> From: David T. Lewis
> I really don't know how the board would be able
> to accomplish this without pissing somebody off.  A strong benevolent
> dictator would be required, and we do not have that.

And this is a central issue.  Look at the big OS efforts - Linux, Perl, Python are examples.  Each effort formed around a central figure that matches David's view of a strong benevolent dictator.

We had dictators, arguably benevolent, in SqC.  We have had a power vacuum since SqC dissolved, with no person or group strong enough to carry the community with them - indeed, with some members of the Squeak community hanging on every word out of Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls and the rest of ex-SqC and treating those with greater reverence than the present board.

Unless we have a shared vision of where we're going (difficult with a mature system like Squeak as it can be used in so many ways) or a person/group to act as a proxy for our strong vision (there's no evidence the community regards SqF in this way), we'll fragment as a community.  I don't know how to get to the shared vision or the trusted person/group from here, and I expect the Squeak community to fragment.  Parts will coalesce around strong projects such as Croquet and Spoon, if the Croquet group are open enough to allow the developer community to grow and if Craig is willing/able to accept distributed developer assistance.  Some newcomers will come in, especially around projects that are newcomer-friendly.  The rest will probably drift to other systems over time.

Here's an interesting question for the list members: what would it take for you to "buy in" to a central governance model for Squeak?  What would it have to look like, who would have to be in it, what would it have to be doing?

My answer to the above (so that I'm not posing questions in the abstract): to buy in to a central governance model, it would have to be taking Squeak in the direction of a fast, modular, cheap runtime with good development tools; it would have to involve or have stated buy-in from my perceived major players in that arena (Bryce for Exupery, Craig for Spoon and Naiad, Tim for VMMaker, plus an appropriate module system and archive such as SM2 + MC2); and it would have to be committed to regular, incremental releases of the smallest possible core plus a cloud of modules that are allowed to be behind the bleeding edge.

As always, my £0.02.

		- Peter