<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 4, 2008 7:06 AM, cdrick <<a href="mailto:cdrick65@gmail.com">cdrick65@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">> But we don't have Jean Todt now.<br>><br>>I very happy if some Master take the lead.<br><br></div>I find the comparison quite pertinent actually... especially if you<br>remember the state of Ferrari F1 team before Jean Todt arrived.<br>
Ferrari, was still the oldest and most succesful, but results were not<br>the best at all...<br>I think Todt brought a direction and some coherence in a team full of<br>talented and passionnated people... It's not a question of raw<br>
competences but more of communication... Squeak need coherence,<br>organisation (to me)... Stephane tried but got burned, Ralph<br>dissapeared (hope nothing bad)...<br><br>Who's next ? I would suggest Andreas takes a role in the new team if<br>
he'd like... not the main one maybe, but a role... especially I like<br>him to implement a simpler traits system. Traits was a first try<br>(personnaly, I don't use them for now but why removing them if they<br>are harmless). Stephane has always recognized the implementation<br>
wasn't ideal (especially the metaclass stuff that I have no idea of).<br>Andreas suggested a simpler implementation (without the<br>meta-problems). I'd love he gives a try but please don't throw traits<br>immediatly...<br>
<br>my very 2 cents<br><br>Cédrick</blockquote><div><br>Thanks Edgar & Cédrick! This analogy is useful in many respects. There is without question a need for coherence - a Jean Todt. At the same time, one can zoom out slightly and see that the race team is a <a href="http://www.rhythmeering.com/the-7-factors/participants/">participant in an ecosystem</a> where Ferrari competes in symbiosis with various sponsors(<a href="http://www.shell.com/home/content/ferrari-en/formula_one_2007/2007_biographies/dir_trackside.html">Shell has 5 people at each race</a> for example). While there is at least some degree of inherent tension/conflict wrt motivations and goals, everyone in the Ferrari ecosystem is focused on having drivers/cars that win consistently. That's why Jean Todt was hired and why I keep mentioning the role of the visible projects. They can be either sponsors or winning cars/drivers but it's hard to see how the work being being released under the Squeak Foundation banner can succeed without the participation of mission-focused entities. Even if a large group of people take up some of the excellent ideas mentioned in Paul's recent JVM post, unless the goal is to maintain a small niche, there will still be a need for "anchor" entities. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with small niches, it's just that Smalltalk/Squeak has so much potential that people tend to want to share it broadly. <br>
</div></div><br><br>Cheers,<br><br>Laurence<br>