I've reviewed the Swiki page, and I think the best proposal is Dwight's:
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.
mostly because it is a single sentence, it is balanced between concrete (Squeak) and open-ended (whatever may evolve from what we now call Squeak), and has a bit less buzz than Paul's version ;-) .
Are there people who seriously object to this purpose? If not, I propose we make it version 1 and go on with Principles. It's an iterative process, after all, so we can always come back to this point.
Are there people who seriously object to this purpose? If not, I propose
we
make it version 1 and go on with Principles. It's an iterative process,
after
all, so we can always come back to this point.
Well, there are a few other proposals and I do not see any reason to restrict a "vote" to the proposal which was selected by you. A strange way to start SqF ...
Andreas
a.kuckartz@dokom.net said:
Well, there are a few other proposals and I do not see any reason to restrict a "vote" to the proposal which was selected by you. A strange way to start SqF ...
I did this to keep discussion flowing. Someone (a role I like to call Chief Whip) has to do that. I revisited the proposals on the Swiki page, and this was the only one that combined in a single sentence the essence of what I think everyone thinks that the SqF should be. The other proposals on the page all seem to be "older versions".
Now, it would be strange if I'd pick one and say "that's the one". But I /proposed/ one, mainly because discussion stopped. Judging by the fact that three of the four respondents agree with both the proposing and the proposal, it doesn't seem to be that unreasonable a step.
I did this to keep discussion flowing. Someone (a role I like to call Chief Whip) has to do that. I revisited the proposals on the Swiki page, and this was the only one that combined in a single sentence the essence of what I think everyone thinks that the SqF should be. The other proposals on the page all seem to be "older versions".
I agree about keeping things moving.
The charter doesn't have to be cast in concrete during this period, I don't think. it just has to be workable enough to move on to the next steps. I think of it like, we're assembling something complicated, and right now we're putting everything together "finger tight" just to get all the pieces in place. When it all seems to hold together, we can tweak the parts and tighten the bolts.
And more about moving forward... I'm hoping by the weekend to put out a list of projects and processes that I can imagine taking place between SqF and SqC in the next 6 months to a year. This may seem out of sequence in the chaordic plan, but my hope is to sort of load our cache with some of the situations we (at least I) will want to deal with, so that the orderly plan goes forward with these in mind.
Ciao - Dan
I'm hoping by the weekend to put out a list of projects and processes that I can imagine taking place between SqF and SqC in the next 6 months to a year. This may seem out of sequence in the chaordic plan, but my hope is to load our cache with some of the situations we (at least I) will want to deal with, so that the orderly plan goes forward with these in mind.
(Oh, you thought I meant last weekend? ;-)
I want to start by acknowledging John Sarkela for undertaking to test what could be a very workable Squeak Foundation release process. And Dave Thomas for encouraging him to do so.
What John did was to dismantle the current release, parition it into various packages to a certain extent, make some important replacements (unrestricted fonts, for instance), and get the whole thing working again. You have to pick a fixed point for this, and you can't have a bunch of other people participating very easily (though this should change as we strengthen the partitioning into real name spaces).
This is what SqC should do at each release, but neither do we have the time nor the focus (we've got focus, but it's usually elsewhere). Therefore I really think it's something SqF should do. Here's my hope for how Squeak releases might get made once SqF is underway:
The base image is nicely built up from modules Starts as a micro kernel suitable for building simple headless apps. Adds enough programming environment to have fun on PDA's (like present majorShrink but less cruft) Adds a package mechanism Adds all the stuff in 3.1 as packages corresponding roughly to the major system categories All the SqD's (Squeak developers, of which SqC is one one) contribute the latest version of their work in the form of one or more packages as phase 1 of a release. As part of each major release, SqF undertakes the process of integrating these as best they can, writing or suggesting more documentation, and sending tentative releases back to the SqD's in some sort of alpha, beta, gamma test cycle. At the end of this cycle, SqF puts out any number of release images (probably a tiny, and a jumbo at least), and all the final packages as approved by the SqD's. Also a set of VMs for each platform of significance. (Some of these may be assembled elsewhere, but SqF is the clearinghouse for shoppers) Each of the SqD's may also maintain and distribute their own possibly more current versions of special-interest images (Siren is an existing example of this).
It's not rocket science. In fact I anticipate a certain amount of anti-pink backlash about this rather mundane vision. But here's my feeling about that. It's much easier to convene an organization around well-specified stuff that has to get done, than it is around a bunch of blue-sky research ideas. Especially if you have no funding.
This doesn't mean giving up on blue-plane progress. This community is full of good people with good ideas for cool directions to go with Squeak. Think of the pink plane as soil and fertilizer. If we do our job on the pink plane, a thousand blue flowers will bloom there next year.
And if there is a decent open process in place (the above is more open than what SqC now does), then the mainline Squeak will follow the blue successes faster than it does now. That would be a Good Thing.
- Dan
Dan Ingalls Dan.Ingalls@disney.com is widely believed to have written:
The base image is nicely built up from modules
The nice thing about having this is that, just as we could do with VMs, you don't actually have to keep any bigger images around except for some possible convenience. And if the kernel image can be made small (where the definition of 'small' is completely open right now) it would make good sense to _always_ bind it into the core VM executable.
Oh and we might want to think of different term to SqD's - it sounds like 'squids' which is a somewhat derogatory term in motorcycle-land for the sort of nitwits that ride top-end sport bikes badly, without any protective gear, and generally irresponsibly. You know the sort - 18 year olds with rich parents that buy a GSX1000 as their first bike. Not the image to mix with responsible, sober, thoughtful Squeak developers. Sorry, excuse the saliva on the screen, I'm getting the giggles here...
tim
Dan.Ingalls@disney.com said:
Here's my hope for how Squeak releases might get made once SqF is underway:
Quite sensible, and I don't think anyone disagrees on the chopping up bit. With help of an appropriate toolset (maybe we could ask Cincom to donate a port of Store :-)) I think it is quite doable to make this a comfortable process.
I like this approach a lot. I keep thinking of SqC as the R&D group, SqD (I agree we need a better set of labels all around) as the product development group, and SqF as the marketing and sales group. With the added wrinkle, of course, that the product development is largely "outsourced."
The release plan seems _exactly_ right to me. --- Dan Ingalls Dan.Ingalls@disney.com wrote:
I'm hoping by the weekend to put out a list of projects and processes that I
can imagine taking place between SqF and SqC in the next 6 months to a year. This may seem out of sequence in the chaordic plan, but my hope is to load our cache with some of the situations we (at least I) will want to deal with, so that the orderly plan goes forward with these in mind.
(Oh, you thought I meant last weekend? ;-)
I want to start by acknowledging John Sarkela for undertaking to test what could be a very workable Squeak Foundation release process. And Dave Thomas for encouraging him to do so.
What John did was to dismantle the current release, parition it into various packages to a certain extent, make some important replacements (unrestricted fonts, for instance), and get the whole thing working again. You have to pick a fixed point for this, and you can't have a bunch of other people participating very easily (though this should change as we strengthen the partitioning into real name spaces).
This is what SqC should do at each release, but neither do we have the time nor the focus (we've got focus, but it's usually elsewhere). Therefore I really think it's something SqF should do. Here's my hope for how Squeak releases might get made once SqF is underway:
The base image is nicely built up from modules Starts as a micro kernel suitable for building simple headless apps. Adds enough programming environment to have fun on PDA's (like present majorShrink but less cruft) Adds a package mechanism Adds all the stuff in 3.1 as packages corresponding roughly to the major system categories All the SqD's (Squeak developers, of which SqC is one one) contribute the latest version of their work in the form of one or more packages as phase 1 of a release. As part of each major release, SqF undertakes the process of integrating these as best they can, writing or suggesting more documentation, and sending tentative releases back to the SqD's in some sort of alpha, beta, gamma test cycle. At the end of this cycle, SqF puts out any number of release images (probably a tiny, and a jumbo at least), and all the final packages as approved by the SqD's. Also a set of VMs for each platform of significance. (Some of these may be assembled elsewhere, but SqF is the clearinghouse for shoppers) Each of the SqD's may also maintain and distribute their own possibly more current versions of special-interest images (Siren is an existing example of this).
It's not rocket science. In fact I anticipate a certain amount of anti-pink backlash about this rather mundane vision. But here's my feeling about that. It's much easier to convene an organization around well-specified stuff that has to get done, than it is around a bunch of blue-sky research ideas. Especially if you have no funding.
This doesn't mean giving up on blue-plane progress. This community is full of good people with good ideas for cool directions to go with Squeak. Think of the pink plane as soil and fertilizer. If we do our job on the pink plane, a thousand blue flowers will bloom there next year.
And if there is a decent open process in place (the above is more open than what SqC now does), then the mainline Squeak will follow the blue successes faster than it does now. That would be a Good Thing.
- Dan
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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Cees-
Works for me, especially as a way to keep moving forward.
-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
Cees de Groot wrote:
I've reviewed the Swiki page, and I think the best proposal is Dwight's:
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.
mostly because it is a single sentence, it is balanced between concrete (Squeak) and open-ended (whatever may evolve from what we now call Squeak), and has a bit less buzz than Paul's version ;-) .
Are there people who seriously object to this purpose? If not, I propose we make it version 1 and go on with Principles. It's an iterative process, after all, so we can always come back to this point.
Haven't had time to catch up fully on all this, but count one more who'll go with that for now.
Paul Fernhout wrote:
Cees-
Works for me, especially as a way to keep moving forward.
-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
Cees de Groot wrote:
I've reviewed the Swiki page, and I think the best proposal is Dwight's:
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.
mostly because it is a single sentence, it is balanced between concrete (Squeak) and open-ended (whatever may evolve from what we now call Squeak), and has a bit less buzz than Paul's version ;-) .
Are there people who seriously object to this purpose? If not, I propose we make it version 1 and go on with Principles. It's an iterative process, after all, so we can always come back to this point.
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.cdegroot.com http://lists.cdegroot.com/listinfo/squeakfoundation
cg@cdegroot.com (Cees de Groot) is widely believed to have written:
I've reviewed the Swiki page, and I think the best proposal is Dwight's:
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.
I think that quite reasonably states things, it seems to me to make sense when compared to Dan's suggested charter and my own ideas, so yes, I'd support that. Gotta move on this stuff before we get hardening of the arteries.
tim
squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Andreas Kuckartz -
cg＠cdegroot.com -
Dan Ingalls -
Dan Shafer -
Paul Fernhout -
Paul McDonough -
Tim Rowledge