On Dec 10, 2004, at 3:25 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:
>
> It shouldn't come to anyones surprise that if you leave a community 
> that this community will go into a different direction.
>
>      Marcus

I think that Marcus is dead-on with this comment.  People shouldn't be 
surprised if parts of the system that they contribute get abandoned if 
they're not there actively promoting and maintaining them.  (And I 
disagree with Andres:  Andreas is actively promoting and maintaining 
his pieces of Squeak, and as an active developer, it's certainly part 
of that role to critique what others do and encourage what he wants to 
see.)

But I think that Lex's point is also quite valid: What about the 
newcomers to Squeak?  What is their expectation about Squeak, and do we 
them (and the community) a disservice by not making some effort to meet 
that expectation?  Expectation failure doesn't encourage people to join 
a community.  The important question for the community, then, is to 
define: What is Squeak?  By answering that, we can more effectively 
promote that definition and encourage the appropriate expectation.

I'm biased here, but I think that one of the ways that people discover 
Squeak is through the OOPSLA paper by Dan et al. and the White and 
NuBlue books.  We certainly don't want to let EVERYTHING in those 
publications define Squeak -- that would completely limit the 
community's ability to change.  But I do think that the NuBlue book's 
title, "Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia" is a pretty 
good definition, and one that the other publications agree with.  
Squeak is about open personal computing and multimedia.

That's what concerns me about the current process in Squeak -- it's 
setting aside the personal computing and multimedia aspects (for now -- 
I do understand that) in favor of improving the underlying base.  I 
understand that current members of the community consider those 
"goodies" (such as Wonderland and eToys) to be "hacks," but those 
"hacks" brought in many people to Squeak.

I do appreciate what Stef and the Berne group have brought to Squeak, 
and I think that the environment that they propose for 3.9 sounds like 
an exciting one to work in.  But here's my suggestion: It's not Squeak, 
at least not as it has been defined and communicated in the past.  When 
the base is improved and the personal computing & multimedia "goodies" 
are ported back (if they are), then it might be Squeak again.  But as 
Marcus points out, that will only happen of the multimedia developers 
are still around then, and they might not be during the interim -- it's 
not clear that people interested mostly at the level of the base image 
are the same kind of people who want to build things like eToys and 
Wonderland.

I make two concrete proposals -- they're alternatives:
A. Call the new thing something else.  Let "Squeak" end at Version 3.7 
or 3.8, unless someone wants to continue it as a tool for personal 
computing and multimedia.  Don't let the expectations of "Squeak" limit 
where the current community wants to go.  Use the new name to attract 
new attention (maybe get Slashdot to notice?) and to signify a new set 
of emphases.
B. Or, call the 3.9 version "Squeak 4.0," and make it clear that there 
is no promise of compatibility or multimedia features across the 
boundary from 3.X->4.0.  Say that clearly on the Website, and make the 
final 3.x version forever available.  If people want "personal 
computing and multimedia," they can download the final 3.x.  If they 
want the coolest open source Smalltalk on the planet, with the base 
hooks to grow one's own personal computing and multimedia (like the 
really interesting eToy/Wonderland substitute whose URL Marcus sent 
around), then let them grab the latest 4.x version.

If a day comes when the "goodies" get folded back in, maybe we can 
re-merge.  But nobody should hold their breath waiting for it.  The 
Georgia Tech group and Andreas' Croquet group can decide which 
version(s) they want to develop from, and perhaps fork if they want.  
(FYI, the "Scratch" project at the MIT Media Lab is building on Squeak 
2.7 -- the forks are already happening, so we might as well be honest 
about it and stop battling over the name.)  But by making a clear break 
with the past, Stef and the Berne group have a freehand to take the 
base image in the directions that they want, and people who come to 
Squeak with the "personal computing and multimedia" expectation can 
make a choice.

Mark
__________
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing/GVU
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Collaborative Software Lab, http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~mark.guzdial/