[Squeakfoundation]Organization Foundation

[Mark Mullin]

Figured I'd throw in my fractional monetary units

1) I don't agree with the proposal to make a restricted official
communications mechanism for organizational issues.  When this is done
'officially' it too often divides the worlds into the 'haves' and 'have
nots', bifurcated on access to this channel in some meaningful fashion. In
short, restricted organizational membership is often followed by paid
corporate access in some fashion that is fundamentally exclusionary to the
rest of the membership, e.g. the old vrml and ogl working groups.
	I argue that Squeaks strengths are best applied in as democratic
environment as possible, interactive squeak + fileins of 'knowledge' is a
lot more flexible and forgiving then say, trying to get those first versions
of STL running on C++ on AIX on version.......
	Needs of the organizers to communicate privately are already well handled
by email, hell you can even go get the slash code and set up a whole
community site.  I have no problem with that existing, but I do have a
problem with it being official and restricted.  The utter inability of the
'unknown stranger' to be able to communicate __in any fashion__ without
paying off the bouncer at the door isn't healthy in the long run.

2) I do agree with the repeated calls to get on with the mechanical details
of creating such an organization.  I further move we table all comments
about what projects individual working groups might focus on until we know
what the hell the organization looks like   :-)  OK, not that harsh, I'd
sooner code than manage most days myself, but at some point the rubber has
to hit the road.

3) We should drive issues of "marketing" Squeak and the foundation in a
combined effort.  The bottom line goal is to get more people in more domains
using Squeak in projects they are investing real resources in, and to return
part of that investment of resources to the community at large.  1st class
OO systems, esp ST and Sq, are some of the finest mechanisms we've ever come
up with for sharing codified knowledge in the form of programs, i.e.  you're
not going to see a C++ programmer file out a fix and a goodie for a buddy in
the middle of a debugging session anytime soon.  If we could have it so
that, on average, 10% of the intellectual/engineering effort of public and
private squeak based projects came back into the community fold, that plus
all those debugging fixes and goodies gives you the basis for steady growth,
and solid long term prospects for the system, the foundation, and it's
community.

3a) I'd recommend one approach be to exploit the current problems with Java.
Ignoring all the other issues, Microsoft talked a good chunk of corporate
america into using their whizzy java extensions to make information tools,
and now microsoft has basically abandoned them.  Public access and rights to
your underlying technology guarantees that this can't happen to you.  When
that is coupled with a stable user community, it's pretty much unassailable,
as evidenced by the current price point of a high quality unix os. Squeak
allows any organization that can apply it to control their own means of
production and distribution in a better way than say, Windows + Msft Java VM
+ classlib 3.2 + absolute edict forbidding anyone ever to use XP.

I'd also hit on the fact that for the average person, if it's related to a
computer and on your desktop, real or virtual - it came from Smalltalk.
I've found that this resonates pretty strongly with those that didn't know
it.  For those that go, yeah that was my gram's system, explain blocks.

Secret stealth agenda - don't tell redmond.....  I hear that some people
already have windows autostarting into squeak, and it's not like there isn't
a lot of free os stuff out there.  I believe one group that should go for
broke as a sig is one to provide display and data management classes for
microsoft office files and other unfortunately standardized products.  OS
components + Squeak + (mesa, some 3d lib) + (msft data classes) ==> no more
windows.  Lessee... Hello corporate america....  how'd you like a high
quality interactive fully dependable open sourced open licensed system to
take care of all your os/system level needs. Oh yeah, we think spreadsheets,
documents, and databases are basic os level needs.  Keep your support
budget, it's not that free.  But you can keep the checks you used to send to
redmond.

Anyway, my rant for a monday evening.  take it for what its worth.  but i do
think that it would be nice to put a foundation together, and i think squeak
has a lot of very positive things to say about itself.

Mark/Vibrant 3D