Very well said Juan. Thank you.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Juan Vuletich wrote:
> Hi Ian,
> 
> Ian Trudel wrote:
>> 2009/7/1 Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>:
>>
>> Hello Bert!
>>
>> It is truly beautiful to see your devotion to a vision. I respect
>> that. The problem has never been eToys or even this vision.
>>
>> The overall considerations should remind us the extremely limited
>> resources our community has, going smaller and smaller as people move
>> to forks, and that it struggles attracting new members. Focusing on
>> children at this point would be a terrible mistake, IMHO.
>>
>> Which part of limited resources don't you understand? Why can't we
>> just have a great system rather than focusing on
>> yet-another-killer-app? Let eToys be eToys and let Squeak be Squeak.
>>
>> Igor said, I think, that eToys can be a package on top of Squeak. It
>> should be perfectly fine for everybody.
>>   
> 
> You seem to think that the resources (i.e. programmer time) of this 
> community are available for whatever the community or the leadership 
> decides. This is completely wrong. The community has never hired Squeak 
> programming time. Each of us is free to contribute (or not) to Squeak 
> with code as we prefer. This also includes several companies, small, 
> medium sized and big. Most contributors, both individuals and companies, 
> do whatever is good / useful for them, and later contribute whatever 
> might be useful for others.
> 
> This means that in order for your vision to become a reality, you need 
> to work on it or pay somebody to work on it. For instance, Cuis exists 
> because I wanted such a system, so I built it. If it is useful for 
> others, great. If not, at least I did get what I wanted in the first place.
> 
> This is at the very heart of open source projects.
> 
>> Let me also speak from the heart, Bert. I have been introduced to
>> Squeak around 2001. There is no contribution from me and I could never
>> manage to do anything more than prototypes in Squeak. As I grow older,
>> and the experience kicks in, I realize that several requirements have
>> to be met in order to make it possible for me to use Squeak.
>>   
> 
> Perhaps some of the forks suits your needs. If not, you'd better start 
> learning how to make Squeak work for you (that's the whole idea of 
> Smalltalk, right from the beginning). If you can not do it, and you 
> can't pay for somebody to do what you need, and nobody is willing to do 
> it, then perhaps Squeak is not for you.
> 
>> How come it is so easy to develop prototypes in Squeak but then it
>> feels flat when it's time to do the real thing? Who can afford to
>> develop not reusable prototypes nowadays? I certainly cannot! When
>> it's time to wrap up Squeak into a product and deploy it, it turns out
>> bitter. It always translates as real deep hard work and possibly more
>> than the initial project.
>>
>> I dream about using Squeak for my projects. My bread and butter is
>> about designing projects and I have thousands of pages about ideas
>> over the last 13 years. I still hardly can fit Squeak in that. Squeak
>> is a designer's dream! But it's a business nightmare. What the heck!
>> Even the wonderful seaside wouldn't be an option, why should I retrain
>> my staff who already know, say, Ruby, to use the unapproachable,
>> weird, childish Squeak when there is Ruby on Rails? I don't have that
>> kind of money to spare on a bet.
>>   
> 
> If Ruby is better for you, what's the problem with using it?
> 
>> That is the reality of small businesses in North America. Thank you
>> for your consideration.
>>   
> 
> Are you saying that small businesses in USA can not use Squeak? My 
> employer is a counter example of that idea. Perhaps you'd hire people 
> here! There are many seasoned squeakers who charge reasonable rates, 
> ready to work for you. I'm one of them.
> 
>> 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.
>>   
> 
> Hehe. You're saying that the visionary people, the great minds have left 
> Squeak? I'm in this community since 1997. I can tell you. Many great 
> people left the community. But the vast majority of them are still here 
> after 12 years!
> 
>> Finally, your contribution to Squeak has been noticed over the years
>> and you're much more important to the community than I am. HOWEVER, I
>> might never be able to seriously use Squeak and contribute to the
>> community if I do not speak up right now... while the community is
>> listening. It is my sincere wish to use Squeak on professional basis.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Ian
> 
> Then start doing it!
> 
> Cheers,
> Juan Vuletich
> 
>