Good answer!  But I press on.

What concrete steps would you and Matthew see as being realistic for  
the Squeak Foundation to take in the coming 12 months?

I personally see Squeak as floundering, and I think it is a terrible  
shame.  This can be a great platform for serious development, but it  
needs a community committed to a common goal.

I agree 100% with your point number 1 as a first step.  How do we  
achieve that?  (It is not so easy.  Your point #2 is also critical but  
not so easy.)  I will vote for people to join the board that have  
concrete ideas how to get there (and then on to all the other points  
you list)!

How do we get there from here?

- on

On Feb 27, 2008, at 21:50, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

>>>>>> "Oscar" == Oscar Nierstrasz <oscar.nierstrasz at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Oscar> Seriously though.  I consider this the most critical question  
> for the
> Oscar> Squeak Foundation.
>
> Oscar> Any ideas?
>
> I think he was spot on.  If you want Squeak to be taken seriously as a
> development platform, you need to find people like me who can take  
> an open
> source product and provide all the infrastructure around it  
> (tutorials,
> courses, books, trainings), and find a way to be financially self- 
> supporting.
>
> For success in the marketplace, you need:
>
> * a stable usable working product
> * expectation of responsiveness to bug fixes and enhancement requests
> * documentation (user, developer, maintenance)
> * after-market support: conferences, trainings, books, tutorials
> * consulting and contracting companies
> * job boards to indicate a marketplace of human resources
> * user groups (real or virtual)
> * manager acceptance (requires press releases and other publicity)
> * active solicitation of visible large "design wins" (like OLPC and  
> Qwaq)
>
> If Squeak has all that, Squeak will succeed.  Fail any of those,
> and Squeak will become "just another interesting project".
>
> By the way, show that as my answer to #11.
>
> -- 
> Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503  
> 777 0095
> <merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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