Hello,

> By the way, how many squeak-related lists are there at the moment? I 
> know of squeak-dev (which I read more frequently since Cees shrinking 
> experiences), squeak-ev (german squeakers list), tweak and, only partly 
> squeak related smallwiki and seaside. Islands? Another list about an 
> ongoing squeak development? Also, there are squeaksource (not every 
> interesting package gets announced) and some other (more or less 
> private) squeaksource servers. Additionally, one should check the 
> minnow-squeak swiki changes from time to time.

  I'd like to point out that there is Japanese community.  For
example, the Squeak-ja mailing list
(http://www.smalltalk.jp/mailman/listinfo/squeak-ja) has over 460
members (and growing); several books about Squeak in Japanese were
published and some of them (two of them, if I remember correctly) hit
the #1 spot of a weekly book sales ranking among the computer books.
I have no idea how many "users", but probably the number if more than
any number we imagine^^;

  They have eToys books as well as technical Squeak programming books.
HP Japan has formed a formal organization called HP-Squeakers to
support the Squeak activity in Japan that consists of more than 100
employees.

  Note that most of these people are eToys users.  I kind of like the
idea to split out unused, broken, or unfinished pieces in the Squeak
image, but splitting out eToys don't sound like a great idea.  It
would put the eToys to second citizen class and harder to maintain.

  Agressively shrink the base image is interesting, but the idea
wouldn't be compatible with the idea that kind of community has.

  I have no doubt that the new leadership understands there is this
kind of wish.

  And if... some of you use claim you're a Squeaker and use PowerPoint
as a presentation tool...  I don't know what to say...

  Just my 2 cents,

-- Yoshiki

  Last little note.  I thought I read some piece of email questioning
Michael Rueger's qualification.  He doesn't write too many emails to
the squeak-dev, but as far as I know, the 3.8 mainstream release will
be packaged by him.  Some Squeakers talk with him almost like
daily/weekly basis.  Calling him "someone who did the network rewrite"
is very, very "dispowering" way of calling him.