Hi Diego,

in my opinion you are posing a strategical question, while the problem is
tactical.

The right Squeak goal is to be both "Media" AND "Traditional", because this
will be the final need for any application we will write in the future.

We can reach this result if will have many people that use Squeak.

Certainly, if we have no user, Sqeak will die.

How will we have more users ?

The question is the same as "why Java succeeded and not Smalltalk ?"

You cannot aspect that everybody will understand Squeak, which is years
beyond the normal development tools and we cannot succeed with only a
technical approach; we should start a marketing approach.

Please, note that a marketing approach is not a synonym of commercial
approach (that is money oriented): is only an approach oriented to
demonstrate which is the best tool, defining what a modern tool is, not only
from a technical point of view, but from usability and many other aspect
that we do not point out.

>From this point of view, the dichotomy you are proposing is very dangerous:
I believe (for example) that the possibility to have an uniform environment
for all kind of work is an enormous advantage.

But you must educate people to understand which are the modern values for
tools evaluation: you can address data models no more, while world models
are the main concern.

In my opinion this is Smalltalk weakness: it has been proposed as the right
tools for developing application, but which kind of application was not
clear.

But what must you consider in order to evaluate an environment ? If you
consider only the capability to manipulate data (with the model we are used
from a procedural point of view) you will never be able to convince people
to use Squeak; on the contrary, if you are able to point out all the modern
problems in data processing (flexibility, different environments etc),
everybody will understand that an investment in knowledge is need: in such a
case, Squeak is certainly the best solution.

But for that, you must convince people that a new point of view is needed
and everybody is worried in changing old habits.

So, if we think that Squeak is for an elite, the current approach is ok; if
we want survive, we must divide our conviction with everybody, after
educating them (my definition of marketing).

This was the Smalltalk problem and in my opinion is Squeak's.

Ciao

Lorenzo


----- Original Message -----
From: <diegogomezdeck at consultar.com>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 10:23 AM
Subject: What we want with Squeak?


> Hi,
>
> I think we're really near to find *the* source of all these discussion we
> have periodically since SqC leaves Disney.
>
> What we want with Squeak? Clearly there are 2 groups:
>
>   - The "Media-Squeakers" (in Andreas's words)
>   - The "Traditional-Squeaker" (in my words)
>
> I'll try to explain creating radicalized descriptions of these groups:
>
> The Media-Squeakers believes in Squeak as the most promising incarnation
of
> the Dynabook concept. These guys want TTF in the Image, Sound, Midi, PDF
> support, SVG readers/writers, Improved Look&Feel, Video support, etc and
> they are able to accept a big core image.
>
> The Traditional-Squeakers are more interested in "normal" development with
> Squeak and they are interested in SOAP, Relational DB Access, CORBA, CVS
> support, cgi-type web servers, native-widgets, etc.  These guys want a
> really small core image with nothing more than stdio support.
>
> If we don't agree with the goals difficulty we'll agree on methods.
>
> We have to decide what we want with Squeak and accept that, probably, the
> goals of these groups are not the same.  Personally I think we have not
> enough resources to try to get all the goals of both groups.
>
> In the SqC age the Media-Group was in charge and Squeak has excellent
> multimedia capabilities and absolute no support for "traditional"
> development.   In the Guides-Age these goals, imho, are not so clear.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Diego
>
>
>
>
>
>