I have just finished reading up on what has happened so far.
Things seem to be stalled. Is everybody waiting for Dan Ingalls's announced list of projects and processes?
My stab at two most important principles: * have clear deliverables for each activity (code in the distribution image, documents, whatever) * accurately document the current status
But I admit I have difficulties with this chaordic thing (I nearly fainted when I read that many organizations take a year or more to go through the process...). Maybe we should just all blurt out what we want to see in terms of activities, and draw abstract concepts from that later, if we want.
I'll just start:
* First, let's change the purpose from "To assist in the evolution" to "Drive the evolution"
Ok, granted, that was still on meta level, but here goes:
I want the Squeak Foundation ... * to appoint a person as "keeper of the VM" for each platform this person is responsible to provide an up-to-date VM to a central location and a list of supported/unsupported features of this particular platform (Sound, Tablet, whatever) (typpical example: when ian piumartas releases new sources, take patches from lex spoon's patches page, apply them, ship new vm; when an update changes the interpreter, rebuild vm and ship) * in a similar vein, to strive for a full implementation of all the existing features that are possible on a respective platform * to modularize the image (however that may look) and then maintain a small baseline image and add-on modules * to maintain a web-based defect tracking system for the bits distributed by it * appoint someone(s) to harvest the list for contributions/fixes * keep some sort of regression test suite to help prevent bit rot from release to release * have an easy way to accept project proposals/requests and let people vote on what the want most * to be different from the squeak mailing list in terms of ... well, I don't know exactly how to explain it - I have a feeling that often, on the list someone suggests something, zillions of people agree, and then nothing happens; SqF should say "we want xyz (New Compiled Methods, Block Closures, Jitter, a slicker Look, get rid of Apple's fonts, ...), and then go for it, (let someone) create it, and then integrate it * connected to that are rules for decision-making - a broad discussion is already possible on the mailing list - decisions should be made in a smaller circle * now then, how do we select that small circle? voting? who can vote? all list-members? I like the Apache foundation's approach of inviting members. of course, then, how do we select the initial member(s)? I suggest let's start with "President Tim", or maybe SqC could choose? or maybe (probably!) somebody has a different idea
On the other hand, I don't want the Squeak Foundation ...
* to only be a philosophizing (?) debating club * to be like STIC - can't really describe that, too - it's just that the scent of irrelevance surrounds it
What else should be thought of:
* how to work with Stable Squeak World Tour, Camp Smalltalk, whoever else?
I realize much of this is easier said than done. And some of it may not be desirable to most people. Please say so, I think it is as important to know what you do NOT want as to know what you want. If enough people say what they would like to see, eventually something will emerge that most people want.
If not, we can scrap the Foundation anyway.
Joern.Eyrich@brokat.com said:
But I admit I have difficulties with this chaordic thing (I nearly fainted when I read that many organizations take a year or more to go through the process...).
Well, organizations are often setup for "eternity". What's a measly year compared to that?
On the other hand, I don't want the Squeak Foundation ...
- to only be a philosophizing (?) debating club
Neither do I. Nor do I want to quickly throw together a SqF and have us all discover that we didn't want /that/ SqF in 6 months. The idea is to do a bit of structured thinking work up front (and I think that the Chaordic process helps with that) so we can do more useful things later on.
However, it seems that there's not much interest in this process. Which is a pity, because it is one of the few ways I know to get all the agendas on the table, get an inventory of who are /really/ interested enough to put in some work, etcetera. A pessimist would say at this point that SqF can't reckon on broad support. An optimist thinks that I simply fail to drive home how important a bit of thinking and philosophizing (without reverting to BDUF) is :).
Apart from the last two points (about the "small circle" - I'd rather have a proxy voting mechanism or something like that in place for decision making) I think it's a very useful list of items. However, the /only/ way to give the SqF the power of authority to actually pull this through is when either we as a community setup a broadly carried SqF through a process like the current one, or we sit back and wait for SqC to do so (that is of course what basically happened with ApacheF). I think the results will be much better if we, as a community, do this.
Anyway, people are busy, so I wanted to wait another week before taking a "despair" measure and simply copy the NAMA list over :-).
Cees de Groot wrote:
Joern.Eyrich@brokat.com said:
But I admit I have difficulties with this chaordic thing (I nearly fainted when I read that many organizations take a year or more to go through the process...).
Well, organizations are often setup for "eternity". What's a measly year compared to that?
Yeah, well .. but ... life's short, you know ;-)?
On the other hand, I don't want the Squeak Foundation ...
- to only be a philosophizing (?) debating club
Neither do I. Nor do I want to quickly throw together a SqF and have us all discover that we didn't want /that/ SqF in 6 months. The idea is to do a bit of structured thinking work up front (and I think that the Chaordic process helps with that) so we can do more useful things later on.
This wasn't meant as a criticism of the current process. What I meant was no matter *how* we go about setting up the foundation, there's always the chance that once it's active, there will be much discussion and nearly no tangible results. The important word for me here is "only". The statement would have been more balanced had I added "Blind activism without thinking won't get us anywhere, either, though."
However, it seems that there's not much interest in this process. Which is a pity, because it is one of the few ways I know to get all the agendas on the table, get an inventory of who are /really/ interested enough to put in some work, etcetera. A pessimist would say at this point that SqF can't reckon on broad support. An optimist thinks that I simply fail to drive home how important a bit of thinking and philosophizing (without reverting to BDUF) is :).
Well, the process sounds intrigueing (sp?) somehow, but I have problems with the strict top down approach. On the the chaordic web site once they speak of "dimensions" instead of "steps" - this appeals more to me, implying that the different aspects should be thought of and evolved simultaneously; maybe I just like the "cha" part better than the "ord" part.
In other words, what I'm suggesting is more of a brainstorming type of approach: Collect people's ideas for whichever aspect of SqF and then take a step back and organize the stuff. What do others think?
Apart from the last two points (about the "small circle" - I'd rather have a proxy voting mechanism or something like that in place for decision making) I think it's a very useful list of items.
Thanks. I concentrated on the stable, traditional-dev-env aspect of Squeak. I hope people with more fantasy will also make suggestions about various new directions for squeak.
However, the /only/ way to give the SqF the power of authority to actually pull this through is when either we as a community setup a broadly carried SqF through a process like the current one, or we sit back and wait for SqC to do so (that is of course what basically happened with ApacheF). I think the results will be much better if we, as a community, do this.
Actually, I would be delighted if we could integrate the views and desires of as many people as possible. It's just that in my experience the chances of success are proportional to the inverse square of the number of people involved (similar to the collective IQ of a group ;-) ); but then, people often characterize me as a pessimist ...
I think people will be pragmatic here. If SqF is useful to them, they won't care if its members were elected or appointed by SqC (or even appointed themselves); if it's not useful to them, they will ignore it no matter how its authority was legitimated.
But as Andrew C. Greenberg would probably put, it: Reasonable people may disagree. And I encourage you to do so on this list.
Anyway, people are busy, so I wanted to wait another week before taking a "despair" measure and simply copy the NAMA list over :-).
Hey, we could call SqF the "International Rodent Alliance" and actually save some typing with that - but IRA, hm... maybe not
In my experience, it's easier for people to comment on a proposal (hey, I don't agree with that; hey, I miss xyz in this) than to volunteer their own ideas. Maybe it is a good idea to just copy for a start and invite people to comment on it.
Joern.Eyrich@brokat.com said:
Well, the process sounds intrigueing (sp?) somehow, but I have problems with the strict top down approach
It's only the first iteration. I think it is a very sensible order to think about what you want to be, without too much context. When you're down the list for the first run, next iterations will probably a bit less order and more chaos.
It's just that in my experience the chances of success are proportional to the inverse square of the number of people involved (similar to the collective IQ of a group ;-) ); but then, people often characterize me as a pessimist ...
One of the stronger points of a chaordic organization is that it attempts to reverse that relation. The basic rule is "put responsibilities at the lowest possible level", which is easy to say but hard to execute...
Cees de Groot wrote:
Joern.Eyrich@brokat.com said:
Well, the process sounds intrigueing (sp?) somehow, but I have problems with the strict top down approach
It's only the first iteration. I think it is a very sensible order to think about what you want to be, without too much context. When you're down the list for the first run, next iterations will probably a bit less order and more chaos.
Hm, I was thinking we were trying to progress from chaos in the beginning to order later. I guess I should have read a bit more about chaordism before starting to discuss it... As nobody else seems to have problems with it and discussion is flowing again, I'll do my best to go along with it.
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