From: "Paul D. Fernhout" pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Design Principles Behind Smalltalk, Revisited Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 21:39:30 -0500
Perhaps the biggest single issue is, how do we have a community around new things inspired by Squeak? I brought this issue up many years ago, but was basically shot down in flames of people pushing "Squeak the artifact" not "Squeak the community". Still, it seems like it is community which makes the value in the free and open source world. Yet the Squeak community seems closely tied to Smalltalk-80 and Squeak-as-it-is, in part as a self-selecting process -- yet ironically as Alan Kay himself keeps saying he wants something better.
Well if there is a crowd that wants to keep Squeak tied to the blue book, then a fork has to happen. I don't think it is the case though. And change for change's sake isn't good either. Smalltalk-80 had a lot of great ideas, so care needs to be taken when breaking from the blue-book to ensure we are going forward not backward. Making some change because "well Java works that way" would be a very bad idea. On the other hand, traits was a departure, but I think (so far) a good one.
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