Maybe my enthusiasm about the whole direction we're going colored my mail in a way I didn't intend (and I apologize if so), but I really meant it as a question - if you/SqC prefer to release 3.4 (you've already done a whole lot of work on it, at a speed and quality it will probably take us a while to approach), that is completely fine by me.

My only hurry is to know how you prefer to go about it, so I know what front to advance on. If you release 3.4, including putting whatever last touches you feel it needs, I will work on preparing some of the refactorings ready for the image. I'm sure all of us guides will be glad of a little more time to get our respective ideas in order, making SM a little more ready, picking up the submitted changesets for the last few months, and so forth.

If the taste of freedom has you hooked already :-), OTOH, we'll be glad to take you up on your offer of a bridge, we can use any help and advice you can offer.

This is a lot of work, people -- stressful, exacting, time-consuming, uncelebrated, unpaid.

Hmm, that reminds me a whole lot of my day job! ;-)

Daniel

Scott Wallace scott.wallace@squeakland.org wrote:

At 12:52 AM +0300 11/16/02, danielv@netvision.net.il wrote:

...

Hi Scott.

We got no answers from you on:

I apologize for not replying sooner, but I hope you'll find the wait has been worthwhile ;-)

...

...

Three issues we should start moving on, IMO:

1. Process to take physical ownership of updates.

• Scott/SqC - do you have any remaining agenda for 3.4a/3.2.1, to

settle before handing over the "keys"?

The Guides have the "keys" already, in the sense that no updates are being published by SqC without the prior approval of the Guides.

Having said that, I should add that I had been willing and intending and expecting to take responsibility to drive Squeak 3.4 quickly forward, right the way through to final release within the next month -- a "unification" release that could reunite the community; the last monolithic image, the last SqC image, a solid basis from which the SqueakMap culture could start to form and from which forthcoming image refactoring and stripping could start taking place in Squeak 3.5a in a matter of weeks.

Indeed, I had been thinking of it as something that SqC *owed* to the community, after this difficult year.

This is a lot of work, people -- stressful, exacting, time-consuming, uncelebrated, unpaid. Thus, the sudden prospect of immediate, complete freedom from such responsibilities is very enticing. So I accept ;-)

If the preference and mood of the community are for an immediate and unconditional and complete hand-over to the Guides, today, right now, of responsibility for 3.4 (and for all Squeak versions for that matter,) consider it done. The keys are in the ignition, guys, go ahead and drive it off ;-)

...

...

• Scott, are you interested in some role (as vaguely ;-) postulated by

goran, or otherwise) under the guidance (sic) of us Guides?

Yes, I'm willing to serve a bridging role. If the Guides want to send me fileouts for publication as updates, I'll gladly publish them; this would afford the full effect of a hand-off while not for the moment requiring us to change too many other things all at once.

...

...

• If neither of the above, can you explain the current existing tools

in the image for handling this and the required resources, so we can plan a clean transition?

Well, this communication needs to be done in any case. I will explain everything I know, but Dan is the best person to transmit most of this information -- they're his tools, and his procedures, and he is the person of record on the sites, guardian of the passwords, contact person with uiuc, etc. Ted is the other leading expert and insider in these matters.

...

And if the last, then on the technical side -

...

I assume basically we'll need some public readable, Guides writeable storage space on updates.squeakfoundation.org, and a final update on both all current servers and versions that changes the urls currently in the image. Am I missing something?

Sounds like you're on top of it. Good luck!

Cheers,

-- Scott