hi mark

Have you noticed that diego has to fork and work alone already. Don;t 
you feel that this is somehow
our failures as a community? Especially since diego was the guy pushing 
the dynabook idea and complaining that not enough was done for the 
multimedia in squeak. Where were the people to help him?

Stef


>> 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/
>
>