Cees wrote:
However, it seems that there's not much interest in this process.
[...]
I think the results will be much better if we, as a community, do this.
I agree but you do have to keep in mind that not the entire Squeak community is represented on this list. The people on this list are (the few?!) which either noticed your message on the Squeak mailing list (I did not) or found it by explicitly asking somebody (I asked Dan when he mentioned it). So, for getting more involvement from the entire community, I would suggest to:
* Make another announcement to the Squeak mailing list, explicitly inviting people to join this mailing list for discussing SqF issues (maybe this could come from Dan to give it more visibility)
* Explicitly invite some people (like Dave Thomas; any others?!) who have shown interest in building an SqF but are unlikely to follow the Squeak mailing list due to its heavy traffic
* Post regular (weekly/monthly) progress reports to the Squeak mailing list
I consider the latter to be very important - even if such a progress report just says "we're stalling" it's still important for people to know. And reporting about progress will help avoid the Stable Squeak mistake of being some mystical secret society where (except from a few initiated) nobody knows what's going on.
Do we have any voluntears (ouch! the Disney background :-) for summarizing the current state of discussions?!
Cheers, - Andreas
"Raab, Andreas" wrote:
- Make another announcement to the Squeak mailing list, explicitly inviting
people to join this mailing list for discussing SqF issues (maybe this could come from Dan to give it more visibility)
put it also in the updates so that everybody who fetches the new updates gets a message box with the announcement
- Explicitly invite some people (like Dave Thomas; any others?!) who have
I think he already posted on the foundation list; he is not listed in the subscriber's list, however - maybe he is the one "private member"?
- Post regular (weekly/monthly) progress reports to the Squeak mailing list
Do we have any voluntears (ouch! the Disney background :-) for summarizing the current state of discussions?!
Good idea. Cees has already started with a status update last week. Cees, can you do that weekly?
Joern.Eyrich@brokat.com said:
Good idea. Cees has already started with a status update last week. Cees, can you do that weekly?
That was actually the second one, and was roughly a week after the first one, so I sorta started already with it :-)
Cees de Groot wrote:
Joern.Eyrich@brokat.com said:
Good idea. Cees has already started with a status update last week. Cees, can you do that weekly?
That was actually the second one, and was roughly a week after the first one, so I sorta started already with it :-)
Oops. Maybe my less-than-two-weeks span of attention explains my urge to press on ;-)
At 01:41 AM 05/11/2001, Andreas Rabb wrote:
And reporting about progress will help avoid the Stable Squeak mistake of being some mystical secret society where (except from a few initiated) nobody knows what's going on.
I think there is also a general perception on the Squeak List that SqF==StableSqueak. A number of people are less than supportive of this, seeing StableSqueak as an evil fork that seeks to nail Squeak down to the pink plane of development (and to generally drag down the whole process of Squeak evolving into something new). It certainly doesn't help that very few have any idea of what it actually is and even less of an idea about its purpose relative to SqC Squeak.
For myself, I would be quite hostile if I saw SqF heading in any direction that would divert the main thrust of Squeak development away from the blue plane.
-- Dwight
Dwight Hughes dwighth@ipa.net is widely believed to have written:
At 01:41 AM 05/11/2001, Andreas Rabb wrote:
And reporting about progress will help avoid the Stable Squeak mistake of being some mystical secret society where (except from a few initiated) nobody knows what's going on.
I think there is also a general perception on the Squeak List that SqF==StableSqueak.
Then we should stomp on that asap. I was going to point to the foundation webpage to illustrate by referring to the statement of purpose, but it isn't there - the webpage I mean! Cees, perhaps you could do a little page with a summary of things 'decided' so far on it?
For myself, I would be quite hostile if I saw SqF heading in any direction that would divert the main thrust of Squeak development away from the blue plane.
I think we've agreed that the key job is to encourage and support _all_ efforts relating to squeak, whether they be tedious money grubber oriented pink plane stuff or soaring delights of blue. It should all be in the archives I think.
tim
Hear, hear! with Tim.
I'm not contributing jack to this discussion or effort thus far; but once I can bring some "situations" under control, I hope to be more active. So that's by way of saying, I probably don't have enough context to be butting in, but I'll do so anyway ...
1. The StableSqueak effort and the main SqC thrust can reinforce one another, to great mutual benefit. Think not of a fork, but rather of interweaving strands, like those pop-drawings of DNA.
2. Without the pink plane, the blue plane soars off into a never-never land which has little or no impact on the world outside its own creative minds. Without the blue plane, the pink plane becomes a dreadful, lifeless, stale, hopeless place of dark, smelly alleys and tumbleweed, and nowhere to work but Microsoft.
3. Pardon while I yell out the name of the 400-lb. gorilla at the table. "Money". Imho, this Squeak Foundation is rolling along pretty well, actually - if you've ever tried to put togethor the neighborhood school-bake-sale or something, you know it's not easy to get a volunteer effort moving quickly. Cees et al. are doing a lot, and being quite effective. But to do a job on the scale that's being talked about, there must be money, or a critical mass of people with sufficient leisure to devote essentially full time.
One way to fund a foundation is through corporate sponsorship. Squeak has plenty of allure, but few delivered "success stories" - and without the success stories, corporate donors become more difficult to convince. So that's where StSq comes back in. The idea behind that effort, as I understand it, was not to supercede Squeak itself, but to provide a steady, backward-compatible, solid platform to allow one to take advantage of Squeak's best developed features, but without having to know all that much about its internal workings, and without the highly interwoven nature that makes such things as headless apps pretty tricky to put together. That's what led me to volunteer to play with the pre-release image (good schtuff!, albeit still a ways to go).
It is my belief that once such a platform becomes available, the sheer brute force of economic opportunity is going to push *someone* to use Squeak to make a buck. That someone, if s/he has the least grain of sense at all, will recognize the value of contributing to efforts such as StSq, SqF, and Squeak Central, in their preferred currency, be it cash, time, or code. In that slice of the business community which has thought about how to build open-source based businesses, Rule Number Two is taken as a given: always give back to the community! And then the community becomes stronger, there's more time/effort available for Squeaking along all planes, more Squeak jobs out there, and it all loops back. That's my hope, anyway, as I really want to see Squeak go where we all know it can go.
Just my 2 cents, Paul
(ps - Rule Number One: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." cf. Wayne/Garth.)
Tim Rowledge wrote:
Dwight Hughes dwighth@ipa.net is widely believed to have written:
At 01:41 AM 05/11/2001, Andreas Rabb wrote:
And reporting about progress will help avoid the Stable Squeak mistake of being some mystical secret society where (except from a few initiated) nobody knows what's going on.
I think there is also a general perception on the Squeak List that SqF==StableSqueak.
Then we should stomp on that asap. I was going to point to the foundation webpage to illustrate by referring to the statement of purpose, but it isn't there - the webpage I mean! Cees, perhaps you could do a little page with a summary of things 'decided' so far on it?
For myself, I would be quite hostile if I saw SqF heading in any direction that would divert the main thrust of Squeak development away from the blue plane.
I think we've agreed that the key job is to encourage and support _all_ efforts relating to squeak, whether they be tedious money grubber oriented pink plane stuff or soaring delights of blue. It should all be in the archives I think.
tim
-- Tim Rowledge, tim@sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim Strange OpCodes: APX: Apply Power and eXplode
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
Paul McDonough wnchips@home.com wrote...
- The StableSqueak effort and the main SqC thrust can reinforce one
another, to great mutual benefit. Think not of a fork, but rather of interweaving strands, like those pop-drawings of DNA.
I agree, and will save the rest for another message.
- Without the pink plane, the blue plane soars off into a never-never
land which has little or no impact on the world outside its own creative minds. Without the blue plane, the pink plane becomes a dreadful, lifeless, stale, hopeless place of dark, smelly alleys and tumbleweed, and nowhere to work but Microsoft.
I agree strongly about this. It seems to me that we have a number of blue-plane interests represented on the Squeak List, and what is really needed from SqF (or someone else if SqF decides to abdicate) are...
A conventional and reliable process for system releases
A conventional and reliable clearinghouse for images and VMs
A source for documentation and other support
This could sound like SqC wants SqF to do all the hard work, and keep all the blue plane fun to itself. This is not at all what I mean. Our work will always be out in the open, and anyone else can go blue whenever they want to. It's true that there is hard work to be done and that I/we can't do it all ourselves. Remember that he SqF movement began from expressed needs for better inclusion of *everyone's* work, and also the need for standards, documentation, scheduled releases, etc.
I see the SqF as a symbolic flag around which we can all rally and declare the things that are needed for this community to truly thrive. I believe the items listed above are needed, and are not strengths of SqC, so whether you consider them pink or purple, we still need to come up with a way to get them done.
- Pardon while I yell out the name of the 400-lb. gorilla at the
table. "Money". Imho, this Squeak Foundation is rolling along pretty well, actually - if you've ever tried to put togethor the neighborhood school-bake-sale or something, you know it's not easy to get a volunteer effort moving quickly. Cees et al. are doing a lot, and being quite effective. But to do a job on the scale that's being talked about, there must be money, or a critical mass of people with sufficient leisure to devote essentially full time.
One way to fund a foundation is through corporate sponsorship. Squeak has plenty of allure, but few delivered "success stories" - and without the success stories, corporate donors become more difficult to convince. So that's where StSq comes back in. The idea behind that effort, as I understand it, was not to supercede Squeak itself, but to provide a steady, backward-compatible, solid platform to allow one to take advantage of Squeak's best developed features, but without having to know all that much about its internal workings, and without the highly interwoven nature that makes such things as headless apps pretty tricky to put together. That's what led me to volunteer to play with the pre-release image (good schtuff!, albeit still a ways to go).
It is my belief that once such a platform becomes available, the sheer brute force of economic opportunity is going to push *someone* to use Squeak to make a buck. That someone, if s/he has the least grain of sense at all, will recognize the value of contributing to efforts such as StSq, SqF, and Squeak Central, in their preferred currency, be it cash, time, or code. In that slice of the business community which has thought about how to build open-source based businesses, Rule Number Two is taken as a given: always give back to the community! And then the community becomes stronger, there's more time/effort available for Squeaking along all planes, more Squeak jobs out there, and it all loops back. That's my hope, anyway, as I really want to see Squeak go where we all know it can go.
Money *is* important. It's fuel for the ship and it's also a concrete acknowledgement that we have, as they say in the biz, a "going concern". I think there are several reasons for people to want to ante up for a free product.
Consider sandwiches: Are you willing to pay more for one made today than one made yesterday? Stock quotes have been out in the open for years, but people who care are still happy to pay for the latest. Get it? If you are a Squeak developer, you are certainly going to want to track the forthocming release, have input to it, and be able to test your product through alpha beta and gamma, so you're ready when the release is ready.
Also, take a look at all the other programming environments. The real money and the real action is not in the programming environments (duh: ours is free), but in consulting and support. Paying clients get consulting and support. Maybe spotty at first, but at least some one-on-one channel where questions get answered promptly, and where people can recommend various sources of documentation, and other experts to contact. I can imagaine a sort of "open consultants bureau" growing out of this facet of SqF.
I think that if SqF could state its... mission strengths process products ... that we could get half a dozen companies to pony up $5000 each, another half dozen benefactors to chip in $1000 each, and maybe 100 opther good Squeakers and true to come forth with $50 each. It won't build us a corporate headquarters on Maui, but it would sure feel like we had a going concern.
- Dan
Dan.Ingalls@disney.com said:
... that we could get half a dozen companies to pony up $5000 each, another half dozen benefactors to chip in $1000 each, and maybe 100 opther good Squeakers and true to come forth with $50 each. It won't build us a corporate headquarters on Maui, but it would sure feel like we had a going concern.
Which moves us on to the Participants bit. Especially corporate sponsorship often happens under the assumption that something comes back, and more comes back if more if paid. Some classification of members, perhaps?
tim@sumeru.stanford.edu said:
Cees, perhaps you could do a little page with a summary of things 'decided' so far on it?
http://www.squeakfoundation.org/, click "Statement of Purpose".
<voice type="metallic"><suit type="alsometallic"><visor type="redSweepingLight"> By your command... </visor></suit></voice>
(it worked when I just tried it. BTW: am I breaking a record yet?:
cg@lnx-1.ams-1:~$ ps -aux|grep squeak cg 9615 10.1 2.1 25136 11460 ? SN Mar19 7751:29 squeak -fullscreen ./squeak.image
that's quite a while for a Swiki to stay running...)
cg@cdegroot.com (Cees de Groot) is widely believed to have written:
tim@sumeru.stanford.edu said:
Cees, perhaps you could do a little page with a summary of things 'decided' so far on it?
http://www.squeakfoundation.org/, click "Statement of Purpose".
wierd. Didn't work when I tried exactly just before my message. Then again, the net seems to be very slow here today, so maybe it was the path not the source! Looks perfectly good now.
<voice type="metallic"><suit type="alsometallic"><visor type="redSweepingLight"> By your command... </visor></suit></voice>
Dang, my browser just doesn't handle those tags. Call Lex - get Scamper upddated!
tim
Original:
To assist in the evolution of Squeak into its ultimate expression as an exquisite personal and collaborative computing environment that is open, well supported, and freely available across the great majority of modern platforms and operating systems.
Too wordy and bureaucratic. Below, find a preliminary hack.
"To evolve Squeak as a well-supported, freely-available, evolving, open, portable, and exquisite computing platform."
John Tobler squeaker@diganet.com http://cyberjet.tripod.com/grepninjalog/
I wrote:
"To evolve Squeak as a well-supported, freely-available, evolving, open, portable, and exquisite computing platform."
I *meant*:
"To promote Squeak as a well-supported, freely-available, evolving, open, portable, and exquisite computing platform."
John Tobler squeaker@diganet.com http://cyberjet.tripod.com/grepninjalog/
I think SqF has to go well beyond simply promoting. IT has to take charge of the image evolution and deployment issues that are either outside SqC's charter or for which SqC simply lacks the resources.
So I'd suggest:
"To evolve, maintain, and promote Squeak as a...."
--- John Tobler squeaker@diganet.com wrote:
I wrote:
"To evolve Squeak as a well-supported, freely-available, evolving, open, portable, and exquisite computing platform."
I *meant*:
"To promote Squeak as a well-supported, freely-available, evolving, open, portable, and exquisite computing platform."
John Tobler squeaker@diganet.com http://cyberjet.tripod.com/grepninjalog/
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
===== ------- Dan Shafer, Author and Community Consultant ^. .^ | Commentator on Community, Web Building, Nanotech ='= | Sr. Co-Editor, Online Community Report | Author, NanoTech, MegaQuake: Business Implications of Squeak| Nanotechnology (Spring 2002), Wiley, ISBN 047120045X ------- http://www.gui.com (major update Spring 2001)
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Dan Shafer suggested:
"To evolve, maintain, and promote Squeak as a...."
With yours, we have duplicate evolves but you have herded me back toward my original mis-statement. How about going even simpler:
"To evolve Squeak as a well-supported, freely-available, open, portable, and exquisite computing platform."
John Tobler squeaker@diganet.com http://cyberjet.tripod.com/grepninjalog/
Yeah. Elegant. --- John Tobler squeaker@diganet.com wrote:
Dan Shafer suggested:
"To evolve, maintain, and promote Squeak as a...."
With yours, we have duplicate evolves but you have herded me back toward my original mis-statement. How about going even simpler:
"To evolve Squeak as a well-supported, freely-available, open, portable, and exquisite computing platform."
John Tobler squeaker@diganet.com http://cyberjet.tripod.com/grepninjalog/
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
===== ------- Dan Shafer, Author and Community Consultant ^. .^ | Commentator on Community, Web Building, Nanotech ='= | Sr. Co-Editor, Online Community Report | Author, NanoTech, MegaQuake: Business Implications of Squeak| Nanotechnology (Spring 2002), Wiley, ISBN 047120045X ------- http://www.gui.com (major update Spring 2001)
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/
squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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cg＠cdegroot.com -
Dan Ingalls -
Dan Shafer -
Dwight Hughes -
John Tobler -
Jörn Eyrich -
Paul McDonough -
Raab, Andreas -
Tim Rowledge