Hi goran

I think that the Guides are ok and that stuff is moving in the right 
direction. I imagine what it is to be at your place. (This is a bit the 
same with ESUG :). Sometimes I have to play the bad cop but nobody pays 
me for that and this is not fun to do.)

- We need to setup a process where groups of people can see their 
code/changes more efficiently put in the stream. But this is coming.
- We need a place and process were projects are listed
	- such as good networking
	- multimedia

Other community has Call for Improvements or other stuff. So andreas 
would simply describe
I need that and that and that because this is important. One page. 
People could sign up.
Then when the stuff is at the right level, it could be added to the 
full blown distribution.

- The guides would review and be pushing to get new exciting stuff in 
Squeak (in scripts that load in the fullblown image).

I think that you are doing well and SM is ***important***. We are 
passing from an oligarchy to democratic process and this is difficult. 
Once the first age will be passed, groups will maintain their stuff.

I remember that when I arrived to Squeak I shout that Squeak was not 
open-source and people shot at me. I just see that the community 
openness is young and that we have to learn how to communicate, have 
medium to express wishes (good network/multimedia support/...).

I saw so many good people looking at Squeak and saying nice but I 
cannot contribute (my changes were lost....) that they turned to other 
systems. And this is what we should avoid.

Stef

PS: May be we should use ESUG as a Squeak meeting point.






On Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 04:31 PM, goran.hultgren at bluefish.se 
wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> "Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>> What I feel _really_ unhappy about is the complete absence
>>>> of any vision (and action) which goes beyound "hack it up in
>>>> small bits".
>
> Well, I have a vision. But the Guides never promised the community a
> Vision. We are trying to moderate, enable, coordinate. Not lead or
> dictate. Yes, I agree - we more or less end up leading anyway - but it
> still isn't the intention of The Guides.
>
> We don't claim to know the Single Truth about what Squeak "should be".
> And frankly - whichever Truth we would present there would be people
> dropping out of the community because they don't agree with that single
> truth.
>
>>> Well, that *is* the strategy. One I'm all in favour of.
>>
>> You are confirming my worst fears.
>
> Why? Personally the strategy is one that I am also much in favour of. 
> If
> you think it is a bad strategy then I would like to know why.
>
>>> So if you ask me "what is the implicit strategic vision behind what
>>> we're currently attempting to do", it is (ugly buzzword warning) to
>>> redefine Squeak as a platform (an operating system done
>>> right) which is distributed, by default, as a rich personal
>>> multimedia environment.
>>
>> With not a single thought being put into the "rich personal multimedia
>> environment" part? And you think that this will work (yeah, maybe for 
>> a year
>> or two). You're going to end up as a competitor of any of the other
>> scripting languages, just not a good one.
>
> Now you are not being fair. Again - I think the most important role of
> the Guides is to *enable* different directions to coexist. That is my
> personal vision. To make Squeak - as a tool and as a community -
> *scale*. Just like Debian does.
>
> And if there are a lot of people in the community working out really
> cool multimedia stuff then I am just the happier.
>
>>> The end result for 3.7 should be that the default download image
>>> (kitchensink, in cdegrootspeak) from Squeak.org should look
>>> *exactly* as it looks now
>>
>> Just my problem. It will look *exactly* the same for the next ten 
>> years if
>> there isn't any vision about where to go.
>
> Now you snipped the part where Cees added that he hoped it would 
> include
> a lot of new stuff - and you are also deliberately "misunderstanding
> him" because you know - as well as we all do - that Cees was trying to
> emphasize that the image will still be there, just like it is today.
>
> It's just that it will not be as bloody messed up as you guys managed 
> to
> get it. (just couldn't resist)
>
>> Ah, shoot. Why am I even writing this. The battle is lost anyways. 
>> There is
>
> What battle? How do you mean lost? You aren't getting away that easily 
> -
> tell me exactly what your perceived problem is instead. Is it that we
> don't all share the Golden Goal of Rich Multimedia? Or is it that you
> don't think we are doing the Guiding part good enough?
>
>> simply nothing I can do convince the guides that the media (and many 
>> other)
>> stuff is as important as any of the other activities. At least it is 
>> now
>
> Come on. We know that. But hey - why don't you just sign up as a
> Harvester and *help out* then?
> The thing we *do know* is that we simply need to get better
> infrastructure before we selfimplode.
>
> So yes, I personally think SM is more important right now than 
> TrueType.
> Why? Because it is the enabler to get all those hundreds of talented
> developers engaged in the process again making 10 other TrueType
> packages to pick from!
>
> SM is so damn simple. But still you didn't bother to build it did you?
> It's about *enabling distributed development*. Enabling people to
> maintain a piece of it all. It is a powerful and important thing.
>
> As far as I remember you didn't take one single step in this direction
> when you were steering the boat.
>
>> clear to me that the original vision of Squeak is really dead today. 
>> "Thank
>> you" for making this so utterly obvious.
>
> It's not dead. Squeak has just gotten a whole bunch of other stuff 
> going
> too.
>
>> Bye,
>>   - Andreas
>
> This whole discussion is disturbing me. I thought we were doing "ok" -
> sure, the Guides aren't saving the world. We are just 6 of you guys. We
> try to do the right thing and we try to listen and moderate discussions
> - boil stuff down to decisions etc. Obviously Andreas think we are a
> complete failure - he wants us to have a Grand Vision. He wants us to
> lead the charge into the Future.
>
> I don't know what to say. Perhaps we are failing and if all of you 
> think
> that then hey - speak up! I don't want to put a lot of work into stuff
> that the community don't want... In that case I have better things to
> do.
>
> thoughtful, Göran
>