Hi all Squeakers!

There has been some heated discussion on this list regarding a range of
different things. Now I am trying - as a Guide - to turn all this
discussion into something concrete. Please be patient and don't flame me
if I get something wrong. But please voice your opinions on my proposal
in this post.

NOTE: I am writing this post without having discussed any of this with
the other Guides. I felt speed was important and I simply assume they
will make their voices heard in replies to this post.

And also - I urge everyone, us Guides included - to read our mission
statement again and think hard about if we are doing the right things
and how we are doing them. Its at:

	http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/squeakfoundation/71

Now lets get down to some real issues.
-------
Problem #1:
The decision process is... well, do we even have one? ;-)

Background:
We Guides thought that we could simply let the decisions "take
themselves" informally on the list as long as we kept us available in
the threads and made sure that conclusions were drawn. It has worked to
some degree but not good enough. We have also utterly failed in
recording decisions - I am the first to admit that. And this is also
perhaps the most important thing to fix - forget about all the technical
issues etc - if we don't have a working decision process all falls
apart.

Medicine:
My proposed medicine comes in two pills - a simple "protocol" and a
role.

The protocol is for dealing with proposals. Python has a scheme called
PEPs - http://www.python.org/peps/.  (Python Enhancement Proposal). I
would like to simply call ours "PROPs" - as in proposals. They need not
be focused on Squeak itself but also on how we work, our own processes.
And I have tried to make our PROPs much simpler than Python's PEPs. PEP
is described in detail here: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0001.html

NOTE: The idea to borrow PEP from Python has been brought up before on
this list by Serge Stinkwich. It was his idea, not mine!

A PROP is simply a message to squeak-dev with the tag [PROP]. The
subject after the tag is the title of the proposal - try to keep it
short and snappy. The mail should be in simple text (no HTML email etc)
and *must* include these three headlines to be valid (but can optionally
contain a few more of your liking):

Author - Your name. Sometimes people don't have that in the "From" field
when they post. Optionally also type in your email, even though that
should be in the from field.

Problem - Describe the perceived problem that the proposal addresses.

Proposal - Describe the proposal.

Well, that's it. If anyone wants to add a mandatory headline then please
make sure we really need it. KISS. And then perhaps Bert (?) can filter
out these little suckers somehow.

Otherwise Avi or I could easily whip up a little web app where these can
be registered and managed - but let's start RIGHT NOW by doing it as I
described above. We can always move them over to such a little websystem
later. Ok?

Pill number two is to set a Guide responsible for keeping track of these
PROPs, maintain a list somewhere, make sure they are decided on etc
through voting or whatever means he/she chooses.

Exactly how this Guide deals with this process is up to that person to
figure out. That is called delegation. I would assume though that the
Guide doing this looks hard at Python for inspiration.

And just to make sure you understand I mean business with this proposal
- I am willing to take on this role for starters but if someone else is
eager then fine by me, I have lots to do with SM anyway - AS LONG AS
SOMEONE TAKES THAT ROLE. Ok? It is simply of utmost importance.

----------
Problem #2:
There is a perceived lack of Vision from the Guides. The community wants
to know "where" we are heading. I have picture hanging in front of me as
I write this. It is a poster from ThinkGeek. It looks like this:
http://www.despair.com/ignorance.html

Background:
We Guides wrote a mission statement. It does actually contain goals and
duties etc. I am not sure how many have read that statement. But anyway,
there are people who surely have read it and still think that we lack a
Vision. Us Guides are wrestling with this because we have different
visions about Squeak. But we could of course try to see if we can "flesh
it out" more than the mission statement contains.

Medicine:
I can understand the perceived lack. I also urge people to realize how
hard it will be for us to produce a Vision that is concrete enough to be
interesting and still broad enough to cater to all of us in this
community.

But we Guides will try to formulate in more detail where we hope that
Squeak is going and our motivations for doing the things we are doing.
The result will be a revised mission statement - call it version 2. :-)
And if the other Guides are with me on this we will do this by running a
discussion on the SqF-list where we synch our ideas/visions with each
other and try to come up with something we can stand united behind. And
hopefully this will be good enough.
------

Well, that was that. 2 pills and a promise to revise the mission
statement.

Now, hit me. [Asbest new wearOn: self] fork

regards, Göran