Bert Freudenberg <bert at impara.de> wrote:
> This is the developer's site where you get the latest and greatest. 
> Recently moved to http://squeak.hpl.hp.com/unix/

In practice, that site is not actually updated so much, for
whatever reason.  I actually point people to the download page on the
Swiki, which does get updated and has more info.  The first link goes to
this page, so in a sense it is strictly a superset of the information. 
As a particular example, Debian users definitely want to go to the swiki
site.  The site at the above URL has had obsolete packages for over a
year.  The Swiki page is at:

	"Download for Unix"
	http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/298

Whatever else you say, the hp.com site is certainly not a "master" site
in the sense of giving you full information.  Just look at the swiki
page, and then look at the hp.com site.  The Swiki page has a great deal of
information that is not on the hp.com site, and the hp.com site doesn't
even link to the swiki at all.  Thus, the hp.com site is not a page you should start
at, if you want to learn about Squeak on Unix in general.  It's a place
to find one person's work.  At the very least, if this one person is to
be officially blessed, then let's be honest about what we are doing and
stop calling it a "master" site.

Aside from that, this site has a long history of not reflecting
community contributions.  Updated Debian packages have been around for
well over a year now.  Further, there was a multi-year period when I
collected people's bug fixes on a separate site because people kept
reporting these bugs on the mailing list.  Some of these were serious
bugs -- things like "I delete a morph and my image hangs", or "my Swiki
won't start at all", or "Squeak doesn't start at all".  These only got
incorporated when a second distribution, called SHA, was on the verge of
becoming the de facto standard.  At the time, there was a suggestion
that things would change, and the site would be more responsive, and
thus everyone dumped SHA in favor of going with the above distribution. 
Now that time has passed, things seem about the same as they were before
(albeit, with those important bug fixes now included).

Nowadays, as before, when I email the address listed on the page, I have
about a 50% chance of getting any response at all.

Thus for multiple reasons, this does not seem like it should be the
official Unix VM distribution site.  It does not have complete
information, it will leave many users without what they need, and its
maintainer has a long history of not coordinating the sub-community that
runs Squeak on Unix.  While this site is notable, and people should know
about it, people should also know what else is going on with Squeak on
Unix.  We owe it to our new users not to give them broken code and
incomplete information if we can avoid it.


To be clear, I would also be happy to see some alternative resolution
where that site gets updated more often.  For example, if more
maintainers were added, so that the site could get updated more
responsively, that would be great.  I can nominate people, but just go
look who has contributed to the old SourceForge CVS repository to get
some ideas.  I am not hopeful about this idea, though.  I suggest that a
well-meaning promise of change should not be enough to keep this as the
master site, given that we have already had a claim that things will
change.  We should insist on some sort of structural change that could
plausibly make the site become a good gathering ground for the
Squeak-on-Unix Squeakers.

But really, changing that site's organization seems not only unlikely,
but overkill.  We already have a way to do community web pages: the
swiki.  It seems by far the simplest thing, to post Unix download
information on the swiki.  It's what it is there for.  Further, the
swiki page provides a great forum for Unix Squeakers to work out these
issues among ourselves.  It's a simple and effective way to give
this part of the community a voice.


I certainly agree that we should give recognition where it is due.  Ian
Piumarta's original Squeak port to Unix has served many of us very well,
and should rightfully be mentioned in any early history of Squeak.  It's
really cool that Squeak ports started appearing just weeks after the
Mac-only first version of Squeak was posted on the web.  Further, Ian's
VM is the one that most Unix Squeakers use by far.  No matter how the
Squeak web site ends up being organized, people should be made aware of
this excellent resource.


Nevertheless, we should think about today, not just history.  Surely
www.squeak.org should point users in the direction that is most likely
to be helpful for them.  Also, surely our organization should seek ways
to leverage people's contributions -- and should carefully react
whenever contributions are being blocked.  Finally, porting Squeak is
*by design* not a major effort--part of the coolness of the above story,
is that it did *not* require a huge amount of time to port it.  How much
should we defer to someone who does an initial port to a platform?


You want to grab the bull by the horns, guys?  Here is a chance to take
on a difficult leadership issue.

-Lex