On Monday 29 Jun 2009 1:05:02 am Ian Trudel wrote:
> 2009/6/28 Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>:
> > Even disregarding what the Pharo people would think about the idea,
> > doesn't that argument go both ways? As in "given that Pharo already
> > forked, Etoys can now be reintegrated to Squeak"?
Squeak started as a research platform. Etoys has branched out from 3.8 to 
become a downstream project serving young learners. If it has to run on 3.10 
now the burden of integration and porting falls on Etoys team and not the 
Squeak team.

> As far as I am concerned, I am not and never been interested in Etoys.
> I managed to avoid it altogether for the years ever since I begun to
> use Squeak. I'd rather prefer not have Etoys merged into Squeak.
Ian, that just means you are not a young learner ;-). Some of the features in 
Cuis make sense to go into upstream Squeak but, in general, downstream 
projects serving distinct groups are best left alone.

A lot of bit traffic in this thread has been around technology. For contributors 
and sponsors to rally around a project for the long term we also need to take 
into account the *target audience* and the *purpose* for which they intend to 
use it. Drop, ignore or change any one of these three elements and you create 
a different beast :-). As long as integrity and coherence is maintained in the 
project, there is an incentive to keep producing (and culling) within the 
scope of the project. So what if some packages fade into oblivion? In other 
major projects like Linux kernel, Debian, packages do get abandoned and become 
zombies. Some of them do manage to find new owners who have a stake in their 
sustenance. Thats life.

Subbu