On Wednesday 05 March 2008 1:54:34 am Michael van der Gulik wrote:
> I've thought about this too. "Squeak" is a name that's hard to take
> seriously, and I for one would be less inclined to advertise that any
> product I make is based on "Squeak". However, there's a large investment in
> the name - URLs, source code, public awareness,  etc.  The name is unlikely
> to change.
I wasn't thinking of rebranding an existing project when I proposed a new 
name. Seriously, Squeak has fallen behind times and that is not good for an 
innovative research platform. Both Smalltalk-80 and Squeak (1995) stood out 
from the rest because they were years ahead of the rest and brought in many 
innovative ways of controlling a computer (that we all take for granted now). 
Today, Squeak struggles to handle multilingual text, scalable vector 
graphics, multicore, 64-bit space, flash memory - features commonly available 
in other programming environments. Research initiatives are split amongst 
multiple projects like Fonc (VPRI), Croquet, Etoys (OLPC) etc. Whatever 
project emerges out of Squeak should act as a core platform for inventing new 
and efficient methods of programming.

The XO hardware shows what can happen in a couple of years if a handful of 
people put their minds together to build a new platform. The software stack 
on XO shows us that we are still a long way off in knowing how to program 
such a system efficiently :-(.

One of the tasks for the new board will to be figure out a way to converge 
disparate efforts, individual and commercial, into a single project; to get 
all the wood behind one arrow. It would be far easier to do this under a new 
name than to do it under "Squeak".

Choose any name except Squawk :-).

Subbu