Hi Andreas,

Thanks for these comments. They will be very useful for me hopefully soon.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" 
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: Smalltalk and Self


>> So something clearly did not went the right way with Squeak from their
>> perspective.
>
> Yes, that is true. There were some things that went "wrong" and that we 
> felt could only be addressed by doing our own systems. Most importantly: 
> We had lost control over our own destiny. That may be not too much of a 
> problem if you're a hobbyist but if you are serious about doing something 
> with Squeak on the scale of either Tweak or Croquet (or
> Scratch or any of the Impara projects for that matter) you *must* be able 
> to control your own future. It is not acceptable to stand helplessly on 
> the sidelines when something very bad is about to happen and all you can 
> do is scream and kick (and if you do, you get flamed etc). It is not 
> acceptable if you need a fix in your system to go through the endless 
> processes to get it approved. It is simply not doable. We have always 
> recommended that people do exactly that even back in the SqC days and most 
> of those groups who were serious took the advice. Such as Interval or 
> Exobox or StableSqueak. And now, Scratch, Tweak and Croquet do the same 
> (which goes to show that we actually take our own advice of the past).
>
> So the lesson that we learned here is that we were right in the past, that 
> you do have to take your future into your own hands and that you have to 
> avoid error 33 like hell (we paid for it, too). The lesson is to stay 
> focused, to keep the ball running. Discussions can be helpful but only up 
> to a point - we all know (and you are just leaning it again) that people 
> will generally resist *any* kind of change. At times, when it's important 
> enough you just have to shove it down people's throats. And some will not 
> like that one bit and you'll loose them. And others will join you 
> *because* of the very changes. That's life.
>
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas