Hi Andreas,
Thanks for these comments. They will be very useful for me hopefully soon.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
----- Original Message ----- From: "Andreas Raab" andreas.raab@gmx.de To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 1:29 AM Subject: Re: Smalltalk and Self
So something clearly did not went the right way with Squeak from their perspective.
Yes, that is true. There were some things that went "wrong" and that we felt could only be addressed by doing our own systems. Most importantly: We had lost control over our own destiny. That may be not too much of a problem if you're a hobbyist but if you are serious about doing something with Squeak on the scale of either Tweak or Croquet (or Scratch or any of the Impara projects for that matter) you *must* be able to control your own future. It is not acceptable to stand helplessly on the sidelines when something very bad is about to happen and all you can do is scream and kick (and if you do, you get flamed etc). It is not acceptable if you need a fix in your system to go through the endless processes to get it approved. It is simply not doable. We have always recommended that people do exactly that even back in the SqC days and most of those groups who were serious took the advice. Such as Interval or Exobox or StableSqueak. And now, Scratch, Tweak and Croquet do the same (which goes to show that we actually take our own advice of the past).
So the lesson that we learned here is that we were right in the past, that you do have to take your future into your own hands and that you have to avoid error 33 like hell (we paid for it, too). The lesson is to stay focused, to keep the ball running. Discussions can be helpful but only up to a point - we all know (and you are just leaning it again) that people will generally resist *any* kind of change. At times, when it's important enough you just have to shove it down people's throats. And some will not like that one bit and you'll loose them. And others will join you *because* of the very changes. That's life.
Cheers,
- Andreas