Hi all--

     I don't mean to speak for the entire Squeak Foundation board of
directors in this message, only for myself. The primary challenge we
face as a board is a lack of coordinated free time (exacerbated by
multiple timezones). We are also presented with an awkward situation.
Rather than let more time pass coming up with some sort of official
group response, I'd like to voice my opinion. I ask the indulgence of
the other board members here. I also apologize in advance to everyone
for such a long message.

     My perception is that Stef left the board because another board
member and I don't support the way he thinks the Foundation should spend
money. Stef proposed a "bounty" system to motivate Squeak development.
My opinion is that such a system is not worth the additional political
risks to the community.

     Of course, our situation as a community is inherently and
unavoidably political, the scarce resource being the time that people
can spend on Squeak development. I have participated in this community
for its entire existence. I have seen heated exchanges over whose work
should be "accepted", without money at stake. I think the situation is
very likely to be worse if money is involved. It is unclear to everyone
(including Stef, as far as I can tell) which projects are worthy of
bounties, how large each bounty should be, and how preferred submissions
should be chosen. Any one of these ambiguities invites disaster.

     And there are other problems with the idea. There is no reliable
funding source for such a system. People do donate to the Foundation
(which is wonderful), but the income is sporadic. I would hate for such
a system to commence, only to stall in the future due to a lack of
funds. I think the community would ultimately hurt itself by fostering
an expectation of financial motivation which is unsustainable. At the
very least, I would want a bounty system to be funded in advance for a
significant term. I don't think that's gong to happen any time soon. I
think we're better off using what money the Foundation has to pay
unavoidable expenses (such as, yes, keeping servers running).

     Stef writes:

> Note that I pushed ESUG to give money and put in place the sponsoring
> program so that we can get money to do stuff to help squeak. But now
> I'm sorry but I have not the time to fight, so now SqF has money for
> the servers. Excellent!

     As Stef says, the Foundation received a donation from ESUG in the
past, at his behest. Later, when ESUG initiated its "SummerTalk" program
(after a failed last-minute bid for Google sponsorship), Stef
effectively demanded that the Foundation sponsor SummerTalk projects. He
threatened us with a negative reaction from ESUG if we didn't use its
donation in that way (as he reiterates below). We acceded. Personally, I
decided this was the best to spend that money, just to diffuse the
conflict. I think that, as far as possible, the Foundation should be
able to act independently. If a donor wants to earmark funds for a
particular purpose, it should say so before donating so that the board
can consider that when deciding whether to accept the money.

> I will report to the ESUG board the situation and they will certainly
> not agree to give more money for SqF and they will be right.

     If that's what it takes to avoid this situation in the future, then
I would agree with them wholeheartedly.

> If you look at the success of the beginner mailing-list. Nobody ever
> told me that this was good that I pushed it but I had to argue argue
> that this was needed.
>
> And now it is a really cool place to be.

     It's great that the beginner list is a success. However, I don't
think it makes sense to tie the merit of one idea (bounties) to the
success of another (the beginner list) simply because the same person
advocated them both. Furthermore, there were several members of the
community with reasonable doubts about the beginner list. Stef wasn't
just debating the board on that issue, so bringing it up in a discussion
of internal board conflict doesn't make much sense to me either.

> I proposed since months the squeakfoundation to help in the first
> place the release team because we had a really hard-time. Helping by
> allocating some money to suppot the dev of some tools that we do not
> have the time to develop like a build process tools. I did a first
> sketch (quite dry) of the behavior of such a tool.
>
> And basically the answer of two of the three members yesterday was
> that "if you do not do it for fun then you should drop it". I found
> that answer totally insane and I got mad and I do not want to hear
> about the SqF even if I was the first member of it.

     At that point in the conversation, it seemed to me that Stef was
making another demand, that someone *owed* him more than gratitude for
the work he had done. He complained that he and another member of the
release team had become physically ill from their exertion. I found this
very disturbing. No one should feel obligated to push themselves to
physical illness for a volunteer effort.

     The other board member and I reminded Stef that we're all in the
same situation here. We all realize that everyone's time is precious and
scarce. No one has the right to tell someone else how to spend their
time. The flipside is that no one has the right to complain about how
much time they've volunteered. And I can just see how much worse this
would be with money at stake: "What? You're not going to choose my
submission for the bounty? But I worked so hard on it!" and so on.

     What the other board member actually said to Stef was that if the
work was taking such a toll, he hoped for Stef's sake that he would take
a break from it. I think he said this more out of concern for Stef's
health than to reiterate a point about volunteerism. But I still think
the point is valid, as harsh as it can sound to someone who has expended
a great deal of effort. The last thing I want for any community is an
argument about who the biggest martyr is.

***

     On a practical note, the board is now deciding what to do about the
vacancy left by Stef, since there is currently no policy about this.

     Stef, I'm disappointed that you feel as you do, and wish you
success and fulfillment in however you choose to spend your time.


     thanks for reading,

-C

-- 
Craig Latta
www.netjam.org