Hi stef

I will try to depict the situation in a few words.
This is true that squeak seems without a real direction but Squeak is 
improving and we are all learning our to work
together. This is also true that different people have different 
vision. But if we step back, we see a common trends:

	- better factored system (start of packages usage)
	- better tool support (MC, SystemChangeNotifier, SqueakSource)
	- better delivery system	(SqueakMap)
	- better core system (network rewrite, internationalisation, ...)
	- better process (this should still evolve and/or be redefined)	
We (the people from berne) and others, think that Squeak is a great 
system offering all kinds of functionality
(3D, Multimedia....) and that this community can really invent the 
future. Now we (the guys from berne) are doing
research in Software engineering and language design and we try to help 
squeak improve from the inside.
We want to ENABLE people creating wealth (3D, Multimedia, education, 
web development, new language) by
offering a system easier to understand, modify, maintain. We want that 
people having ideas and visions can
create them without having to fight with the system. What is really 
important is that squeak becomes a better
and simpler environment so good people can work  with it.  We focus on 
our area of expertise because else we
would not do anything for the community. Simple! Now we pay attention 
to limit the changes and to break as less as
possible but changes and evolution is part of a living system. But 
again this would be simpler for us to just hack in our
own stream.
	
Now we are trying to see how the situation could be more synergetic 
(more people involved, more points of views).
But in any case I think that this is important that everybody 
participate at his own level
	- creating assets
	- using published code
	- giving feedback to authors
	- reviewing fixes
	
Now if you reread the roadmap for 3.9 (which may 4.0 if people have the 
time and energy to release another version)
in between, we want to have at the core a better system for developers 
(better tools, better abstraction...) to make sure
that people like you can create new stuff and invent: the next 
generation of dynabooks, oop languages, web development environment, 
...

But this will not be without breaking some stuff.

Stef