[ANN][IMPORTANT] New leadership formed!

Stephan B. Wessels swessels at cox.net
Wed Feb 16 04:32:50 UTC 2005


I wonder how many Smalltalker's I've met who used to do a lot more work 
in Squeak but have either given up and gone onto something else or 
decided to avoid the mailing list, etc.?

I know of individuals that fit into one or more of these:
	- frustrated that bugs posted to the mailing list are still in the 
product after 4 years
	- frustrated that worthy features published to the list are ignored
	- frustrated with how a lot of things are just not finished
	- frustrated with an appearance of an "in crowd" that decides where 
the group as a whole focuses (although I do not applaud committee based 
design)

Okay, so I really love Squeak.  I truly believe it's the future of 
Smalltalk.  I use Squeak every day.  Further, we have some of the 
finest minds in OO working either on or with Squeak.  How can we go 
wrong?

However, I do not grasp how this activity furthers any real growth in 
Squeak.

I'll keep an open mind but my first reaction is to speak up and say 
"wait a second".  Help me to understand better why this is good thing.

Cheers,
   - Steve

On Feb 15, 2005, at 6:40 AM, goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:

> Hi fellow Squeakers!
>
> Pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab hold of your keyboard and read the
> rest of this posting - even if it *is* long. Ok? :)
>
> 	"Are we rising again?" "No. On the contrary." "Are we descending?"
> "Worse than that, captain!
> 	we are falling!" "For Heaven's sake heave out the ballast!" "There! 
> the
> last sack is empty!"
> 	"Does the balloon rise?" "No!" "I hear a noise like the dashing of
> waves. The sea is below the
> 	car! It cannot be more than 500 feet from us!" "Overboard with every
> weight! . . .
> 	everything!"
>
> Thus starts chapter 1, "Dropped from the clouds", of the book "The
> Mysterious Island" by Jules Verne. The Mysterious Island follows the
> adventures of a group of five castaways who use their survivalist savvy
> to build a functional community on an uncharted, faraway, fantastic
> island of bewildering goings-on.
>
> Our sacred balloon is also in trouble. We need to loose weight because
> we are drowning in endless debates and non functional processes. We 
> need
> to get a good lightweight leadership in place. This island, the future,
> is also full of wonders but still largely uncharted. Can we succeed in
> building a functional community? Yes, we can. So, "dropped from the
> clouds", we will try:
>
> The Castaways
> -----------------
>
> The last six days there has been some off list activity in forming a 
> new
> leadership for Squeak. Yes, you read it right - the Guides are now
> *officially retired*. From this point and forward there is a new
> *temporary* group consisting of five castawa... eh people, that now
> leads Squeak:
>
> 	- Göran Krampe
> 	- Doug Way
> 	- Cees de Groot
> 	- Marcus Denker
> 	- Michael Rueger
>
> This group reads squeak-dev of course, but is also reachable at:
>
> 	mysterious-island at discuss.squeakfoundation.org
>
> We are *leading* the Squeak community, not guiding. Well, that was the
> summary, you have questions? That's odd. :) Read on.
>
>
> Questions and Answers
> --------------------------
>
> Q: How on earth did this happen? :)
>
> Well, very sudden. I (Göran) got a sudden urge/jolt/whatever six days
> ago and just ran with the ball. This is NOT a reaction against the
> current ongoing SqF formation (see below) - in fact - it is rather the
> opposite.
>
> Q: How does this relate to the Squeakfoundation formation going on?
>
> First of all, only some of you know (not publicly announced yet, so I 
> am
> spilling the beans here) that there is a SqueakFoundation formation
> process recently started. It aims to put a real foundation in place 
> with
> capacity of real funding etc and this work continues. A lot of people
> are involved in that process and we have high hopes for it.
>
> Us five castaways are not leading that process, Stephane Ducasse and
> Michael Rueger are (Michael is in our group too, but whatever). The 
> idea
> is that the castaways is temporarily in charge, *until* and *if* SqF
> delivers a scheme for forming a new leadership. When and how that will
> happen, we do not know.
>
> Also note that everyone in this group is actively participating in the
> SqF formation. Finally, we think forming this leadership will help the
> SqF formation a lot - because now there is a group leading that can 
> take
> decisions and implement suggestions, and pave the way forward.
>
> Q: Who gave you permission to do this "coup" you sneaky bastards!?
>
> Noone did, because before today there was no decisional body or forum
> that could grant it to us! This is the first step - an interim group
> that stands up, takes charge and leads. One important thing though - 
> the
> former Guides and Stephane Ducasse (leading the SqF formation process)
> stands behind this new group and support us.
>
> We are also all dedicated to the community - and you who know who we 
> are
> can attest to that. This is NOT some "hostile takeover" of any kind. We
> are doing this hoping for ALL your support and we expect to not let you
> down. We are putting ourselves on the line here. We are taking on the
> responsibility and hope we can deliver.
>
> Q: Why aren't the other three guides in the group?
>
> This is a group specifically focused on community decision-making,
> building consensus etc. Ned, Craig and Tim (the former guides not in
> this new group) are all top notch Squeak developers but they are quite
> busy doing what they do best - cranking out cool code. And this group
> both needs to be rejuvenated and to be small. Ned, Craig and Tim or
> anyone else will get their chance of being in this group in the future,
> since we are only grabbing a temporary "mandate".
>
> Q: What does temporary mean exactly?
>
> We don't know. 6 months, a year? We will see. But it IS temporary in 
> any
> case, if SqF hasn't formed a replacement scheme - then we will solve it
> some other way, like for example by putting a new group in place.
>
> Q: What is this group called? Mysterious Island is a bit long...
>
> Yeah. :) Castaways? Settlers? Silly-sods-taking-all-the-crap? Hehe, you
> decide.
>
> Q: What happens now?
>
> In day-to-day practice not much revolutionary will happen immediately.
> Things continue mostly like before - but there are a few big 
> differences
> in how the community will operate:
>
> 	- Decisions that needs to be made for Squeak will in the end be made 
> by
> us. Of course, the discussions are as open as always right here on
> squeak-dev, and we are not claiming to know everything - people with 
> the
> knowledge still affect the process just like always. In fact, this is
> more of a responsibility than anything else. We take the responsibility
> to make the decisions instead of just having discussions turning into
> endless debate.
>
> 	- You can always ask us. Since we now make the decisions and thus,
> consequentially, form the direction forward for Squeak - we should be
> able to answer any questions with authority. This helps the community a
> lot.
>
> 	- Any and all Squeak issues should be discussed just like before, on
> squeak-dev. Yes, we do have the private list mentioned above - but it
> will not contain any discussion except for when we think it is needed 
> to
> do it privately. The Guides did everything openly. We do not and we
> require at least a small private forum in order to operate well.
>
> Other than that, the plans haven't been made yet. We have promised to
> take a good look at the roadmap Stephane has presented and will 
> probably
> do that as one of our first tasks. And all the other things going on at
> this moment continues as before, like the restarted partitioning of the
> image etc.
>
> How we will organize within our group, with roles and how decisions are
> tracked etc, well, we haven't decided yet. But from now on you can use
> mysterious-island at discuss.squeakfoundation.org to reach all of us. More
> on that later.
>
> So if you want to alert us and make sure your issue isn't drowning in
> squeak-dev, use the above. We are of course all reading squeak-dev, but
> sometimes the traffic can be intense and CCing to the above will make
> sure we can filter it out.
>
> If anyone has additional questions - feel free to just reply to this
> posting (on squeak-dev) and we will try hard to answer. :)
>
> regards, Göran Krampe on behalf of the castaways
>
>
--
Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible.
   - alan kay
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