<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Hello Again Josh,</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>The goals of my post were as follows:<br>- to establish clearly that compatibility is not the only thing that the community cares about (it also cares about "progress")<br>- to determine whether Keith acknowledges this fact<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; ">We were clearly told by the board years ago, that stella-progress was going to come in Squeak 5.0. </span></div><div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">In fact squeak 5.0 would have more progress than you could shake a stick at. They were so confident of this fact that at one point they cancelled 3.x development altogether.</div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">It is common for open source projects to maintain two branches, the red/blue pills, the blue/pink planes etc.</div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">Squeak 5.0 is the place for progress, 3.x is the place for stability. Simple as.</div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">So as an application developer, I don't want progress that does anything at all to rock the boat, I want stability increases and speed improvements month on month that is all. Anything else is not progress, its a pain in the rear.</div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">Fonts and traits I can do without. I have nothing against progress that has been thought about, and tested fully and is optional for me to load. (its called a package, every innovation can be delivered as a package, even a changeset can be delivered as a loadable package)</div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">Every innovation in the "3.x stable plane" should be developed, tested, COMPLETELY FINISHED and made loadable into 3.10 (and 3.9) since they are practically the same, so that all legacy code in 3.10 and 3.9 continues to work and there are no surprises.</div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">"trunk" is the pursuit of random "progress", on the fly, hacking, without thinking in advance, and without making the knowledge available in a usable form for anyone who is not in the "trunk" fork, and without a continuous testing framework. Trunk is purposefully a fork away from (3.9 and 3.10) And I cant tell my clients what is coming in 1 months time let alone a years time.</div><div style="font-size: 17px; "><br></div><div style="font-size: 17px; ">If you want progress without compatability, go and nag Craig, who said he would deliver Squeak 5.0 18 months ago. Andreas should have supported, worked with and annoyed Craig, not me. All of "trunk" effort should be producing 5.x on top of spoon, not 3.x.</div><br style="font-size: 17px; "><blockquote type="cite" style="font-size: 17px; "><div>- to determine whether Keith acknowledges this fact<br>- if so, to determine whether his approach may address the issue in some way that I missed</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; ">So yes I think you missed the point of my belief that we are supposed to be supporting squeak as a professional development product with a professional attitude.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; "><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; ">Currently the attitude is, release the image, forget about it, and move on to the next release, which will probably not be compatible with the previous one, and definitely will not have a migration path for you, sure we might fix some stuff but if you want to use it, you have to take all the pain of keeping up.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; "><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; ">3.10 as a release should be a stable supported release, with fixes and improvements that do not break compatibility or continuity in 3.11 3.12 etc etc. The 3.x team is responsible for providing 3.x-1 users a migration path, and the easiest way to achieve this is to make all 3.x-innovations, optional loads into 3.x-1. Its not hard, its just a matter of making the choice not to group-hack.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; "><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; ">So when a professional developer starts using 3.10, he is continuously supported, with bug fixes, managed in a bug fix database, and new versions, all of which maintain compatibility.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">So the board's first responsibility is to support the existing users of squeak, by making sure that the maintained version is maintained, and "progress" occurs within the capabilities of the existing users. I do not have the ability to load closures into 3.10 on my own, this is a serious issue. By not insisting that closures are loadable into a raw 3.10 the board is letting me down.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">Secondly they want to make a brand shiny new product, to attract new users with new flashy capabilities. However, it is absolutely stupid to use one as a club to kill the other.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">Given that the "trunk" is not providing the migration path, it is a year away form being ready for me to use, and there is no ongoing support for me as a 3.10 user. I am very concerned that squeak was a bad choice to make as a development tool, that I had the cheek to sit in meetings with clients and say, its ok, we can develop stuff and it will keep going for years to come.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">Keith</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></div></div></div></body></html>