I've been following this discussion with great interest and then I see...

> packagizing of Squeak is of zero interest to me personally and I suspect 
> it will diminish the synergy that was so enjoyable in the old Squeak.
>
BINGO and DITTO! To *me* personally, what Bob says here is absolutely on 
the money, 200 percent and then some. When I first got introduced to 
Squeak about three years ago(?), it was at 2.7. A long time Smalltalker 
(10+ years plus) IBM guy I  worked with would constantly be saying 'Ah yes,
  but in Smalltalk it's practically free (class creation overhead)' and so 
on while we developed a C++ object engine for a database, all the thorny 
issues in C++ he would say 'Oh, in ST you would just become that object' 
etc etc. He then showed me 2.7 on a ThinkPad and I've been sadly, madly 
addicted since then. I judge all other IDE's and languages against 
Smalltalk and they all come up short most if the time, IMO.

The *best* think about a Squeak download is the sheer volume and diversity 
of classes you get built in. As well as the expected boring stuff (numbers,
  strings, files etc) you get Morphic, you get MPEG stuff, Sound stuff, 
WarpBlt, JPEG, images flying everywhere, the paintbox, scripting, eToys, 
Scamper, Celeste, and so on...this was what blew me out in the early days.
  it still does to some extent as the range is always increasing it seems.

If I had had to download and install other packages to do all those things 
it currently does out of the box, I just know that I wouldn't have 
bothered and moved on to something else....maybe? I remember reading the 
original Smalltalk Byte(81) article and thinking 'this is brilliant' but 
being young and green, Smalltalk passed me by as I continued college etc 
etc jobs...life etc etc.

To *win over* newcomers then, I think that a massive, bloated, 
splitting-at-the-seams image is how it should be, and currently is. When I 
first got into Linux, the thing that stumped / irritated / confused me the 
most was the 'perceived complexity' of matching libraries against distros.
  of this and that to make things work. Indeed, the first time I got Squeak 
to run on Linux box it took some long head-banging and judicious use of 
'ln'!

A newcomer does not want this. IMHO, a newcomer will definitely not want 
to know JS about what modules are. Hey, I just bought a Ferrari, why do I 
need to know about hydraulic brakes, I just wanna burn rubber. FAST!

As a developer, I see the value in modularizing the bits and pieces but I 
think that it should be very well hidden through a superb interface for 
newcomers lest they get put off and think it's too difficult.

Squeak will never die because it is just too good a meme that has infected 
too many people!

Sean Charles.

PS: Tim, your mail server might be able to beat up mine but my dongle is 
bigger than yours.