs
> > (http://www.lsi.usp.br/~jecel/jpaper8.html), so I can hardly claim the
> > same.
> >
> > > And I stand
> > > by having working components;) Do you not like to have working
> > > components? ;) Perhaps the people want to read that kind of email.
> >
> > I just thought it funny that in one email you were complaining (and
> > understandably so) about unfinished projects being released and in
> > another about unfinished projects not being released.
> >
> > Not only were incomplete experiments left "floating around" inside the
> > official image, but also changes made things that used to work break.
> > That was the cost of rapid development. But the focus since Squeak 3.4
> > has been on cleaning up and fixing instead of radical new advances.
> > There are lots of things that nobody is currently using, so if you find
> > stuff that doesn't work please report it so that it can be either fixed
> > or thrown away as the case may be. A quick scan through this list for
> > emails with BFAV subject tags in them shows that people do want to read
> > that kind of email.
> >
> > -- Jecel
> >
> >
> >
-- 
Jim Gettys <Jim.Gettys at hp.com>
HP Labs, Cambridge Research Laboratory




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