Dave wrote in the thread "Goals"
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>]
Now we are getting somewhere. Some good words in there: "Encourage", "Evolution", "Future Generations", "Research", "Education", "Creativity", "Diversity" "Reduce" "Unnecessary" "Increase" "Reuse". These sound like words that might be in a 'If we could achieve that, my life would have meaning' level purpose.
Still though, again the question of "why?".
Why is it of value to encourage the use or evolution of Squeak?
"Encouraging creativity and diversity" from the above is perhaps part of the answer.
Does Squeak or the ideas behind it have anything that sets it apart from say "encouraging the evolution of C++"? And, does the foundation want to support that larger purpose as Squeak represents it, rather than say Squeak itself?
What is "Squeak"? That is, what does Squeak represent? Why would people want it over say VisualWorks or Delphi? What do people need or want that Squeak supplies that these other systems do not? How is it that these other systems perhaps do not encourage creativity or diversity?
-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
Paul Fernhout wrote:
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).