Survey finally published etc

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Tue Jan 24 19:22:46 UTC 2006


Hi Goran -

goran at krampe.se wrote:
> The whole point with the current board was that we needed to "get going"
> - and the SqF bootstrap wasn't going anywhere. Now we are getting
> dangerously close (IMHO) to a similar fate with the upcoming election.

I think this is at the heart of our disagreement. I do not agree that 
the "SqF bootstrap wasn't going anywhere" in a form that would require 
such drastic actions. Sure, it wasn't the fastest, but it was trying to 
get agreement, and that was part of its appeal. Neither do I think that 
the election "is in danger". It may be in danger wrt your deadline but 
that was your deadline, not theirs IIRC.

> If you really mean that you are positive towards the new upcoming board
> and election, help out with it so that it turns out successful.

I really mean that. But please keep in mind that I do have a number of 
other things on my plate (#1 being Hedgehog right now) and will probably 
not have much spare time to spend on these issues.

> Well, it has been lots of water under the bridge but I still feel quite
> uneasy about what happened and I really can't get a grip on your
> intentions/motives anymore. Yes, this is a vague statement - but it is
> just how I feel and I don't want to dwelve deeper into the reasons in
> public.

Strangely enough, this almost precisely describes my feelings towards 
the islanders group (and in particular yours truly).

Now, from my point of view, my motivations are simple: Technically, I 
need a robust basis for the work going on in Tweak/Croquet. The smaller 
the basis the better because it limits maintenance efforts. If you look 
at the work I do for the community you'll find that there is an obvious 
overlap of interests: ToolBuilder, Graphics, FFI, Compression are all 
core technologies that we use heavily in our projects and where it makes 
perfect sense to put some work in.

In the larger picture, because of the dependency on other parts of the 
system, I am in the conservative camp - changes are generally bad since 
we have no control and little influence on what precisely happens where 
(just two days ago I got reminded again how small that influence is in 
practice). You should therefore be prepared that if I comment on such 
issues that I'll raise the conservative voice - this is part of my 
responsibility to the other projects I'm in.

 From the community point of view (meaning Squeak-dev community) I have 
actually very little motivations - I am not trying to achieve anything 
in particular (which may explain your vague feeling). Mostly I'm just 
throwing in my $.02 for what it's worth. I do dislike the islander 
setup, I dislike the way it came about, and I will be happy to see 
something that represents the community in the best way possible.

If you look at what I generally do and say in light of the above I think 
you won't find many inconsistencies.

>>>I just humbly wonder why you didn't bother to even *reply* to the survey
>>>emails which AFAIK asked quite a few questions regarding these things.
>>
>>Honestly? Really, there were a couple of things. First, I'm busy.
> 
> Too busy to reply and say so? For two weeks?

More for like eight weeks. And originally, like I was saying I was 
planning on writing something back. That was up until the point of 
"that" message.

> And what about:
[... snip ...]
> If that question (for example) wasn't about the future then... what?

Yes, they are. But like I said:

>>And 
>>here, I didn't dare to speak my mind freely - simply because you 
>>promised to publish the results and if I would say what the most likely 
>>course of action is it would get me even more of a reputation of being 
>>an evil guy who wants to prevent everyone from doing anything. So none 
>>of this was really appealing to me.
> 
> I would like to note that the email said:
> 
> "If you wish to give "off the record" feedback you can do so by simply
> separately emailing mysterious-island at discuss.squeakfoundation.org which
> is the non public mailinglist of the Coordinators."

Actually, I don't remember this and I probably interpreted that 
differently (e.g., as "if you have any OTHER feedback" outside of that 
survey). Sorry, my bad.

> Ok, for people to understand what this is about I here include both
> reminders sent out AND the subsequent apology:
[... snip ...]
> The part upsetting Avi and obviously you is the "reconsider" bit. I
> admit that paragraph was clumsily written but there was also a sincere
> intention behind it - if you (and I admit it was subconsciously aimed at
> you Andreas) don't want to have this role then you can give it to
> someone else.

I didn't exactly volunteer for that role either. I was asked to do it 
and since there wasn't a compelling logical argument against it I went 
along with it.

> Now there you go. I can't judge if my reminders were really *that*
> upsetting, and IMHO the apology was pretty darn clear - but it doesn't
> matter. Fact remains, we got ZERO replies from 5 out of 12 stakeholder
> communities.

Yes, and? (I'm not sure if you are trying to make an argument here - if 
you do, I don't get it)

> But what is the whole point being a contact person if you don't want to
> communicate with us? Let me quote from the email inviting you to be a
> contact person:
> 
[... snip ...]
> 
> Now, sure - it says "there are no obligations" but it also clearly says
> that we want to be able to send out questions etc. And no, there is
> nothing forcing you to answer - but IMHO the least we could expect is
> that you bother to reply.

You know, you're right. I should have sent an email saying "thanks for 
sending this, I received it, and I may or may not reply within the time 
frame you set". I apologize for not doing that, I will definitely do it 
in the future.

I don't think this would've changed the gist of this discussion (in 
which case we would discuss "not answering the questions" instead of 
"not answering") but I should've done it nonetheless. Sorry for that.

Cheers,
   - Andreas



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