This thread is intended to discuss the purpose of the Squeak Foundation along the lines of the chaordic design process described at: http://www.chaordic.org/what_des.html (and which Cees has participated in related to Sun's JINI).
On the Wiki at:
http://swiki.cdegroot.com/squeakfoundation/6
I found this first draft of a purpose Cees put there and thought I would add it to this thread.
Quoting Dwight Hughes: [create] from the mailing list: The SqueakFoundation should be a single, easily found, responsive, reliable, up-to-date point of contact and information for most things Squeak; should act as an organizing entity to sift out the best of the Squeak world and present it in a well-structured, easily accessed and understood form; and should create content as necessary to achieve this.
Let's think about this. Why? Why is it worth doing the above? (I'm not saying it's not worth doing, I'm just asking us to look at the deeper purpose behind such an activity.)
As it is, the above statement is a very "Squeak" oriented purpose in the sense of being a non-profit ParcPlace/Digitalk/ObjectShare/Cincom of Squeak based on the work of volunteer developers (so, perhaps Cincom crossed with RedHat for Squeak).
While laudable (and I think worth doing as a set of projects), it doesn't for me quite meet the chaordic criterion of "If we could achieve that, my life would have meaning."
Perhaps we need to think more deeply about why Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls and the rest at Xerox Parc invented Smalltalk in the first place?
-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
Paul Fernhout wrote:
This thread is intended to discuss the purpose of the Squeak Foundation along the lines of the chaordic design process described at: http://www.chaordic.org/what_des.html (and which Cees has participated in related to Sun's JINI).
Dave wrote in the thread "Goals"
Encourage the development, support, distribution and evolution of Squeak and Squeak based endeavors wherever it may be os use. Ensure that Squeak is available to future generations of researchers and educators. Encourage creativity and diversity. Try to reduce unnecessary duplication of effort and increased reuse. [nice tension <g>]
Now we are getting somewhere. Some good words in there: "Encourage", "Evolution", "Future Generations", "Research", "Education", "Creativity", "Diversity" "Reduce" "Unnecessary" "Increase" "Reuse". These sound like words that might be in a 'If we could achieve that, my life would have meaning' level purpose.
Still though, again the question of "why?".
Why is it of value to encourage the use or evolution of Squeak?
"Encouraging creativity and diversity" from the above is perhaps part of the answer.
Does Squeak or the ideas behind it have anything that sets it apart from say "encouraging the evolution of C++"? And, does the foundation want to support that larger purpose as Squeak represents it, rather than say Squeak itself?
What is "Squeak"? That is, what does Squeak represent? Why would people want it over say VisualWorks or Delphi? What do people need or want that Squeak supplies that these other systems do not? How is it that these other systems perhaps do not encourage creativity or diversity?
-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
Paul Fernhout wrote:
This thread is intended to discuss the purpose of the Squeak Foundation along the lines of the chaordic design process described at: http://www.chaordic.org/what_des.html (and which Cees has participated in related to Sun's JINI).
pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com said:
"Stable Squeak" is a project. "Better Documentation" is a project. "Hosting Conferences" is a project.
"Ensuring Reliable Technology" is a purpose. "Advancing Computer Literacy" is a purpose. "Encouraging Collaboration" is a purpose.
Isaw that one coming. I do think the SqF needs to stick to Squeak and that the reasons for doing this for Squeak should probably not be part of the purpose - maybe somewhere in the Constitution. You run the risk that Squeak is obsoleted or replaced by another project, but I think it is easier to accept Squeak as a given now that we think is worthwhile to make available as broadly as possible than to define a broader purpose which may have a longer lifecycle but will see us meandering all over the purpose map during the next few months, getting caught up in too broad discussions and eventually choking in (aaaargh) MetaProcess...
OTOH, there's a lot of merit in everyone here trying to answer the question "why Squeak?". It may give useful input to the process, and will certainly help in defining the scope of SqF.
I think that Smalltalk is a very important language for a very broad range of applications - not in the least for web-enabled software, which is my first interest at the moment because of my business. I also think that Smalltalk is much better than other languages for teaching purposes; sadly enough, teachers teach what the market wants (Java, C++) and not what helps in making good programmers. Smalltalk, IMHO, excels in transferring the principles of programming as a craft, and I believe in these principles. Programmers/CS students/... need this knowledge, and if a teacher teaches what the market wants, one way is to make the market want Smalltalk. Teaching people about computers is my second interest - partly professional because I see so many badly trained programmers, partly personal because I am still looking for something that helps me introduce computers and programming to my kids.
Together with many others I have been wanting a good, stable, free (speech) Smalltalk implementation, and found 95% of that in Squeak. Thanks to all the goodies (Morphic, Etoys, PWS/Comanche) it is frustratingly close to granting both wishes at once. That'd be a first, and that really raised my interest in Squeak. It is a unicum in that it is appliable in such a broad range of environments (as a teaching tool, a teacher's tool, but also a tool for professional programmers, students, hobbyists), and to make the most of that is what I wish for the SqF.
That narrows the scope of a SqF, in my opinion, to the support of Squeak. One could try to abstract what Squeak is and write that in the purpose, and that would probably produce an organization that would have a longer life, but I like short, to-the-point discussions and well-focused organizations - I'd rather put money in an organization that is good at Squeak and only Squeak than in some club of people who want to make the world a better place (I'm a schizofrenic, because at the same time I own a domain meant for excatly such an organization, the Software Guild ;-)).
Cees de Groot wrote:
[Other good points snipped] That narrows the scope of a SqF, in my opinion, to the support of Squeak. One could try to abstract what Squeak is and write that in the purpose, and that would probably produce an organization that would have a longer life, but I like short, to-the-point discussions and well-focused organizations - I'd rather put money in an organization that is good at Squeak and only Squeak than in some club of people who want to make the world a better place
That seems to be similar to what other people have posted on this list (Dave, Dwight). So, at least we have some more clarity on that. There is no reason the purpose has to please everyone (or me), so it's OK if people don't want a purpose that is overly broad. Self-organization involves those units for which it makes sense to self-organize around an issue. As Cees also points out, one can still find other organizations for broader purposes, and the same person can still support two different types of activity.
So, then basically the Squeak Foundation purpose is about promoting Squeak and supporting processes the develop it for maximum value for various user communities?
I guess I always saw Squeak's purposes as a bit broader still, relating more to "individual and group empowering transparent ubiquitous computing". For example, I see Squeak concepts as providing an OS neutral platform for various languages (Python, Lisp, Forth) [an open source .NET] and I don't see how that is going to fit into a mission statement that links to Squeak as is with a perception of a Smalltalk environment only. Granted, most people joining this list may have no direct interest in this, so that is not to say the purpose of the organization should necessarily incorporate that, especially if it has detrimental effect by making things too overly broad.
Here's an alternative -- anchor the effort on one side by Squeak and have it open ended on the other. For example, "To assist the evolution of a individual and group empowering transparent open-source ubiquitous computing platform starting from the initial Squeak code base".
I don't think this is out of character with for example where Alan Kay has wanted to go with Squeak in regards to a "Dynabook".
OTOH, there's a lot of merit in everyone here trying to answer the question "why Squeak?". It may give useful input to the process, and will certainly help in defining the scope of SqF.
Agreed. And it will also then be useful for mission related advertising on a foundation's web pages (so it has value by itself).
However, since Squeak is many things, it might also be useful for people to define what the "Squeak" is that they are referring to. Is it the "artifact" in the sense of the current code base, or is it the "process" in the sense of moving the image forward, or is it the "community" as in the Squeak mailing list? Or is it the Smalltalk-powered Dynabook "vision" articulated by Alan Kay?
Here is an example of how the world currently sees Squeak, from the April 30, 2001 Newsweek Magazine article on Microsoft's creation of what they think of as a Dynabook. From page 70, at the bottom: "Thacker took the prototype [Microsoft Tablet PC] to the Imagineering research lab at Walt Disney Co., where Alan Kay now heads a team trying to bring a buff update of Smalltalk into the 21st century." Is that how Squeak should be seen? A "buff update of Smalltalk", perhaps fitting into a larger Microsoft .NET world? What sort of thing would we have wanted the journalist to have written or been able to write (true at the moment or not)?
-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
pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com said:
So, then basically the Squeak Foundation purpose is about promoting Squeak and supporting processes the develop it for maximum value for various user communities?
[Trying to steer discussion back to the purpose] Yes. Re-reading Dwight's proposal, it has a lot of means and isn't too clear about the purpose. Yours:
"To assist the evolution of a individual and group empowering transparent open-source ubiquitous computing platform starting from the initial Squeak code base"
comes closer to a purpose but I have problems reading it - everything between "individual" and "computing" is one big adjective to "platform", and that strings consist of a number of words heavily contaminated by marketing guys. But I like the one-sentence formulation. Am I the only one having problems with the words "empowering", "transparent", "ubiquitous" appearing in one sentence? Is there an alternative that's as open-ended?
At 01:56 AM 04/27/2001, Cees de Groot wrote:
pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com said:
So, then basically the Squeak Foundation purpose is about promoting Squeak and supporting processes the develop it for maximum value for various user communities?
[Trying to steer discussion back to the purpose] Yes. Re-reading Dwight's proposal, it has a lot of means and isn't too clear about the purpose. Yours:
In my defense, I was outlining what I thought SqF should *do* to make itself useful - not what its ultimate goals should be. I will have a contribution on that sort of thing (and hopefully more) this evening.
"To assist the evolution of a individual and group empowering transparent open-source ubiquitous computing platform starting from the initial Squeak code base"
comes closer to a purpose but I have problems reading it - everything between "individual" and "computing" is one big adjective to "platform", and that strings consist of a number of words heavily contaminated by marketing guys. But I like the one-sentence formulation. Am I the only one having problems with the words "empowering", "transparent", "ubiquitous" appearing in one sentence? Is there an alternative that's as open-ended?
My BS alarm sounds like a KISS concert when I read a sentence like that.
How about this instead: "To assist in the evolution of Squeak into its ultimate expression as an exquisite personal computing environment that is open, well supported, and freely available across the great majority of platforms and operating systems."
I borrowed the phrase "exquisite personal computing environment" from Dan Ingalls.
-- Dwight
Or perhaps, to make it a bit more general: "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."
-- Dwight
At 12:36 PM 04/27/2001, Dwight wrote:
How about this instead: "To assist in the evolution of Squeak into its ultimate expression as an exquisite personal computing environment that is open, well supported, and freely available across the great majority of platforms and operating systems."
dwighth@ipa.net said:
I borrowed the phrase "exquisite personal computing environment" from Dan Ingalls.
All respect for Dan, but my agenda probably looks different than his - maybe I'm interested in seeing Squeak run on IBM zServers (newspeak for mainframes) replacing SAP/R3... I suggest dropping the "personal":
"To assist in the evolution of Squeak into its ultimate expression as an exquisite computing environment that is open, well supported, and freely available across the great majority of platforms and operating systems."
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