[REPORT] Report 1 from castaways (that name sucks...)

Steven Swerling sswerling at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 19 21:20:24 UTC 2005


Avi Bryant wrote:

> Since you bring me up, just a small note: as I made clear in my
> original suggestion, I think it's crucially important that the
> RestOfMorphic package be ackowledged as a main focus (I'd say, *the*
> main focus) of this effort.  Calling it a "side product" gives me
> pause.  If we're trying not to fragment the community, then the silent
> majority of Squeak users who rely on eToys can't feel left behind. 
> There's been a lot of good and necessary work already on simply
> stripping down a Morphic image, but the much harder and equally
> necessary part, which will require a lot of leadership,
> coordination,and elbow grease, is getting the RestOfMorphic together
> to file back in.

Hopefully, nobody wants to see eToys or any other project left behind. 
But perhaps these worries are just a tempest in a teapot. Let's presume, 
for a moment, that some feckless renegades come out with a very powerful 
and modular image that that happens to change the internals of what they 
call "Morphic" beyond all recognition, and this group has the temerity 
to pronounce to the community that they have just released Squeak 4.0. 
Just who the heck are these guys? Soon after, another group comes along 
with a package for this interloper "Squeak" that has some amazing new 
multimedia abilities. What suckers -- don't they know that "Squeak 4.0" 
isn't really Squeak? The eToys crowd looks on in horror. But wait...they 
notice that the new package is, well, a package. It's got a clean API, 
it's loadable and removable. Can't the eToys guys just file it into 
their image? Please don't take this as glib. But it begs the question, 
what *exactly* does it mean to leave eToys behind? As long as Plugins 
for Squeak 4.0 work more or less like the plugins for 3.X, and as long 
as the Collections-* and Kernel-*  and etc classes look about the same, 
chances are they will benefit along with everyone else from new and 
exciting packages. When we ask "Don't leave eToys behind?", do we mean 
that the eToys project shouldn't have to work too hard to benefit from 
advances in Squeak, like anyone else, or that all the work should be 
done for them by all groups with any interest in Squeak?



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list