That's OK, I didn't take it personal. Glad to hear that there is no 
real problems then (apart from discussing the actual process); thanks 
for saying this.


On Monday, February 24, 2003, at 12:26 PM, Martin Wirblat wrote:

> Hi Roel and Andreas,
>
> I must admit my post sounds really somewhat naive. Perhaps I reacted 
> to fast
> and emotionally on a proposal which I misinterpreted as being a 'Taking
> control' in the sense of having the power to decide without any 
> previous
> discussion. I fully agree that there must be a leadership and that 
> those
> leaders will be found naturally and automatically among experienced and
> responsible people. So I were glad when Roel posted that he never 
> thought of
> bypassing any discussion and I feel sorry if I irritated anyone with 
> my post.
>
> regards,
> Martin
>
> "Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote on 23.02.2003 23:57:43:
>>
>> Hi Martin,
>>
>> I don't know how far your experience in the Open Source community 
>> reaches
>> but I think that your views are somewhat naive here. First of all, 
>> when we
>> refer to "dictatorship" then what we mean is an entity that ultimately
>> decides what is part of the "core release" and what isn't. Such an 
>> entity is
>> present in pretty much every Open Source project I know about and 
>> currently,
>> it's called "the Guides" in Squeak. You may not see them as a 
>> dictatorship
>> but the Guides "hold the keys" and as such are executing the ultimate 
>> power.
>> SqC merely didn't delude itself about this fact. And there is no 
>> problem
>> with it - at some point either an individual or a group of people has 
>> to
>> make the ultimate call on deciding some issue.
>>
>> Secondly, it is  always  the case that people have 'special opinions' 
>> about
>> the way 'how things go' (as you put it). In the small, it's when you 
>> decide
>> to write your own code instead of using someone else's, in the large 
>> it's
>> the maintainer of a package at SqueakMap who may or may not decide 
>> what
>> enhancements he or she will ship with the next version. Yet, typically
>> there's no problem here either. Quite to the contrary. Literally all 
>> people
>> I know who manage some part of a system are VERY responsible people 
>> who will
>> rather go over code again to make it fit their expections (and by 
>> doing so,
>> often fix some more bugs ;) than blaming someone else or blindly 
>> reject it.
>> How comes?! If they don't then (one or more) possible contributors 
>> will get
>> so pissed off that they start rolling their own (effectively, this is 
>> what
>> happened with "the Guides vs. SqC"). And it is that competition that 
>> will
>> ultimately decide the issue - because if the community by the large 
>> is feels
>> that some person is being unable to handle things it will switch to 
>> the
>> competition. With the advent of SqueakMap this is really easy. So 
>> that the
>> only place where this can become a problem is when licensing issues 
>> prevent
>> you from making up a competitive package - which is one of the 
>> reasons why
>> everything going into the "core release" absolutely has to have an 
>> open
>> license in order to prevent permanent lock-ins of the community.
>>
>> Thirdly, many (all?) of the ideas that evolved and changed Squeak 
>> started
>> out as private discussions. You will never (well, assuming you're not 
>> a
>> total nut ;) send - for example - a radical proposal to the entire 
>> community
>> right away. You will first check out people who you think have a good
>> judgement about how the community may react, if that is something 
>> that might
>> be worthwhile, a Good Idea. Many of those ideas die after the first
>> mentioning. Others don't. They will get relayed (for example to the 
>> SqF
>> list) further relayed (for example to Squeak-Dev) and give a larger 
>> part of
>> the community the ability to voice their opinions. Such as yours. 
>> Again,
>> none of this is a problem for the community unless final actions 
>> happen
>> based on those private communications.
>>
>> In this concrete case, I completely disagree with your point of view. 
>> I
>> think it is way about time for the Squeak community to actively hand 
>> out
>> responsibilities for those parts of Squeak which are currently 
>> "unmanaged".
>> In effect, this means nothing but handing some person or group the
>> responsibility to "take care" of some currently unmanaged aspect of 
>> Squeak.
>> If it happens to be the case (such as here) that this group of people 
>> has
>> both the need for an actively managed part of Squeak as well as the 
>> ability
>> to evolve it towards new and better ways that's an added bonus.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>  - Andreas
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>>> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On
>>> Behalf Of Martin Wirblat
>>> Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 5:07 PM
>>> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>>> Subject: Re: Taking control of parts of Squeak
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hi Roel and you all down there in Bern!
>>>>
>>>> Roel Wuyts <roel.wuyts at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
>>>>> Hi Goran,
>>>>> before mentioning anything on the list I'd like to
>>> discuss some views
>>>>> we have here on how the decentralization of
>>> responsibility of Squeak
>>>>> could be done.
>>> .....
>>>>> - all changes to the part that you are responsible for,
>>> can only be
>>>>> approved by you.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, that is the idea with responsibility! :-)
>>>
>>> Not a good idea for the core release. For everyone who had
>>> problems with
>>> the way Squeak Central behaved ( I read something like
>>> 'dictatorship' on this
>>> list ), this will be an even worse repetition of the past.
>>> Imagine that there
>>> is someone on the 'approval-trigger' who has a 'special'
>>> opinion of how things
>>> have to go, or who is more and more considered by the
>>> community of being not
>>> able to make the right decisions.
>>>
>>> How to change it and even how to say it?
>>>
>>> IMHO this is not 'community'. I would like to add that mails
>>> regarding this
>>> should be sent to the main list and not privately.
>>>
>>> regards,
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
Roel Wuyts                                                   Software 
Composition Group
roel.wuyts at iam.unibe.ch                       University of Bern, 
Switzerland
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~wuyts/
Board Member of the European Smalltalk User Group: www.esug.org