[squeak-dev] Election 2008: Answers from Matthew

Matthew Fulmer tapplek at gmail.com
Fri Feb 29 17:49:05 UTC 2008


On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 11:28:59PM +0100, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
>
> 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?

I assume by "point number 1" you mean "you need a stable usable
working product", and by "point #2", you mean "you need an
expectation of responsiveness to bug fixes and enhancement
requests". My answers below.

>> 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

This we already have. +1

>> * expectation of responsiveness to bug fixes and enhancement requests

We have this in the projects that have a defined group of
maintainers, but the core has floundered as all (or most) of the
original developers moved on to something else. For this, One or
several of us will have to spend our time on learning and
enhancing the core instead of working on a more personal
project. I am willing to do that. +0.5

>> * documentation (user, developer, maintenance)

Thanks to SBE, we have great user documentation. I assume
developer documentation means "where in the image is the code I
want". I haven't seen a project that had good documentation in
this regard. Or maybe you mean documentation on the libraries in
the image. This is lacking. I don't really know how to fix it. 

I have no idea what "maintenance" documentation is.

+0.5. A year ago this was +0

>> * after-market support: conferences, trainings, books, tutorials

I don't know how to do this. It is probably the one that needs
the most work

+0

>> * consulting and contracting companies

Many of the members of the community already do this. +1

>> * job boards to indicate a marketplace of human resources

We have at least one of these. +1

>> * user groups (real or virtual)

This is our biggest strength, in my opinion. We have a lot of
smart people, and a lot of helpful people, and they are mostly
the same people.

+1

>> * manager acceptance (requires press releases and other publicity)

I don't know how to do this either. It will go up as more
successful projects gain publicity.

+0

>> * active solicitation of visible large "design wins" (like OLPC and Qwaq)

This is really starting to happen from what I can tell. I don't
have any worries here.

+1. A year ago this was +0 I think

>> If Squeak has all that, Squeak will succeed.  Fail any of those,
>> and Squeak will become "just another interesting project".

If that is the case, I think we score about 6 out of 9. A year
ago, we were at about 4.5, so I think we are improving. We can
continue knocking off each of these barriers to entry. My main
interest is in "responsiveness to bug fixes"

-- 
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808



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