All-
On reflection, as I try to reconcile Andreas Raab's perspective with my own perspective, I wonder if we are both looking at the Squeak Foundation statement of purpose through the wrong end of the telescope.
That is, we are both looking inwards to discussing purposes and projects to support "Squeak the artifact" as opposed to looking outwards to purposes and projects to support "Squeak the community". The two are naturally related, but the choice of perspective might have a profound influence on how we all think about the Squeak Foundation, as well as how the Squeak Foundation carries out its operations and sets its priorities.
We could switch the SqF purpose to a "community" focused one about "supporting Squeak community processes" instead of a "code" or "content" focused one about "supporting Squeak technical artifact handling". Such a shift in focus might allow the Squeak Foundation to better view and handle issues related to conflicts between pink plane (present) and blue plane (future) Squeak activities.
Perhaps one of the reasons we have not been thinking this way so far is that many generous individuals in the Squeak community have on their own (or through allied institutions) already created and maintained mailing lists, Wikis, and Web servers related to Squeak. They have done this so well, and for so long, and with such enthusiasm, that we have come to take for granted the fundamental community infrastructure behind the Squeak phenomena. The social and technical infrastructure underlying the Squeak community has become invisible (except perhaps to the actual providers of it). Yet, there still remain rough edges, for example with the Wiki technical infrastructure as Simon Michael pointed out on 25 May 2001. This example shows the potential benefit of an organization dedicated to among other things ensuring reliable community services (with more resources at its disposal than that of, say, an individual at a university). This would be especially true if the Squeak community should suddenly grow immensely in response to a sudden breakthrough release or even just experience sustained exponential growth through word of mouth.
How would this shift in perspective change the wording of the purpose?
Here is the current purpose showing an artifact focus: : The Squeak Foundation's purpose is: : 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.
Here is a purpose with more of a community focus: : The Squeak Foundation's purpose is: : To support the vitality and evolution of a chaordic community : creating, maintaining, enhancing, discussing, and using : an exquisite personal and collaborative computing ecosystem : of tools, components, infrastructure, knowledge, and content : derived from or inspired by Squeak or Dynabook technology : which are open, well supported, and freely available : and make use of ever increasing computing power for humane ends.
For me, this purpose passes the test of: 'If we could achieve that, my life would have meaning.' http://www.chaordic.org/what_des.html
Of course, this purpose isn't exactly achievable because it is more a process of ongoing activity than a realizable goal. But that's a minor quibble, and for me it defines a direction worth striving towards.
As a shorthand, one can abbreviate this entire purpose in casual conversation as: "To support the Squeak community and its computing ecosystem." However, I think the longer formal definition is needed for detailed long-range decision making, and should be part of a related non-profit's legal charter.
One could think of SqF as the VM underlying the Squeak community. Note that under this new purpose, the Squeak Foundation itself might not be chaordic at first even if it supports chaordic processes in the larger Squeak community (although I think it should be nonetheless, to preserve accountability to the community). It also presumes -- I think correctly -- that what is going on already with the Squeak mailing list community and current development processes is to a large extent chaordic in the way it is self-organizing. Also note the principles discussed on the list before could remain pretty much as they are now.
I added the last clause in the purpose in part related to the recent comment I made on the Squeak list about Squeak file seek primitives needing to support 64 bit offsets, given IBM's announcement of 400GB desktop drives likely in the next couple of years. Moore's law and related trends mean computers at the same cost will be about 1000x faster and bigger for the same cost in somewhat over ten years, and about 1,000,000X faster in about twenty to thirty years. Alan Kay's Dynabook concept was in part envisioned assuming this trend. Ten to twenty years is easily the lifetime of any foundation, and I think the exponential aspect of the current computer technology situation should be explicitly taken into account in our plans.
I wanted to include the terms "humane ends" http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn/?stage=1&word=humane http://www.context.org/ICLIB/DEFS/hsc.htm and Alan Kay's "Dynabook technology" http://dmoz.org/Computers/History/Pioneers/Kay,_Alan/ because, for me, this purpose then also takes on some aspects of Doug Englebart's Augment vision to improve humanity's ability to collaborate using computers [to solve pressing world problems] http://www.bootstrap.org/ as well as including some aspects from the Theodore Sturgeon short story "The Skills of Xanadu".
I'd put Doug Englebart's "Augment" in explicitly in the purpose as in "Squeak, Dynabook, or Augment technology" if it would fly with people on this list. Augment-like technology is implicit in where the Squeak community is heading now with Nebraska. I feel the Augment collaboration ideal will only grow in prominence in Squeak as time goes by. When asked recently how the web could be made better, Alan Kay cited Doug Engelbart's 1968 Augment work, so I think there is some synergy there as Squeak moves into supplying more web services. In a way, all the concrete SqF projects Andreas Raab outlined on 25 May 2001 from faqs to web indexes are in effect collaborative Augment type projects.
Kay, Engelbart, Sturgeon (and others like Vannevar Bush http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm or Ted Nelson) http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/ all had key visions of a hopeful future using computing around the 1950s and 1960s. A missing piece of these visions was the free software (Richard Stallman) http://www.fsf.org/ or open source models (Eric Raymond). http://www.opensource.org/ Free implementations of the still relevant parts of these visions done using Squeak can help steer computing to what I feel is the better end of the possible spectrum -- as far as helping humanity survive with style the upcoming "Singularity" related to the exponential growth of computing capacity foreseen by Vernor Vinge. http://www.extropy.org/eo/articles/vi.html http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/memelist.html?m=1 http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html
What sorts of concrete projects would fit under this purpose? Certainly all the ones Andreas listed, as well as any of the other ones mentioned so far on this list. In short, anything that would benefit the Squeak community would be possible, which would in many cases include projects directly benefiting the development of Squeak related artifacts.
These projects could include: * coordinating one or more mainline Squeak releases, * strategic investments to get over hurdles hindering collaboration (whether involving handling licenses, underwriting development, or managing complexity), * rewriting a license for a version of Squeak without fonts, * negotiating with Apple for an alternate base license if desired, * serving as a single point of contact for organizations outside the community (like foundations or businesses) wishing to support the grassroots Squeak community, * creating and organizing educational materials about Squeak, * supporting talks and conferences to promote Squeak usage, * helping catalog orphaned projects and passing them onto new maintainers, * creating mini-Faqs like Andreas suggested and distributing them on a regular basis, * providing free web hosting and mailing lists related to community projects (like SourceForge but for Squeak and running on Squeak), * creating or fostering self-organizing indexes of what is out there in the Squeak ecosystem and presenting these catalogs both within and without the community, * giving SqueakC a home if Disney is ever foolish enough to let them go, and * setting up community accepted processes to "bless" versions of various Squeak artifacts as they are collaboratively developed and released.
Fundraising might then commence related to supporting such projects (although many of these could be done without funds by individuals willing to volunteer time or resources as they do now). Naturally, the Squeak Foundation might then undertake to raise significant funds from a variety of sources and spend them for targeted development, integration, or testing to support certain goals for subcommunities (say business Squeakers). As long as this funding was done in the light of supporting the community (say to overcome specific hurdles holding the community back), aspects of fairness related to keeping voluntary efforts going would be considered in the funding decisions as a matter of course -- since the fundamental purpose of a chaordic organization needs to be kept uppermost in mind in planning activities. The assurance that the Squeak Foundation would always put the interests of the Squeak community foremost would address a major concern related to the potential negative effects of such funding on volunteerism. (Not to say there might not still be significant negative effects from funding, but hopefully the community benefits would outweigh them.)
To summarize, a purpose oriented around supporting a "community" rather than a "code base" permits more room for managing conflicting priorities related to using Squeak for: * educating creative children, * empowering individuals to be productive and creative, * helping groups to work together to solve complex problems, * making shippable applications, * creating embedded systems, * providing commercial web application services, * implementing in-house IT solutions, * exploring the frontiers of object computing, and finally * mitigating as best as possible any negative effects of the exponential growth of computing.
All in all I feel this community perspective is more sustainable in the long run for supporting the common goals that have brought us all together to the Squeak mailing list. I also think the community perspective is an easier short run sell to everyone on the list.
-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
=== withdrawing some objections ===
Making the Squeak Foundation purpose a community one that supports a "meta object-community protocol" :-) has many benefits. Here is one:
I had previously written in DanI's "The Natives are Restless" thread:
I would also suggest that (no offense intended) we not expect SqueakC members to be in charge of SqueakF. This is in part because SqueakC has lots of other things to do, and in part because what's the point of just having a second SqueakC with the same exact strengths and weaknesses? (Liason or advisory roles is a different story, as would also be the situation for ex-SqueakC people.)
If we shift to a community focus for the Squeak Foundation, (which might be reflected by changing the name to the "Squeak Community Foundation"), then my feelings would change greatly about the involvement of SqC personnel in a SqF (or "SqCF"?).
A "Squeak Community Foundation" would benefit greatly in credibility and fund raising appeal by having people like Dan Ingalls or Alan Kay on its board of directors, or steering and executive committees.
When any SqC people gave talks on the "Squeak Community Foundation" (as opposed to their own SqC work), it would then be clear from the start just from the name that they would be talking about the Squeak community as a process first, and some current versions of some Squeak artifacts second. Naturally they could talk about their own work as part of that, the point being that SqC work at Apple and later Disney was a key "quantum barrier reducing" enabling effort that allowed the Squeak community to tunnel through comp.lang.smalltalk and coalesce, http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&selm=3251FC00.39A3%40Taurus.Apple.c... and that they are still active participants themselves in the larger Squeak community.
There still might be issues concerning SqC people in leadership roles that would apply for anybody, but those would be based purely on issues of time availability (or employer restrictions). There couldn't be a major conflict from the directions in which SqC thought Squeak should progress, because those decisions would not primarily be made by SqF but would ultimately emerge from the Squeak community, which SqC staff might be supporting in general in their voluntary SqF role.
I might still be concerned if SqC had the majority of board of trustee positions (given their focus on education and individual empowerment) in a foundation that was supposed to support a whole community of Squeak interests. However, I would feel that way too if, say, "business squeakers" or "embedded squeakers" or even "singularity squeakers" had a majority of board seats.
The Squeak Community Foundation might also provide opportunities for some people to support Squeak while still accepting some of the constraints any employee of a company that produces copyrighted material (which would include SqC staff) might otherwise be under from their employer regarding ownership of copyrights or patents. Whatever the status of copyrights or patents produced by employees in their spare time (sometimes assigned to the company), generally speaking employers don't put many restrictions on other forms of charitable activities employees may do on their own time (like organizing swim meets or giving public talks at their local ACM chapter) and some even encourage such activities as part of personal and professional development. So, if such employees were willing to help with all the non-copyright aspects of supporting the Squeak community, they would have a way to do that through participating in a non-programming ways (educational outreach in schools, giving local ACM chapter talks, fund raising, running booths at conferences, managing finances, making badges, etc.) through the Squeak Community Foundation. Talks by anyone from SqC at universities about why to get involved with the Squeak community, done under the banner of the Squeak Community Foundation (not Disney), might do wonders for increasing the size of the Squeak community. Obviously, anyone out there working for a company (including SqC staff) should still ideally first make sure their activities (even if not copyright or patent generating) do not violate the terms of their employment, just to be on the safe side, since open source or free software involvement of any kind is still probably a gray area at most companies.
-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
== some organizational structure ideas ===
How about an organizational structure with "chairs" for representing the following interests (derived from the previous post on community focus):
* education squeakers (Alan Kay?) * individual-empowerment squeakers (Dan Ingalls?) * group-empowerment squeakers (Bob Arning?) * shippable squeakers (Dave Thomas?) * embedded squeakers (Tim Rowledge?) * web-services squeakers (Cees de Groot?) * in-house squeakers (John Sarkela?) * frontier squeakers (Jecel Assumpcao Jr?) * singularity squeakers (Paul Fernhout?) and let me add: * microbot squeakers (Jon Hylands?) * intellectual-capital-appreciation squeakers (Jim Spohrer?) * music squeakers (Danny Oppenheim?) * AI squeakers (Sam Adams?) * digital-library squeakers (Les Tyrrell?)
I just tried to fill in slots with an example person off the top of my head who might be interested -- if you want to play a role or not, please chime in! In practice, things will be shaped by whoever participates.
No doubt more "chairs" might be needed in the future to represent the interests of other subcommunities. Also, there wouldn't have to be a one-to-one correspondence of board positions to chairs, since these (overlapping) sub-populations might need different levels of representation (akin to U.S. House vs. Senate representation). Certainly education squeakers, individual-empowerment squeakers, and frontier squeakers are more heavily represented on the Squeak list right now, although proportional representation might just lock in that demographic as opposed to support a diverse evolution of the overall Squeak user population (since the Squeak list so far has been self-selecting for those groups since those activities are what Squeak is most useful for right now).
This is just a suggestion to get people talking. Obviously we might prefer to divide things along other lines (fundraising, education, technology) or have some sort of matrix.
The interests and people listed above might end up more as committee chairs than board members. Like in most organizations, the actual board might be selected (or emerge) in practice more for experience, trustworthiness, vision, community visibility, fund-raising ability, and an iron stomach for cocktail party schmoozing. :-)
-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
=== coordinating with the chaordic alliance ===
With a community focus for a "Squeak Community Foundation", we could also approach the Chaordic Alliance and Dee Hock http://www.chaordic.org/ for some organizational process help (or even fundraising advice). We might also exchange help -- perhaps making a Squeak application useful as an open chaordic IT infrastructure for their Terra Civitas Chaordic Commons. http://www.chaordic.org/commons.html
A closer relationship with them might mean they could also extend their 501(c)(3) status to act as a tax-exempt financial sponsor http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/bus_info/eo/index.html to get things rolling until the Squeak Community Foundation got its own exemption. There are other organizations that could do this, some of which have been mentioned before on this list. (A good choice I have talked to for other reasons is Tides around San Francisco, CA). http://www.tides.org/center/index.cfm However, the Chaordic Alliance might be a great choice if the foundation is supporting a chaordic Squeak community.
Note that for companies, which can deduct some contributions to organizations as a business expense (depending on the situation), being tax exempt may not be a big thing for encouraging donations. However, to encourage larger contributions from foundations or individuals, tax exempt status would help.
-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
=== how I could support a Squeak Community Foundation ===
As Michael Phillips says in "The Seven Laws of Money", http://www.well.com/~mp/ one of the most important aspects of any organization is having "supporters", from whom volunteer effort and money will flow if the cause makes sense to them. That is one reason I have kept asking "money for what?" in an effort to determine the cause for which we are expecting to get supporters. With "supporting the Squeak Community" as the cause, I think we are in better shape to think about activities related to that cause.
For example, with a community of 1000+ Squeak users who are Squeak Community Foundation supporters, $20 from everybody would produce more than enough to pay the direct costs for a non-profit incorporation, for a dedicated Squeak box through an ISP for use by the community for a reliable Wiki (perhaps including user accounts for Squeak servlets on a model like the Python "Starship"), for a "Squeak Community" booth at a few conferences (staffed by volunteers), and for a monthly Squeak community conference call. These last three would directly support the community. The first, incorporation, becomes an enabler of the last three in regards to fund raising.
In my own case, this enlarged Squeak community purpose would make me a stronger supporter of the foundation. In general, it would probably lead me to focus more of my efforts on Squeak and less on alternatives, since the larger Kay/Dynabook/Engelbart/Augment vision is not present in a big way in most other developer communities. That support from me could come in any of several ways, including time and money.
I know some things about non-profit issues (legal, social, financial) from having been involved with a few environmental non-profits in various roles over the years (for example, I was program administrator for the NOFA-NJ Organic Farm Certification Program in 1990). My wife and I have been looking into forming a not-for-profit http://www.oag.state.ny.us/business/not_for_profit.html for our garden simulator and some technology digital library efforts (primarily as a way to limit liability, not necessarily fund raise). I would be happy to continue to comment on such issues (such I have done already).
As stated before, and moving to a level of a commitment if a community focus was adopted in the near future, I'd be willing to contribute $2000 towards removing obstacles from what we could now call "the business Squeak user community" if 50 other people will also do so through a non-profit Squeak Community Foundation. Presumably that money would be spent primarily on employing someone full-time for coordinating volunteer created contributions to a business Squeak, dealing with licensing issues and statements of originality, picking a stable and clearly licensed selection of code from what exists to produce a stable and clearly licensed cross-platform (at least Mac, Windows, Linux) ready-to-download business Squeak version (probably relying on StSq for a start), testing candidate releases, "blessing" releases, coding a few MVC or Morphic widgets business users might need, and so on. Obviously, that process of empowering the business Squeak community would entail further reflection and discussion about what really makes sense for fostering a community of Squeak business users (e.g. a focus on web vs. GUI vs. text-processing vs. embedded vs. all four) and whether targeted marketing (e.g. issuing press releases or writing magazine articles) was more essential than, say, coding.
Here are some other ways I could help with a Squeak Community Foundation. I know of a couple East Coast squeakers who work at a nearby computer company who supports some open source efforts like Apache and Linux and who perhaps might be coaxed to serve on a board of trustees. As mentioned above, I've already been looking into NY non-profit formation and could help with that process in NY if no one cares where the Squeak Community Foundation is incorporated (although I would think California is where it would incorporate otherwise, given the geographical concentration of well known squeakers there). Also, there are foundations in NYC (like the variants of Ford & Rockefeller foundations), as well as some major corporations head-quartered in NY (like GE or Pepsico), at which I would be willing to help present a proposal or demo Squeak in person if needed. I can also develop code, as I have time, to address licensing and complexity management issues related to code and content development by a large distributed community.
-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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