The leaders (was Re: Smalltalk and Self)

goran at krampe.se goran at krampe.se
Thu Sep 1 22:05:07 UTC 2005


Hi!

Victor Rodriguez <victor.palique at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 2005/8/31, Jecel Assumpcao Jr <jecel at merlintec.com>:
> > Marcus Denker wrote on Thu, 1 Sep 2005 01:05:22 +0200
> [snip]
> > The first major part of Squeak that was developed in a relatively public
> > way was the 3.3 modules and that led to a lot of anger and people
> > leaving our community. While I don't think there was any relation at
> > all, I can understand it if some people hesitate to do things this way
> > again.
> 
> This is very interesting and, at least to me, makes it seem like the
> Squeak community was significantly lessened. Would you mind to give a
> brief description of what happened, for the benefit of those of us new
> to Squeak?

I wouldn't say *that* many people left the community, but sure, it was a
painful lesson. But we all learned something.

> BTW, I have been lurking in the mailing list for a while now, and
> still I do not have a clear picture of who the leaders of Squeak are.

Well, Squeak is very much a doer-ocracy - if you are a "doer" you *will*
lead in one way or another, either you like it or not. :) So in essence
the people who have the time and skill for the moment to put in an
effort are typically the ones running the show at that point in time. :)

For example, currently I have very little time to spare - but Marcus on
the other hand has been doing lots of work - so he is for the moment
very much more a leader than I am and he is free to take lots of
decisions since he quite frankly must do so in order to move forward.

But... first we had SqC - the original Squeak team at Apple and later
Disney (Dan Ingalls being spokesperson) - then when SqC stepped down a
little group called the Guides was formed, but with the intent to
"guide" and not really replace SqC as a decisional body. We felt that
stepping in and replacing SqC wouldn't sit well with the community -
perhaps it was right or wrong, hard to say.

This worked for a while - and quite frankly, mainly due to the fact that
the important doers in our community are doing the work with or without
leadership :), for example the VM guys or all the important package
maintainers.

Then relatively lately there were some efforts in getting something more
decisive in place - and without going into the details we ended up with
a new group called the Coordinators (on my initiative basically). We
also got a mailinglist with a semilarge group of important Squeakers
that was meant to form a proper legal entity - SqF (Squeak Foundation) -
but it has been rather low traffic lately, but it is there at least.

The Coordinators anyway is meant to be a more definitive leadership,
read more here:
	http://swiki.krampe.se/castaways

...and the reports show quite a bit what it is all about:
	http://swiki.krampe.se/castaways/8

> At any rate, Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls do not seem to have any
> involvment in Squeak any more. So, who are the Squeak leaders? Whose
> responsibility is it to decide the immediate future of Squeak?

Dan is an advisor in the Coordinator group, but haven't had much time to
put in - but he does get all email we exchange on our private list so he
has full "insight" and we greatly value whatever help he can give us in
any way. Alan is around, and I think he is quite active in Squeakland
and Croquet, two important projects using Squeak as the base. But he
isn't involved in the evolution of Squeak at the moment.

Lately I have myself been swamped due to changes (changed job etc) in my
personal life so the Coordinator group has been less active for a while
(well, Doug and Marcus has been working quite hard - but we haven't
posted much about the Team efforts etc). But the Teams are working ahead
and especially Marcus Denker, Doug Way and Stephane Ducasse and a bunch
of more hard working souls have been pushing forward - so we have
progress - it just has been less visible for a while.

We all know each other quite well by now and we also agree on most
things that we know needs to be done - so lots of work is progressing
without the need for decisions to be made.

I hope to be able to get more active within a few weeks though and will
try to post some summary on what is going on and where we are going.

Oh, right, and finally - yes, the people who have the "final say"
*currently* in the Squeak community - that would be us - the
coordinators.

regards, Göran



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list