At Wed, 1 Jul 2009 17:16:38 -0400,
Ian Trudel wrote:
> 
> That is the reality of small businesses in North America. Thank you
> for your consideration.
> 
> You want eToys? Get on board with eToys. The visionary people have
> left the building. The truth is that by leaving Squeak, the great
> minds have made a self admission, a confession, that Squeak was no
> longer a vision (but, perhaps, the concretization of a vision), and
> they have moved on another vision... something related to the far
> fetched future. We should understand what has happened, embrace the
> reality and also move on to something more tengible for us in the near
> future.

  Ian, if you could spare some time to read...

  - Bert knows a bit about small businesses in Germany, and I could
    say he know a bit about small businesses in North America.  At
    Impara, they shipped products done in Squeak, and he is well
    connected some people who do products in Squeak in North America,
    as some of his code and contribution are part of them.

  - Bert is on board with Etoys, especially for the latest round of
    development.  I should say that he was the main driver for the
    latest round of development.

  - At the Viewpoints Research Institute (which is in North America
    and with the visionary), quite a few people are paid to extend and
    maintain Etoys.  And Bert is one of them.  Yes, we are now trying
    to minimize the commitment and pretty much have shifted the focus
    to the "new" things, but if you say "leaving" Squeak, it doesn't
    click as reality.

  - Squeak itself has never been a "vision" from the beginning.
    Squeak was created a (temporary) vehicle to reach a goal, and goal
    was to make an authoring environment for children of all ages.

  - I could say that Squeak left the visionary people when more people
    in the community get only interested in "grown up" parts and
    themselves.

And not to this email but:

  - Etoys got a new round of attention because of the OLPC project,
    but it's been maintained and around before it, and has been used
    by kids around the world in various forms.  The one in the
    mainstream images weren't working well, but that doesn't mean it
    was dead.

  BTW, what do you know about the "something related to the far
fetched future"?

-- Yoshiki