Hello Craig,

I would just like to offer my thanks for your work towards this vision.

I believe that this could provide an excellent option or opportunity to 
the Squeak community to possibly do somethings that are currently 
struggled with. I believe it is easier to build upon than to cleanly remove.

A strong healthy small core from which to build will be awesome and 
enabling.

Many like to think of Squeak in OS or environment terms. I agree.
You can pretty much live in the Squeak world.

But, I know for myself I have never treated my OSes like Squeak is treated.

Whether installing MacOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, etc. I always install as 
whatever I need to support whatever I am doing. I don't put Gnome-games, 
X-games, etc. in my servers. I don't put Apache, etc. in my Desktops. 
Just examples. I've always handpicked what I installed within the 
liberty given me by the installers.

Why should Squeak be different?

It is great that Squeak has all these abilities.
But few of us use everything in Squeak. And even fewer still use 
everything all the time everywhere.

The WebDev guys don't really need or desire all the 3d or games or music 
or ... in their WebAppServer images.

The Educational guys don't really need or desire 
TheGreatestWebAppServerEver on the children's images at school.

This brings to a more modular Squeak. It seems to me that the best way 
to get us there is something like Spoon.

We need a small minimal image that is ready to have things ported to it 
and built upon it.
 From there if you want it all in one image. Go for it.
If you want a webserving image. Go for it.
If you want a multimedia master image. Go for it.

I don't know how this all plays together with exciting stuff like the 
64bit vms and Exupery ...

One quick comment. I don't what thought's you've given towards this 
direction. But it would be nice if what you have is 64bit clean, so that 
I can compile it on my Opteron machine.

Squeak 3.x is here, it exists.
Anybody who wants to use the all-in-one system can.
And going in a direction such as a minimal-build-it-up image does not 
take anything away from them.

I think the small Smalltalk image and system you build up, could have 
potentially prevented or at least mitigated the heated discussions 
recently on squeak-dev. It definitely allows for multiple visions to be 
pursued cleanly without minimal conflict. IMHO.

I very much think that it is time for the Squeak community to vote on 
things like this by actions and not words.

I believe that Squeakers will vote for what enables them to move towards 
the future best. Whether that be carving and cleaning Squeak 3. Building 
the heretofore spoke of Squeak 4. Or something a little more different 
such as Spoon or Slate.

Again, I said all that to say thanks.

I can't support you with money or code.
But I can cheerlead. :)
And let you know your not alone.

Jimmie Houchin