Hi
Right now even if we want to give money to Squeak we cannot. There is no place where I can support Squeak by paying a kind of shareware fee or even to get a CD with all the Squeak material. In the school of my wife they are paying around 1000 $ for office and they don't use it so I do not see why they would not like to get a good cd with the major release on it.
This is the same here at the University we could support Squeak but at least there should be a way to give money. I hope that ESUG will not lose money this year and that we will be able to give the purcentage we promised to Squeak. But at the minimum we need to be able to do that.
I'm fed up to see that people are afraid to make money with Squeak because this could be a problem for SqueakC. Alan said it was not.
So are the German Squeakers in the mood to get money? I can send you the cd with all the material I collected. Tansel what are your plans?
Stef
Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE (ducasse@iam.unibe.ch) http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/ "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do different? ... especially if, by doing something different, today might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes
Stephane Ducasse ducasse@iam.unibe.ch is claimed by the authorities to have written:
Hi
Right now even if we want to give money to Squeak we cannot.
Anybody is quite welcome to send me money. Seriously; I'm quite willing to set up a proper charity and be it's employee and accept your offerings.
tim
Tim --
I'm good for some chocolate to the Rowledge Foundation.
Cheers,
Alan
-------
At 9:56 AM -0700 6/18/02, Tim Rowledge wrote:
Stephane Ducasse ducasse@iam.unibe.ch is claimed by the authorities to have written:
Hi
Right now even if we want to give money to Squeak we cannot.
Anybody is quite welcome to send me money. Seriously; I'm quite willing to set up a proper charity and be it's employee and accept your offerings.
tim
Tim Rowledge, tim@sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim The wise person writes bomb-proof code.
--
Stephane Ducasse ducasse@iam.unibe.ch said:
Right now even if we want to give money to Squeak we cannot.
With SqF having stalled (I haven given up my attempts to communicate with Dan for the moment; I've got other stuff on my mind), I think the German Squeak Verein is a good place to send money to. It's a democratic institution, it's a legal entity (well, it is but it ain't usable probably until the registration bits are dealt with), etcetera. In short, it's everything what SqF will be, when everyone gets some time to set it up ;-).
I'm helping ESUG with setting up an on-line payment system for stuff like congress registrations. It might be an idea to use that system to enhance things a bit, with maybe a separate page for Squeak e.V. donations and CD sales. I'll keep it in mind for when the main stuff runs.
With SqF having stalled (I haven given up my attempts to communicate with Dan for the moment; I've got other stuff on my mind), I think the German Squeak Verein is a good place to send money to. It's a democratic institution, it's a legal entity (well, it is but it ain't usable probably until the registration bits are dealt with), etcetera. In short, it's everything what SqF will be, when everyone gets some time to set it up ;-).
I'm helping ESUG with setting up an on-line payment system for stuff like congress registrations. It might be an idea to use that system to enhance things a bit, with maybe a separate page for Squeak e.V. donations and CD sales. I'll keep it in mind for when the main stuff runs.
Please do. I think that we should do the squeakfoundation and do not wait for people. I have no problem to see a structure running in Germany if you are the only active people. I would like to see a place where I can buy Squeak Cd with a different kind of prices, and one Supporting Squeak Price.
Our Universities are rich to buy silly software so if the German Foundation could ship a distribution (simple low profile) we could buy it and ask others to do the same. I would not have any problem to buy twice a year a cd that would contain a dump of the wiki, the VM and all the books, columns material. ESUg is currently stabilizing a Smalltalk Cds and you could use the material to create a Squeak Distribution. Then with some sexy names like Emmental or another Cheese brand we could have in no time a nice site.
Stef
Hi Cees
I have another idea. I know that some Squeak Germany Foundation Squeakers will be at ESUG and this would be a really smart to have an official presentation of the Squeak G Foundation. During the presentation we could announce that ESUG gives a purcentage of the income (if any) to the Squeak Foundation. Then we could ask for others donators.
I made a bet with Dave Thomas that we would get a running structure soon and he was pessimistic so we could then show that a first Squeak Foundation with modest but existing goals is there and willing to grow.
I think that we should throw away all the mess around the discussion of the constitution (because lot of people like to talk but few act- I can tell that ESUG is because a couple of fools are running it). We will see later when we will have the time to discuss philosophy.
What do you think?
Stef
On mardi, juin 18, 2002, at 07:51 PM, Cees de Groot wrote:
Stephane Ducasse ducasse@iam.unibe.ch said:
Right now even if we want to give money to Squeak we cannot.
With SqF having stalled (I haven given up my attempts to communicate with Dan for the moment; I've got other stuff on my mind), I think the German Squeak Verein is a good place to send money to. It's a democratic institution, it's a legal entity (well, it is but it ain't usable probably until the registration bits are dealt with), etcetera. In short, it's everything what SqF will be, when everyone gets some time to set it up ;-).
I'm helping ESUG with setting up an on-line payment system for stuff like congress registrations. It might be an idea to use that system to enhance things a bit, with maybe a separate page for Squeak e.V. donations and CD sales. I'll keep it in mind for when the main stuff runs.
-- Cees de Groot http://www.cdegroot.com cg@cdegroot.com GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD 1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B Cogito ergo evigilo
Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE (ducasse@iam.unibe.ch) http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/ "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do different? ... especially if, by doing something different, today might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes
Stephane Ducasse ducasse@iam.unibe.ch said:
I have another idea. I know that some Squeak Germany Foundation Squea= kers=20 will be at ESUG and this would be a really smart to have an official= =20 presentation of the Squeak G Foundation.
Note that the German thingy is an association, not a foundation. I don't think anglosaxon countries have associations as a separate form of legal entity, or am I wrong? Anyway, there is a difference over here (the European continent) between an association and a foundation, they are different types of legal entities.
Talk on the Squeak-ev also is in the direction of a presentation at ESUG. With a bit of luck, the registration has been completed by that time so the club can then act as a legal entity (and accept money in its own bank account ;-)).
I made a bet with Dave Thomas that we would get a running structure s= oon=20 and he was pessimistic so we could then show that a first Squeak=20 Foundation with modest but existing goals is there and willing to gro= w.
Well, I'm a bit pessimistic about SqF as well - we've missed the self-imposed June deadline...
I think that we should throw away all the mess around the discussion = of=20 the constitution (because lot of people like to talk but few act- I can tell that ESUG= is=20 because a couple of fools are running it). We will see later when we will h= ave=20 the time to discuss philosophy.
I think that discussion already is largely behind us, up to the point where a couple of fools indeed need to stand up and incorporate whatever you need to incorporate in the USofA for a foundation (and in whatever state is most profitable ;-)). I heard that the bylaws stay flexible for quite some time during incorporation, if so we can indeed move that discussion to priority 2.
Hi cees
Note that the German thingy is an association, not a foundation. I don't think anglosaxon countries have associations as a separate form of legal entity, or am I wrong? Anyway, there is a difference over here (the European continent) between an association and a foundation, they are different types of legal entities.
But for now an association would work perfectly, I guess that an association in germany acts as a group of people that do not have the intention to make money but can manage it. So right now this would be perfect. I prefer to see an association that a non exisiting foundation.
Talk on the Squeak-ev also is in the direction of a presentation at ESUG. With a bit of luck, the registration has been completed by that time so the club can then act as a legal entity (and accept money in its own bank account ;-)).
This would be a good start.
On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 09:03:22AM +0200, Stephane Ducasse wrote:
But for now an association would work perfectly, I guess that an association in germany acts as a group of people that do not have the intention to make money but can manage it. So right now this would be perfect. I prefer to see an association that a non exisiting foundation.
Hi all,
Sorry for not answering earlier... but we had to discuss this on the squeak-ev list first.
So... maybe I start with
What we did ------------
We're in the process of setting up a non-profit association in Germany. This association will be a legal entity (like a Person or a Company) after it gets registered (than we are a "e.V" which es a "registered association"). This will take some time because both the Tax Authorities and the local Court are involved in the process.
The bylaws of the association were discussed on the squeak-ev list for some time, and then some of us (exactly 7, required by law) met at LinuxTag and signed them. There is a nice photo at http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/squeak-ev/34
The bylaws are pretty standard for this kind of german association (Verein) (We copied them from ADA Germany e.V. and then modified them for our purpose). The bylaws are very much like a constitution for the association: They contain first a set of goals (What do we want to do?) and then the bylaws define the structure (simple: board of three (First, Second, Treasurer), and how these get elected and how to remove them if they do strange things. The elected board is: 1. Marcus Denker, 2. Markus Gaelli, Treasurer: Hans Beck.
Members are required to pay a membership-fee. (Euro 0 (younger than 18y, 10 (Students), 30 (normal) and 200 (corporations) per year)
Have a look at the Babelfish translation: http://babelfish.altavista.com/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fswiki.squeakfoundat.... +org%2Fsqueak-ev%2F20&lp=de_en&tt=url&urltext=&doit=done) pretty funny translation, but better than nothing.
So the whole thing is as simple as possible and *very* flexible. We can simply do what we want and build further structures on the way. ("Do the simplest thing that could possibly work").
Ok. Now
What we *are* ------------- We consider the german association to be local thing. We discussed this on the squeak-ev list, and we think that "morphing" squeak-ev into that what squeakfoundation is planed to be would not be good. Being local instead of global has some implications... Our idea for squeak-ev was to do something small, but *do* it.
We agreed on the following:
1) We are not yet registered. Nothing will happen until we are. 2) We consider ourself to be a local organisation. 3) We would like to help building structures to support Squeak, both global and european. 4) Because there is no squeakfoundation yet, we are willing to take donations as soon as we are registered. We garantee that this money will be used according to our statutes.
So... back to you suggestion: It seems to be a good idea to put together a CD for companies and universities to buy (and thus contributing to the further development of squeak).
Other things to consider would be
T-shirts: http://www.jinxhackwear.com Affero: http://www.affero.com/ (this seems to be a realy interesting idea)
Marcus
Hey,
I haven been programming some multi-threaded applications in Squeak, and once more I got reminded that it is really hard and cumbersome to write safe and understandable code by just using semaphores as the only means of synchronization.
Having a look at the class SharedQueue is a good example: At a first glance, it seems to be doing what it is supposed to, but when you look at it more closely, you'll notice that there are about 5 or more synchronization bugs in it.
I believe that it is possible to avoid most of these problems by using a higher-level synchronization mechanism, and therefore I implemented a variant of the well-known Monitor data-structure in Squeak. (In fact, I ported an implementation I did in VW about 2 years ago). This monior has the following properties:
1) At any time, only one process can be executing code inside a critcal section of a monitor. 2) A monitor is reentrant, which means that the active process in a monitor does never get blocked when it enters a (nested) critical section of the same monitor. 3) Inside a critcal section, a process can wait for an event that may be coupled to a certain condition. If the condition is not fulfilled, the process leaves the monitor temporarily (in order to let other processes enter) and waits until another process signals the event. Then, the original process checks the condition again (this often necessary because the state of the monitor could have changed in the meantime) and continues if it is fulfilled. 4) The monitor is fair, which means that the process that is waiting on a signaled condition the longest gets activated first. 5) The monitor allows to define timeouts after which a process gets activated automatically.
There are several important advantages of such a Monitor over a Semaphore: 1) A process autimatically leaves the monitor when a condition is not fulfilled. 2) When a blocked process is woken up, the condition is always rechecked. 3) Point 1) and 2) together guarantee that the code following the condition is only executed if the condition holds. In addition, busy waits will never occur. 4) The monitor is reentrant
In order to illustrate how a Monitor can drastically simplify process synchronization, let's assume that we would like to implement a thread-safe BoundedCounter with the following properties: - The counter provides methods #inc and #dec, which increment and decrement the counter. - If the value of the counter is equal to a certain #lowerBound (e.g. 0), every process invoking #dec gets blocked until the decrementation can be performed without getting a value less than #lowerBound. - Similarly, inc blocks processes in order to avoid values bigger than #upperBound (e.g. 10)
Without a monitor, we typically use 3 semaphores (mutex, incPossible, decPossible) to safely implement this behavior. And as you can see, the whole synchronization is rather complex because the the usage of the semaphores have to be nested in order to avoid unsafe situations or deadlocks:
BoundedCounter>>dec | done | done _ false. [done] whileFalse: [ mutex critical: [ value > self lowerBound ifTrue: [ value _ value - 1. done _ true. incPossible signal]]. done ifFalse: [decPossible wait]].
BoundedCounter>>inc | done | done _ false. [done] whileFalse: [ mutex critical: [ value < self upperBound ifTrue: [ value _ value + 1. done _ true. decPossible signal]]. done ifFalse: [incPossible wait]].
Instead of using 3 Semaphores, we can use just one Monitor (monitor). Like that, the code would look as follows:
BoundedCounter>>dec monitor critical: [ monitor waitUntil: [value > self lowerBound]. value = self upperBound ifTrue: [monitor signalAll]. value _ value - 1].
BoundedCounter>>inc monitor critical: [ monitor waitUntil: [value < self upperBound]. value = self lowerBound ifTrue: [monitor signalAll]. value _ value + 1].
Let's have a closer look at what happens: - Invocation of #critical: ensures that only one process can be modifying the counter at a time. - Invocation of #waitUntil: guarantees that the argument condition holds when the following code is executed. As long as this condition does not hold, the process gets blocked and leaves the critical section so that another process can enter. - Invocation of #signalAll wakes up all the processes that have been blocked because there waiting condition was not fulfilled. As explained above, the conditio gets rechecked before the following code is executed.
As you can see, this code is already a lot nicer than the original one. However, using more advanced features of the monitor can make it even nicer:
BoundedCounter>>dec monitor critical: [ monitor waitUntil: [value > self lowerBound] for: #decPossible. monitor signal: #incPossible. value _ value - 1].
BoundedCounter>>inc monitor critical: [ monitor waitUntil: [value < self upperBound] for: #incPossible. monitor signal: #decPossible. value _ value + 1].
The difference to the implementation above are as follows: - The method #waitUntil:for: is very similar to the #waitUntil:. The only difference is the fact that a blocked process only gets woken up if the event provided as the second argument is signaled. - The method #signal: is very similar to #signalAll. The difference to #signalAll is that #signal: only wakes up *one* process that is waiting for the event specified as the argument.
Well, you can find a complete documentation of the Monitor in the changeset "Monitor.1.cs" that is attached to this email (read the class comment). In addition, there is a changeset "MonitorTest.1.cs" that contains some SUnit tests, and a file BoundedCounter.1.cs that contains this example.
Please let me know if you find bugs or have suggestions for changes...
Cheers, Nathanael
BTW: One remark for the ones that already know the Java synchronization mechanism: This Monitor implementation can be considered as a more powerful version of the Java synchronization mechanism. Just replace:
#critical: ... -> synchronized() { ... } #wait -> wait() #signal -> notify() #signalAll -> notifyAll()
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for the picture. It's nice to see the faces.
Just one little thing, can you show who is who.
Thanks,
PhiHo.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Denker" marcus@ira.uka.de To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Cc: squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 4:03 PM Subject: Re: Idea to get money in Squeak community
On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 09:03:22AM +0200, Stephane Ducasse wrote:
But for now an association would work perfectly, I guess that an association in germany acts as a group of people that do not have the intention to make money but can manage it. So right now this would be perfect. I prefer to see an association that a non exisiting foundation.
Hi all,
Sorry for not answering earlier... but we had to discuss this on the squeak-ev list first.
So... maybe I start with
What we did
We're in the process of setting up a non-profit association in Germany. This association will be a legal entity (like a Person or a Company) after it gets registered (than we are a "e.V" which es a "registered
association").
This will take some time because both the Tax Authorities and the local Court are involved in the process.
The bylaws of the association were discussed on the squeak-ev list for some time, and then some of us (exactly 7, required by law) met at LinuxTag and signed them. There is a nice photo at http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/squeak-ev/34
The bylaws are pretty standard for this kind of german association
(Verein)
(We copied them from ADA Germany e.V. and then modified them for our purpose). The bylaws are very much like a constitution for the
association:
They contain first a set of goals (What do we want to do?) and then the bylaws define the structure (simple: board of three (First, Second, Treasurer), and how these get elected and how to remove them if they do strange things. The elected board is: 1. Marcus Denker, 2. Markus Gaelli, Treasurer: Hans Beck.
Members are required to pay a membership-fee. (Euro 0 (younger than 18y,
10
(Students), 30 (normal) and 200 (corporations) per year)
Have a look at the Babelfish translation:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fswiki.squeakfoundat ion.
+org%2Fsqueak-ev%2F20&lp=de_en&tt=url&urltext=&doit=done) pretty funny translation, but better than nothing.
So the whole thing is as simple as possible and *very* flexible. We can simply do what we want and build further structures on the way. ("Do the simplest thing that could possibly work").
Ok. Now
What we *are*
We consider the german association to be local thing. We discussed this on the squeak-ev list, and we think that "morphing" squeak-ev into that what squeakfoundation is planed to be would not be good. Being local instead of global has some implications... Our idea for squeak-ev was to do something small, but *do* it.
We agreed on the following:
- We are not yet registered. Nothing will happen until we are.
- We consider ourself to be a local organisation.
- We would like to help building structures to support Squeak, both global and european.
- Because there is no squeakfoundation yet, we are willing to take donations as soon as we are registered. We garantee that this money will be used according to our statutes.
So... back to you suggestion: It seems to be a good idea to put together a CD for companies and universities to buy (and thus contributing to the further development of squeak).
Other things to consider would be
T-shirts: http://www.jinxhackwear.com Affero: http://www.affero.com/ (this seems to be a realy interesting
idea)
Marcus-- Marcus Denker marcus@ira.uka.de -- Squeak! http://squeakland.org
On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 11:03:05AM -0400, PhiHo Hoang wrote:
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for the picture. It's nice to see the faces. Just one little thing, can you show who is who.
From left to right:
Robert Hirschfeld Markus Gaelli Felix Franz Andreas Raab Marcus Denker Hans Beck
(http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/squeak-ev/34)
Marcus,
That's what I guessed. I used Andreas as the pivot to sort it out but there were 7 names and only 6 faces. That's why I had to ask, I guessed Karsten is the photographer ;-)
Let's hope grassroot movements like this will spring up elsewhere as well.
Then when the muddy water on the SqF front settled, let's hope that these will become the local chapters for SqueakFoundation.
Let's see what the grassroot movements can do _for_ Squeak. It seems to me that our poor little Mouse is very much confused and dizzy. Totally lost its directions.
Best wishes,
PhiHo.
P.S: Hi Robert, nice to see you.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Denker" marcus@ira.uka.de To: squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org Cc: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 1:30 PM Subject: Re: [Squeakfoundation]Re: Idea to get money in Squeak community
On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 11:03:05AM -0400, PhiHo Hoang wrote:
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for the picture. It's nice to see the faces. Just one little thing, can you show who is who.From left to right:
Robert Hirschfeld Markus Gaelli Felix Franz Andreas Raab Marcus Denker Hans Beck
(http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/squeak-ev/34)
-- Marcus Denker marcus@ira.uka.de -- Squeak! http://squeakland.org
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
Thanks Stef --
Let me encourage all efforts in this direction. There is absolutely no problem with Squeakers using Squeak to make money (especially to help Squeak).
Cheers,
Alan
----- At 10:39 AM +0200 6/18/02, Stephane Ducasse wrote:
Hi
Right now even if we want to give money to Squeak we cannot. There is no place where I can support Squeak by paying a kind of shareware fee or even to get a CD with all the Squeak material. In the school of my wife they are paying around 1000 $ for office and they don't use it so I do not see why they would not like to get a good cd with the major release on it.
This is the same here at the University we could support Squeak but at least there should be a way to give money. I hope that ESUG will not lose money this year and that we will be able to give the purcentage we promised to Squeak. But at the minimum we need to be able to do that.
I'm fed up to see that people are afraid to make money with Squeak because this could be a problem for SqueakC. Alan said it was not.
So are the German Squeakers in the mood to get money? I can send you the cd with all the material I collected. Tansel what are your plans?
Stef
Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE (ducasse@iam.unibe.ch) http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/ "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do different? ... especially if, by doing something different, today might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes
--
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Alan Kay -
cg＠cdegroot.com -
Marcus Denker -
Nathanael Schärli -
PhiHo Hoang -
Stephane Ducasse -
Tim Rowledge