Paul,

I don't think that the licensing problems are so difficult as you seem
to believe, but this is a separate topic and there are more experienced
people regarding this topic as me.


Squeakers,

I just want to make a few comments to some technical and social topics.

Paul Fernhout wrote:
> 
> Squeakers-

<snipped>

> Such a system would have as its first priority modularizing the image.
> Such an effort might include tools to assist this process, such as the
> wonderful effort by the 4th Estate.
> 
> The effort to manage complexity would take precedence over bug fixes,
> GUIs, event handling, or anything else. It would also include building
> the image from scratch -- where every last byte was known and accounted
> for.
> 
> Once this old Squeak was modularized, then fixes would be made purely
> from the standpoint of stability. These would focus primarily on
> stability of utility related code, and secondarily on stability of
> development tools. Code would need to be added to handle common text
> manipulations, including XML input and output. GUI changes would be a
> minimum needed to control file manipulation.
> 
> Later, after this stable base existed, one could add all sorts of bells
> and whistles -- in a modular fashion.

What about realizing this building from scratch by using namespaces
(Environments, btw: What's their status?):
- building a sub system *inside* Squeak in its own namespace named e.g.
'IndustrialStrength',
- modularizing it by creating sub-namespaces,
- move Classes/methods one after each other from the fat to
'IndustrialStrength'.

So we would develop a stable base *inside* the more experimental fat
one, with all the tools currently available in the standard Squeak.
The communication inside the community would be better, because there
wouldn't be a decoupling of both developments.

The main problems - which I see here - would have a big social
component, namely to manage the processes of
- the definition of the interfaces,
- the determination of the stability of different modules,
- definition of responsibilities:
	- for groups,
	- for persons?

> I'm sure people will say this would be a lot of work -- perhaps too much
> for one person.

To much for one person, that's true.

<snipped>

> It's easy to say "just do it and it's done" when your salary and your
> employees' salaries are paid for with other people's money, where those
> deep pocketed people actually expect you to do unexpected things and
> trust you to accomplish them whatever it costs.

But I think all people would benefit from a really stable hard-core.

Greetings,

Stephan

<snipped>

> -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

-- 
Stephan Rudlof (sr at evolgo.de)
   "Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis.
    You can't simply say, 'Today I will be brilliant.'"
    -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3