At 10:29 AM +1000 6/21/00, Mike Thomas wrote:
>Hi Stephan.
>
>I agree with you.  This seems to be a commonly stated view on this list, but
>there seems to be some kind of historical momentum built up which is not
>going away in a hurry.  On one level that is fair enough too if that is what
>the people who do the work want (the open source do it yourself philosophy).

This is a mistaken view.  Nobody thinks that Squeak "needs" to look 
any way.  Its just that everyone has a different view as to what are 
the priorities.  The vast majority of contributors here are 
interested in the "innards," knowing they are capable of making it 
look any way they want for meaningful application cases.

Whether or not the failure to see what Squeak can be "made to be" in 
terms of appearance is a failure of imagination, the real bottom line 
is this:  If you don't like how it looks, fix it!

That is the mantra of the Open Source movement.  Squeak is whatever 
you want it to be.  There are many widget sets out there, and many 
ways to duplicate existing OS looks and feel.  Rewriting MacOS or 
Windows isn't really of interest to some, but may be to others.

If you are one of the others, by all means, please do it.

The long and short of it is this -- in an open source project, the 
community decides its priorities, but on an individual by individual 
basis.  We all have different views what things should be done next. 
If yours is pretty widgets, make 'em.

That's the open source way.
-- 
Andrew C. Greenberg		acg at netwolves.com
V.P. Eng., R&D, 		813.885.2779 (office)
Netwolves Corporation		813.885.2380 (facsimile)
www.netwolves.com

Please use werdna at mucow.com instead of werdna at gate.net