Squeakfoundation April 2001

squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org

15 participants
11 discussions

Greetings
by Dan Ingalls 02 May '01

02 May '01

Folks - I've just joined the SqF mail list. My apologies for not having joined in sooner. Anyway, it looks like I have some catching up to do. At first glance a lot of good thinking has already taken place. Then I'll try to say a few words about where SqC is likely going in the next year, and what the best way would be for us to work together with the rest of the community through a Squeak Foundation. We already have some ideas about this, but first I want to read what has already been said here. Thanks - Dan PS: I have a favor to ask: To look at the old messages, I have to use the archive. If it would be easy for any of you to forward all the messages to me, then I could read them in my normal mail system. If any of you would be willing to do this, please send a message *to me*, and I'll confirm back (to avoid everyone forwarding N copies of all the messages). Thanks

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OK, what exactly should this SqueakFoundation thing be and do?
by Dwight Hughes 29 Apr '01

29 Apr '01

A few initial notions (following several of the points Tim made earlier) which I hope others will add to, refine, step on, etc : The SqueakFoundation should be a single, easily found, responsive, reliable, up-to-date point of contact and information for most things Squeak; should act as an organizing entity to sift out the best of the Squeak world and present it in a well-structured, easily accessed and understood form; and should create content as necessary to achieve this. This means creating/compiling/maintaining: - a reliable, regularly updated, organized web presence; - clear detailed info for getting started with Squeak; - an organized repository of sources and premade Squeak distributions for most platforms; - a good updated FAQ database (searchable would be nice) with info for newbies and not so newbies; - task oriented how-to-do info; - a *complete* searchable archive of the Squeak mailing list from its beginning; - host the Squeak mailing list and actually maintain it (no more running on inertia like it's done for so long - not meaning to be ungrateful, but the list needs and deserves better); I realize there can be much more to SqF, and there is much more to add, but there also needs to be a place to begin. -- Dwight

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Chaordic Purpose
by Paul Fernhout 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

This thread is intended to discuss the purpose of the Squeak Foundation along the lines of the chaordic design process described at: http://www.chaordic.org/what_des.html (and which Cees has participated in related to Sun's JINI).

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Hosting and Legal
by Dave 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

We have two offers for hosting (I had offered earlier but defer to the offer with larger pipes<g>) I have already offered and have a volunteer lawyer who uses Squeak to help "bend" the Apache model into the right shape. Dave

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Goals
by Dave 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

Disclaimer - I hate goals and mission statements since like non-disclosure agreements the longer they are the less gets done. I think something brief and broad is preferable to a list of lists. Encourage the development, support, distribution and evolution of Squeak and Squeak based endeavors wherever it may be os use. Ensure that Squeak is available to future generations of researchers and educators. Encourage creativity and diversity. Try to reduce unnecessary duplication of effort and increased reuse. [nice tension <g>] I also think we should steal from something that works aka Apache rather than attempt to get caught up in meta process. It can always be changed in release 2, but if there is no release 1 who cares about release 2. We need to be realistic about how long it will take to achieve this and get started sooner rather than later. Finally we need to realize that innovation and progress will cost something and that something means that there needs to be some diversification such as the multiple projects forking before consolidation/unification. Dave

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It Takes a Community
by Dave 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

What is needed is for people to step up to the bar and say I'm in and I'll give ???? to the community effort. If there are not enough people to support it there is no community (so lurkers put up or shut up <grin>). One also needs leaders - to do the "BS" part and a leader to do the "Linus" part and some others to help. The community needs to give that group a mandate to "do something with Squeak" which will be definition be wrong <grin> but better than nothing. Using the XP Community Building Kit <grin> you can then iterate over time. The name, goals...will come as you go...communities form to do things not define things <grin>. Dave p.s. Dan is not opposed to using Squeak if SqF goals are in the spirit of Squeak... I believe the OpenSmalltalk came up because some people have a passion for going backwards to ANSI Smalltalk ( I hate reruns<grin>).

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YAS
by Dave 26 Apr '01

26 Apr '01

I think this is a generous offer and worth considering once the SqF knows what it wants to be. Dave

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It Takes A Community
by Dave 24 Apr '01

24 Apr '01

Just to make it clear what my intentions are when I suggested SqF could be based on Apache. I would like to see Squeak be available to subsequent generations of educators and researchers as well as share the burden of SqC with respect to evolution and support of Squeak. While I have a long commercial Smalltalk history, my agenda now is to use it (which was what I started off doing before and ended up in a different place <grin>). Some thoughts... - Apache is non-profit company with a well known and respected set of social and business protocols. I've already offered to support the legal work if there is a energetic community with projects. Apache is focused on a product which I don't think suites the SqF which should have a mission of evolution and creativity while admitting efforts to produce base images, components etc. SqF should seek to be inclusive in the spirit of Squeak, not fragment due to different needs. - I think we need a leader at the top of the meritocracy and the only person that the world could easily agree on is Dan Ingalls. "Linus" Mouse<g>. - We need a community that is prepared to work WITHOUT money which is how most communities are built. When the discussion begins with money it usually goes down hill with community. Communities are usually built during difficult times when people share a common goal. - A Squeak community needs to encourage diversity so I think it is important that StableSqueak, UnStableSqueak, MVCForeverSqueak, MorphicSqueak, PipSqueak be thought of as separate projects which are enabled by Squeak rather than assume there should be "the Squeak" code base. This allows smaller communities of interest to exist in SqF. I think one of the problems is that people are trying to define a Squeak image which leads to boring and aging artifacts like ANSI Smalltalk. Best Wishes Dave Thomas Old Country Programmer and Object Troll

3 4

is there anybody ...
by Paul McDonough 18 Apr '01

18 Apr '01

... out there? Other than Tim and John, that is. I've been following the discussion(s) loosely, and it seems the one thing we keep dancing about without much believable answer to is funding. Perhaps that's just the lens I look through nowadays. But it got me curious - I don't know the early history of the Apache foundation. How did they get started, get structured, and pay for it? I assume there was a lot of volunteer work, but there must have been some other support as well. Any better-informed-than-I cyberhistorians out there?

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So, what next folks?
by Tim Rowledge 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

If anything is to happen, we have to make it happen. What do we wnt? tim -- Tim Rowledge, tim(a)sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim Useful random insult:- Paralyzed from the neck up.

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Squeakfoundation April 2001