Hi Jecel -

Nice job laying out the issues. Personally, I don't see any conflict in 
what you're describing (and of course, if forking were a criteria for 
exclusion I wouldn't be here :-) but it's always good to be clear on the 
issues.

Forks actually serve an important purpose. They allow people to 
experiment down certain paths without having to compromise. The result 
is much more comprehensive view of what they're trying to achieve. If 
you look at Cuis, Cobalt, or Pharo, you can see very clearly how they're 
different and how they're not. It is up to us to decide how much of each 
we'd like to integrate in the end.

It's good to have you with us.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
> With this email, I am announcing that I am running for the 2010 Squeak
> board. I had considered not doing do due to a potential conflict of
> interest (which I will describe below), but then decided that it would
> be better to just warn you and let you decide for yourself.
> 
> My participation in the Squeak community during the second half of 2009
> was limited to some investigations needed for the relicensing effort. I
> was busy getting a master's degree, but will put off starting a PhD
> program until I can get the following done over the next months:
> 
> 1) Squeak hardware
> 2) dual image SqueakNOS
> 3) manycore Squeak with world image
> 
> The third project is the cause of the potential conflict since it can
> lead to a fork, so I will go into more detail below. But first I would
> like to stress that I am in favor of combining efforts rather than
> splitting our already small community. My hope for 2010 is that Etoys 5
> can be structured as a layer that can be loaded on top of a bare Squeak
> 4.1 and that, perhaps, the same will happen with OpenCobalt. I would
> love to Squeak to come closer to Cuis and Pharo as well as other
> Smalltalks (something I hoped might be possible through the new standard
> effort).
> 
> Though other board members, both past and present, were far more
> envolved with the OLPC project than I ever was, as I said before last
> year's election I feel the duty to represent all the people who depend
> on Squeak but who don't participate in squeak-dev and so don't vote.
> This includes not only all the teachers and students you can meet in the
> SqueakFests, but also people doing Seaside or Aida and stuff like that.
> 
> I am glad to see Squeak moving forward with Metacello, scripts and other
> things like that. At least we will then have something like "yum" or
> "apt-get" in Linux. But that is not what the users that I have just
> mentioned need. And just putting a pretty face on top of this technology
> isn't enough. So project 3 is about changing ObjectMemory so that people
> can share stuff in a much more natural way. The details are not
> important (see http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5637 if you want to know
> more), but the change in image format means a break (like with the
> closure thing, but more radical) with the current VMs and images. Anyone
> will be free to adopt these changes, of course. But if not, we will have
> a fork.
> 
> As a developer, I would like to see the code get adopted. As a board
> member, I have to vote on what the community in general wants to do. I
> feel I can handle the different roles, but it is up to the voters to
> decide if they agree.
> 
> -- Jecel
> 
> 
>