> In this special case of 3.9 Stephane tries to change
> the language
> according to his personal views.

Huh?!  

First, I seem to remember quite a bit of positive
feedback about Traits from many prominent community
members.  I don't see this as Stephen's "personal
view" at all, I see Stephen as the one getting the
hard work done for the rest of our benefit.  Second,
its (supposed to be) mostly backward compatible with
stuff that stays above Smalltalk's meta layer, so the
"language change" is mostly transparent (IIUC). 
Third, even if there are problems, the community will
voice them and adapt individually or collectively.

It ain't gonna stagnate any time soon, as painful as
it sometimes is to "upgrade", the best way to really
grok things like this is to try them for real, that's
what Stephen et al is allowing the community to do.

> And there have been skeptical opinions from
> important persons of this
> community which is on the brink to break into two
> parts right now. One
> idea to solve this problem was to have a *small*
> core Squeak and
> building on that special distributions or "flavors".
> This way a
> contradiction between Traits and Tweak, which
> apparently exists - be it
> temporarily, practically or whatsoever, could be
> circumvented. We could
> have Squeak-Core and on top of that Squeak-Traits
> and Squeak-Tweak,
> which of course does not exclude a merge or
> redistribution at a later time.

I must admit I am concerned about this.  I do hope
that Tweak and Croquet can loaded or merged into
mainstream or vice-versa.  Both will be too valuable
to be split, so I'm confident energy to work on this
will form within someone somewhere..

> Anyway, a little common sense should tell everyone
> that it is sensible
> to try a language change over a longer period of
> time than just a few
> month. This prolonged trial period and of course the
> freedom of choice
> would be served nicely by this release model.

A 3.9 release *is* the trial or, rather, commences it.
 Its when other "needs-stability" projects still on
3.8 will try to upgrade to 3.9 and see how it goes,
not "This is new Squeak engraved in stone the way its
gonna be forever and ever no matter what..."

 - Chris