Squeakfoundation May 2001

squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org

29 participants
36 discussions

The Natives are Restless
by Dan Ingalls 12 Jan '02

12 Jan '02

Folks - Speaking as one who wants to see SqF take advantage of the community urge for a truly open Squeak, I have some concern for the pace of bringing SqF into existence. What I see is the Stable Squeak experiment reaching completion in not much more time than we have spent deliberating over the definition of SqF, and a number of people who *would support* an SqF looking elsewhere for it when it is right under their nose. Why? Because we haven't yet declared the existence of SqF. With no disrespect for the goals or even the process represented by the dialog on this list so far, what I'm wondering is: Why wait for all the chaordic process and exact definitions to declare the existence of SqF? Instead, why not Declare that SqF exists, Appoint a number of "acting" officers Declare a couple of active projects one of which is to converge on a more formal def of the organization I think I could even raise a few $$ to carry us through the interim period As token "Old Fart" I'm willing to be put in any role. I'll even appoint myself and everybody else if no one wants to do this. And I'll make up a project list (you can guess from prior messages). That doesn't sound very democratic ("open"), but I'm just wanting to "jump-start" the organization so that it can be accreting respect and definition while it is still being born, and so that we can channel the open Squeak urges into a coherent future, rather than fighting fires on the Squeak mail list and dissipating energy in twenty splinter efforts. What do others feel? - Dan PS: This may sound critical, but I don't feel that way at all. I'm happy with the current participants and process. I just feel the need for an interim solution.

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Concrete SqF projects
by Andreas.Raab＠gmx.de 17 Jun '01

17 Jun '01

Folks, Over the last weeks (basically as long as I'm following this list) there have been a number of (quite high-level) discussions about purpose and principles of the SqF on this list. While I feel that these discussions are useful and necessary, I would like to see a start of more concrete projects. Perhaps it's helpful to try it the other way around and discuss the principles in the context of concrete projects (where the practical issues will ultimately arise). While it may sound complicated to start projects in a phase where no SqF (at least formally) exists and where we also have to avoid certain issues (like money changing hands) I think that there are a number of projects that we could basically start right away, which would benefit the entire Squeak community, and also show that SqF is not only a club for debating chaordic principles (just kidding ;-) Starting some of those projects might also help finding (at least interim) project officers for some of the issues that will stay in the long-term focus of SqF. So what could we start with in practice?! The three issues which I think are obvious no-brainers for the SqF are: * Establish a web-presence of Squeak image releases Meaning a central list pointing out what versions exists, when they were released, what VM to use with it, an FAQ per release, etc. etc. etc. * Establish a web-presence of Squeak VMs Meaning a central list of compiled VMs that are available, references to the source code for each version, telling people that "If the VM for version XYZ hasn't been compiled on ABC, please drop us a copy", FAQs for VMs/platforms, etc. etc. etc. * Establish a web-presence of Squeak packages [GOODIEs] [ADDONs] etc. Meaning a central list of available packages, goodies, add-ons, telling people what this thing does, the Squeak version it has been designed for, the versions it has been successfully tested on, perhaps a swiki for posting bugs etc. The above three are obvious issues that SqF needs to deal with concretely. They do not require any programming, they do not require money, all they do require is a couple of dedicated people for setting up the infrastructure, for making up some web pages, write a few emails, and - most importantly - keep it up-to-date. Also note that the above does require almost no server space - virtually everything is available at UIUC or on some other server world-wide. Later we can think about mirroring this stuff at some SqF server but we don't need this to get started. BTW, I'm thinking about the above mainly as a - critically needed - reorganization of the stuff that's available at the GATech Swiki (perhaps on a more robust server ;-) since there are tons of infomation available at the swiki - they just cannot be found. In addition to these projects we may think about a few others. Two that come to my mind are (there may be more - I'm sure Paul has suggestions ;-) * Review and coordinate a migration of Stable Squeak into the main release Although not yet released (but according to John it'll happen on the weekend) I think that this could be a very valuable task since it brings together the best of both worlds. * Write and post a monthly "Mini Squeak FAQ" to the mailing list For one thing, this FAQ would help many beginners to find information faster (all the mini FAQ has to provide is pointers to URLs answering the questions). For another thing it could be "brought to you by the Squeakfoundation" thus raising the visibility of the SqF and establish it as a central and known entity in Squeakland. Please note that because of my association with Squeak Central I am not volunteering for any of the stuff. If you want me to, then say so and I will, but I'd rather see the community taking the lead here. Cheers, - Andreas -- Machen Sie Ihr Hobby zu Geld bei unserem Partner 1&1! http://profiseller.de/info/index.php3?ac=OM.PS.PS003K00596T0409a -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net

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Re: [Squeakfoundation]Process for volunteering (was Re: Concrete SqF projects)
by cg＠cdegroot.com 16 Jun '01

16 Jun '01

dway(a)riskmetrics.com said: > Is there a process for volunteering for projects (and mini-projects)? Probably the easiest way is to announce the project as being a project on the Swiki front page and put your name on the page behind it. Like the Camp Smalltalk project pages, I guess. -- Cees de Groot http://www.cdegroot.com <cg(a)cdegroot.com> GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD 1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B

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Another project - hosting the primary Squeak mailing list
by Doug Way 01 Jun '01

01 Jun '01

There have been several problems recently with the Squeak mailing list (squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu) not delivering email to everyone. Also, the list currently doesn't have an administrator who participates in the list (or much of an administrator at all). For more details, see Ralph Johnson's comments in this message: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/squeak/message/28661 Given this, I'd propose to make this a Squeak Foundation project to host the list. A couple of people (including Cees de Groot) offered to host the list in response to the earlier mail. (If there were no objections I'd personally be happy to see Cees host the new list, since he's already demonstrated that he can host the Squeak Foundation list and archives, and is an active participant in both lists.) One additional minor thing for whoever is in charge of this... it would be nice to keep the existing Yahoo archives (and Georg Gollman's archives) and carry them over to the new list address, if possible. (I'm not sure if this is possible with the Yahoo archives or not.) Thoughts/objections? - Doug Way dway(a)riskmetrics.com

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Back up again
by cg＠cdegroot.com 31 May '01

31 May '01

If you can read this, SqF is on the air again in the new server room. -- Cees de Groot http://www.cdegroot.com <cg(a)cdegroot.com> GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD 1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B

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[ANN] StSq taking the offer!
by G�ran Hultgren 31 May '01

31 May '01

Hi all! I hereby take the liberty of telling you all that StSq has agreed upon accepting the offer from SqF to use the Swiki and the mailinglist that Cees has set up for us at squeakfoundation.org. If you go to *http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/stablesqueak* you can now see it is not empty any more. In fact... well, why don't we just wait and read the announcement from John about that, shall we! :-) :-) Sorry John for spilling the beans ;-) We will move over to the new list from our current little alias stsq(a)bluefish.se tomorrow - all 15 of us! (yep, we are growing) And just a small note: We insist on keeping the list FREE from SqF discussions - we really want the StSq list to be focused on StSq work. :-) And finally I think I talk for all the StSq:ers when I say that decisions regarding StSq is still being made by the StSq:ers working on it on the list with our coordinator John Sarkela "at the top". No change there whatsoever! ;-) (serious smiley with a twinkle) Happy Squeaking, G�ran ===== G�ran Hultgren, goran.hultgren(a)bluefish.se GSM: +46 70 3933950, http://www.bluefish.se "Department of Redundancy department." -- ThinkGeek __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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Re: [Squeakfoundation]Process for volunteering (was Re: Concrete SqF projects)
by G�ran Hultgren 31 May '01

31 May '01

--- Doug Way <dway(a)riskmetrics.com> wrote: [SNIP] > >* Write and post a monthly "Mini Squeak FAQ" to the mailing list > >For one thing, this FAQ would help many beginners to find information faster > >(all the mini FAQ has to provide is pointers to URLs answering the > >questions). For another thing it could be "brought to you by the > >Squeakfoundation" thus raising the visibility of the SqF and establish > >it as a central and known entity in Squeakland. > > In any case, I had some mild interest in volunteering to work on the above > item. (I wouldn't mind a co-volunteer if anyone else were interested... I > guess it depends on whether this would really just be a mini-FAQ or a more > complete Squeak FAQ.) > > I suppose a logical next step in volunteering for a project like this would be > to set up a page on the SqF wiki to discuss the basic content of the project > and how to implement it...? As I like pragmatism I say go for it! But this will raise another question I guess - will you/we then move the FAQ stuff already present at the minnow Swiki? Duplication is bad... :-) regards, G�ran ===== G�ran Hultgren, goran.hultgren(a)bluefish.se GSM: +46 70 3933950, http://www.bluefish.se "Department of Redundancy department." -- ThinkGeek __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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Meshwork and Hierarchy in SqF
by Paul Fernhout 30 May '01

30 May '01

All- We on this Squeak list hold or advocate essentially two perspectives: * SqF could be created now to be essentially a hierarchically organized but somewhat publicly accountable SqC analogue, where the only question is who at first fills the slots in the hierarchy (board of trustees, executive director, treasurer, volunteer coordinator, development director), since we already of a long list of worthwhile things for SqF to do, and * SqF could be created over time using a chaordic processes to be and/or support a meshwork development involving a community process evolving Squeak. The first is essentially what we have now with SqC and what we are most familiar with in general in corporate America. The second is a newer organizational concept relative to that, and Dee Hock says in his book "Birth of the Chaordic Age" http://www.chaordic.org/ that it is often the most experienced and successful managers who have the most trouble with it (for various reasons, since it can seem to fly in the face of organizational logic that they know works.) It is a tribute to the flexibility of the experienced managers on this list that they've given the chaordic process as much rope as it has got so far. :-) That may also be a tribute to Smalltalk itself, since when used well Smalltalk tends to make people think more in terms of collaborating agents than monolithic programs. The two perspectives of hierarchy and meshwork aren't completely incompatible since all organizations have aspects of both hierarchy and meshwork, so they actually form more like two ends of a spectrum (or perhaps more like two axes of a graph). As an exercise, think about where you would place the Borg of "Star Trek: TNG" in such a two axes graph, both before and after the writers introduced a "Borg queen" for theatrical puposes. This forwarded post referencing Manuel de Landa's work is intended to be less of as a crosspost and more "for the Foundation records". It was a reply I made to Gary's concern about "hierarchies on the way" on the main Squeak list, posted in a thread related to one I started to try to sound out the larger community's feelings on a community oriented SqF purpose. This post elicited at least one positive comment (thanks John!). (Thanks also go to my wife who read Manuel de Landa's book and pointed de Landa's work out to me in another context related to free software/content development.) I post it to the foundation list as well because it seems to bear on the issue of talking vs. doing and what the issue is that creates some conflict. Conflict isn't always bad -- it's more how it is handled -- since resolving conflict through either transcendence or compromise can be essential to creativity. As several have expressed to me publicly or privately, hopefully we are mainly a community of doers, and it is not my intent here to advocate a group that only discusses process. However, doing may include discussing of what to do (system architecture?) since good programmers do spend time talking with colleagues and reading about their craft and its context in addition to coding. But having said that, I'd say I'm talked out at his point. :-) I've had my say, and raised what I thought were the key issues, and how we go forward now is up to the group process and individual initiatives. I think a purely conventional hierarchical SqF attempting to be a publicly accountable SqC would be an improvement both for the community (who will get a broader spectrum of issues addressed) and for SqC (who can then focus on other things as the Squeak community grows). So please don't let my interests in supporting meshwork aspects of Squeak development prevent a worthwhile hierarchy from forming if the alternative is having nothing (especially as such a hierarchy will be part of the Squeak community meshwork in any case, and will probably end up answering to those meshwork needs if it is to have any long term relevance). However the foundation organizes formally, this meshwork and hierarchy distinction is one to keep in the back of our minds as we go forward, even if the initial foundation is completely hierarchical and also centrally manages Squeak releases. -Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software ========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Meshwork vs. Hierarchy in SqF Resent-Date: 30 May 2001 01:55:29 -0000 Resent-From: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu Resent-CC: recipient list not shown: ; Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 21:59:49 -0400 From: Paul Fernhout <pdfernhout(a)kurtz-fernhout.com> Reply-To: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu Organization: Kurtz-Fernhout Software To: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu References: <200105280135.f4S1ZC518961(a)smtp-server1.tampabay.rr.com> <3B11DD7A.6119922A(a)kurtz-fernhout.com> <005601c0e7ae$00af7b40$815c063e@default> Gary- Very perceptive point on hierarchies. (And that raises a valid concern about any organized foundation interacting with a community). Manuel de Landa in his book "1000 Years of Non-linear History" http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/ http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm http://www.kud-fp.si/~karlo/intview/uslanda.html talks about the interrelation of meshworks and hierarchies. These can overlap each other, as you might have hierarchies as elements of a meshwork, or you might have informal meshwork links within a hierarchy. You seem to celebrate the meshwork aspect of Squeak and open-source / free software. Me too! (Despite what might otherwise appear by my involvement on the SqF list.) It would be good to tease out objections to: * managing the Squeak Foundation as a hierarchy vs. * having a central point (implicit hierarchy) for managing releases vs. * whether people participating in the existing community meshwork around Squeak might have a definable common purpose. The thing is, as soon as people are giving money to an organization for general use under its direction, there is effectively a hierarchy in that there is now a decision maker (the foundation) issuing orders made enforceable (somewhat) through money. Alternatives would be to have money go directly from donor to developer, to consider the chaordic model of multiple levels of control (lots of hierarchies), for individuals to keep doing their own thing, or for the foundation to be more like a alliance (Apache group?) than a formal organization (although human tribal machinery may effectively make an alliance somewhat hierarchical by having either a first-among-equals or a "benevolent dicatator"). As Manuel de Landa points out, it is very, very rare for any system to be either a pure meshwork or a pure hierarchy. However, we already have a funded hierarchy deeply involved in the Squeak Community -- it is SqC. Maybe what is happening here is really some people thinking about replacing one hierarchy (SqC) funded by Disney with another hierarchy (SqF) funded by the community (or a few commercial donors), in order to make the development of Squeak more responsive to the organizer's vision or donor's needs (or out of general goodness :-). It's an easy thing to think this way -- because a central release system is a situation we are all familiar with. It is a valid question to ask, should we replace one hierarchy with another as opposed to doing something else? Whether there are better alternatives in this situation is a good question. One may want to look at a more "termite" model of management for how the Squeak community could (and to an extent, does) work: http://www.imaginiz.com/provocative/organize/termites.html In some ways, the "termite" model is probably how much development already works in practice, ignoring SqC for the moment, as people make some exciting bit of Squeak code and others pile more code onto that, and then things get really moving in the community if two or more such piles of code can be linked together to make something grander (like Nebraska -- based on various other creative code related to Morphs). However, even termites are in a way hierarchical, controlled both with pheromones secreted by a queen and also with shared DNA patterns effecting their behavior. So again, it is hard to find a pure meshwork (or hierarchy). Personally, I've been musing on the idea of a peer-to-peer source code management system for Squeak to address exactly this concern you raise. I've been thinking some about this, although I can't yet see how they could *easily* coordinate code releases. Anyone know of peer-to-peer systems used for source control already or got any ideas on this? Obviously, emailing around changesets is a start. Maybe that could be enough with a better prerequisite system? However, even if SqF didn't manage releases, there may well be a legitimate reason to have such an organization for "marketing" Squeak and serving as spokesperson for the community (given the way the rest of the world works and what the press might expect). Your point about "interpretation" is also very important to always keep in mind. I guess that's one reason why the US has the Supreme Court in addition to other branches of government -- to ultimately "interpret" the constitution. Who will play that role in a Squeak Foundation? I don't know. Presumably, the board of trustees, who are typically volunteers. For that reasons, many times paid staff can't be voting trustees (separating the "executive branch" from the "judicial") although this is a gray area: http://www.nonprofits.org/npofaq/03/17.html -Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software ========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com gb wrote: > > I like all the arguments in this thread, but I think I can sense hierarchies > on the way, and while they may be good for armies and conquests and > businesses, they may not be the best model for an open source group. > Purposes and charters rely upon the interpretation of the powers that be, > and that isn't such a good thing when fascists are at the top of the > pyramid. But then again hierarchies seem to achieve more. > > >From my perspective I'm grateful to find something that I can do what I like > with (Squeak) depending only upon how much I know. And I find it very > interesting that people do their own thing and share it with one another > without controls and collaborate freely. > > Regards, > Gary

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Why grants and software go together
by Paul Fernhout 29 May '01

29 May '01

Several people on this list imply there is money just begging to be raised and spent on open source Squeak related things. They may well be right, and such statements may be even more true as time passes. Here are some ideas to consider using when persuading foundation program officers to lobby their funding boards to donate funds to a Squeak Community Foundation. It's a little political, but so are some of the points that need to be made to make the argument that funding free software will produce good things for society. In general, there are many reasons "open source" or "free software" projects might be funded as charitable causes. Here are some interesting comments on this (written as a semi-open letter to Michael Phillips): http://remarque.org/~turner/to-mp.html General statements of the public value of open or free results can be found through on the pages of these two major organizations: http://www.opensource.org/ http://www.fsf.org/ If anyone has any other pointers to links, I'd love to see them. If you read any of Richard Stallman's philosophy at all [many people criticize him without reading his works] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ http://www.stallman.org/ http://www.carnall.demon.co.uk/stallman/index.html you will see he argues that the most important aspect of "free software" is that you are free to adapt it to your needs -- not that you get it for free or that it was made by volunteers (neither of which may be true) or even that is under the viral GPL (which is not required for software to be called "free" by his definition). The problem with the current funding approach for most software development from Stallman's point of view is that as a side effect of creating an artificial scarcity for their product (to encourage users to pay for it), software vendors restrict users' ability to make and redistribute derivative works. This limits the individual's opportunities to improve the software to meet their own needs. It also limits the community's ability to evolve software through cooperation. It doesn't matter how efficient the current system may or may not be -- the deeper point is the desire for this "freedom" to adapt things to local needs and to improve them and share improvements in a community. That limitation on collaboration imposed by proprietary software wasn't as significant before the internet became as widespread and heavily used as now. Before the internet, is was very difficult to do any sort of fine-grained collaboration with anyone unless you were either in the same building with them or were working at a large organization with a private network infrastructure. Thus, groups collaborating as closely as those in the Squeak community simply could not form or sustain themselves on a practical basis (outside of large organizations or universities, which is where much free software originated pre-web). That limitation on derived works has a negative effect on service businesses, because they may be unable to tailor software products to meet the needs of their clients. Imagine for example if your lawyer told you they could not modify their boilerplate contract for your needs, or your doctor said they could not alter the dose of a drug to your exact physiology. The issue also isn't just what a service person can do at the moment. Service companies often make specific alliances with vendors of proprietary solutions to sell their tools in a particular year. The deeper issue is also what exactly the service provider has spent years using and learning. Without widespread open solutions available for easy study, it is less likely there will be knowledgeable and experienced service people who know of a wide range of open solution that may be tailored to your needs. It is also less likely they will be familiar with them from personal experience. You probably won't find another similar vendor around the block selling the same proprietary solution modified in the same ways to give you a choice of service providers. The point is -- proprietary solutions can have a negative effect on people getting their needs met even when they are willing to pay money. There are also larger overall societal costs to proprietary solutions. Essentially we are otherwise heading towards Digital Rights Management software on every computer. Charging for every use of every file is like making every road a toll road. Lots of things can go wrong with such systems. I discuss some of them in this post to gnu.misc.discuss where I mention four things that went wrong during a recent drive I took down a toll road: http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&selm=3B0B2DD1.40BDD739%40kurtz-fernhou… Stallman would argue these are more subtle effects of proprietary software that makes criminal the neighborly impulse to share software. This is potentially corrupting morally. It can promote a disrespect for the law. It is also slowly leading to draconian social controls starting with the DMCA (unauthorized copying can now be a felony instead of just incurring a civil penalty). It is also justifying increased surveillance and decreased privacy. The Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s has a similar effect on our society, and eventually those laws were repealed and alcohol became a legal, but somewhat regulated and highly taxed drug. Unfortunately, the widening use of wiretaps and other new police methods that weakened privacy in the United States during Alcohol Prohibition remained after prohibition ended. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/drugs/000912/4128274.html Both the medical and legal professions are highly paid, and both entail professionals understanding a large body of generally public domain knowledge and applying it to client's specific situations. Both doctors and lawyers create new knowledge that is effectively put into the public domain in the form of medical journal articles or court proceedings. To help a lawyer to understand free or open source software, just ask her or him to think about it in terms of the law itself -- from court proceedings to legislative records. While lawyers may pay for a service like Westlaw service for convenience or practical necessity, http://www.westlaw.com/about/ they are not paying to use the law itself, say when they make an argument in court. Surely nobody would suggest the world was better off in the days of 18th-century England when a medical student had to crawl on top of a roof and look in from a skylight to find out the proprietary technique used by one group of secretive obstetricians to have a lower rate of infant and maternal mortality than their competitors: http://www.ogilvy.com/memorial/html/onads.htm Yet, people do die when software fails -- on airplanes, space stations, cars, telephone networks, and medical equipment. Is it unreasonable to hope someday the software "profession" might operate on a professional basis more like doctors and lawyers do now? While the the companies selling proprietary software may lose funds if more software was developed on the basis of grants, the individuals and companies who know how to work within the common software infrastructure will be in demand. Right now, if you can believe the Linux trade press, Linux skills are in widespread demand at high pay rates across the country. Proprietary Unix skills (outside of a few specialized places) were never in quite as widespread demand like this across all types of products (embedded, desktop, server, mainframe). The same thing is true for, say, proprietary VisualWorks skills. They are only in demand in a few specialized places -- not everywhere in every industry. An open Squeak, widely adopted, might create a widespread demand for Smalltalk development experience and related consulting opportunities. While it is a compromise, if you can spend half your time consulting and half your time writing your own free software (and be twice as productive because of access to other's work to build on), and earn from your half-time consulting as much or more (because you and your client are more productive) than when you tried just to sell proprietary software, everyone might be better off. As someone who has tried to sell software, I can definitely say consulting pays a lot better, and most of the other people I have talked to who sold software have echoed this as well. (Obviously a few people have succeeded wildly at selling proprietary software, but most have not. Still, like with gambling, the allure remains.) For software development processes funded directly by grants, where the result was open and free, then even if you were not the one to get the grant, you could at least benefit from the results and improve them to meet your needs. So even if the granting process was unfair (and most probably are for whatever reasons, typically because peer review rarely funds the innovative proposal from the unknown inventor), non-grantees at least would still benefit somewhat from the end product of the grant, because they could build on that end product. (Currently much software written from grant funds, say, at universities, is still allowed to be considered proprietary by the developer, but that's another sad story.) If grants for free software make sense, then grant requests to fund services assisting developer communities, like a Squeak "Community" Foundation, should be even more attractive to potential donors. I feel things have come a long way from, say, 1997, when in response to a grant pre-proposal to the NSF discussing creating a community of developers around an open source version of our garden simulator, the response was: "We don't understand why you don't want to sell the program commercially". [We discussed exactly that issue in the proposal.] http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/nsfprop.htm (By the way, that simulator project is still one I would like to move to Squeak, and the Delphi source is available on our site if anyone is interested.) -Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software ========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com

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Initial project - Squeak core
by cg＠cdegroot.com 29 May '01

29 May '01

Here's my second initial project proposal, mostly triggered by the meeting with Paul. The first project must be a no-brainer, reasonably easy to implement, and a test of the (initial) environment. I propose CVS/Sourceforge, I know it's not optimal for St projects but it is there, it works, and we can use it to bootstrap up to a Squeak-specific SCM system. Proposal: Calling SqC's hand on SqF cooperation, I propose that we put the VM plus a very minimal core class library on SourceForge, and call that the official Squeak reference implementation. Rationale: As Paul indicated in his notes on our conversation, there are lots of parallels between Squeak and Linux - as Linux is tremendously succesful, we might just as well learn from it :-). Both systems are an operating system, and both are applicable in a very broad range, both horizontally (from iPAQ to "SqueakNOS for System/390 ;-)") and vertically ("BusinessSqueak", "SchoolSqueak", ...). Like Linux, a worthwhile model could be to define a very basic core (kernel, libraries) and have third parties build distributions on top of that with added value. So a BusinessSqueak could be core+networking+Glorp+Swazoo (with a competing one core+networking+Comanche+SMS), a SchoolSqueak would have Morphic and eToys, etcetera. Keep in mind, that's the general direction I think it useful, the first step I propose here is just a very minimal first step. A side effect of this operation is that we force the issue of modularity. Squeak-Core (as I propose to name this bit) would define the de-facto standard, which automatically opens up a clear, minimal target for competing and/or platform-optimized implementations. The first work, apart from maybe some refactoring, could be to write unit tests for this core so that alternative implementations could be validated. The "Calling SqC's hand" terminology I used above is in response to Dan's message indicating SqC's support for the SqF effort ("great, Dan - prove it" ;-)). Handing over the responsibility for the core to the community and pledging to cooperate on this bit would make this support very concrete. As it would be a extremely minimal bit of Squeak, it is very likely to consist of very stable code so that the impact on SqC day-to-day operations is likely to be small. That helps us to focus on procedures around SqC/SqF cooperation, roles, responsibilities. Goal: Produce Squeak-Core v1.0 on SourceForge. Steps: - (in parallel with the other steps) setup a mailing list where we can discuss the scope of Squeak-Core (probably VMConstruction plus stripped-down versions of Kernel, ST80, Collections, System - the goal is to have stuff in Core that must be present everywhere, no matter what the size of the platform or the application). - Setup a SourceForge project or adopt an existing one for this goal. - Setup a self-contained CVS changeset with some extra bits of code so that e.g. the Help menu is extended with SourceForge CVS interactions ("update code from SourceForge", "commit code to SourceForge", "send patches to Squeak-Core project mailing list", etcetera). - Take a code cut and stash it into SourceForge. Call it "1.0.0". - Start a machinery like the linux kernel machinery: Squeak-Core 1.1.x is hacking, alpha, unstable, when there's a nice set of new features start stabilizing until a version can be called 1.2.0 which is the next "official" release, etcetera. -- Cees de Groot http://www.cdegroot.com <cg(a)cdegroot.com> GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD 1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B

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Squeakfoundation May 2001