Hey:
(Methodoogical Note: I suggest taking a peek at the Python web site (http://www.python.org/), in particular, the idea of SIGs (special interest groups). These are often transient mailing lists organized around a topic, typically with a goal of moving some part of the system forward. As such, several sigs have closed out as they've achieved their goal.
In any case, my impression is that this methodology has worked extremely well. It doesn't *drastically* appeal to me :))
I'm interested in helping out with the following:
[snip]
Block closures
Mostly Q/A. I'm not really up to speed on the other stuff (the compiler, VM, etc.) though I'm very interested in learning it.
Proper sockets The major problem is that until now there hasn't been a BSD accept()-like call (which made it possible to miss connections). Update 1328 allows for such a call *optionally* in ConnectionQueue so if you have it then everything is fine and if you don't you just go the way it has been before.
There is a much larger issue of a complete rewrite (along the lines of Craig Latta's Correspondents), and also of a general File System rewrite. We probably need to discuss each of these more fully with regards to pros and cons and urgency. As Craig has pointed out, we will have to move the Mac to OpenTransport when support for MacTCP goes away anyway.
specifing goals, implementation, Q/A
All of them. I've already been researching this pretty hard.
[snip]
Documentation
Tutorials
Web Site
As I write the networking chapter for Mark's Squeak book, I keep finding more things to write about, document, and opportunities for tutorials. So, I'd be up for this as time permits.
Cheers, Bijan Parsia.