News from SqueakFoundation

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Sat Jan 7 18:56:51 UTC 2006


Hi all,

Here is an email from the SqueakFoundation. We are actively  
discussing what we would like to do and
we would like to share that with you to get your feedback and ideas.

First we summarize a bit the situation:
	- Team Model: we spent time to see how a process and structure can  
support.
	the work and integration of changes and we hope that the model will  
really
	get some good benefit. The Web Team is clearly a great success (the  
web site is really cool).
	- There will be some elections soon prepared by the Election Team.
	- Contact with the legal US entity to get the stamp for the  
VisualWorks cryptography package for Squeak.
	- Checking the pay pal account for the web servers: it seems that  
now we get two years of backup.
	- Squeak Merchandising: the cafepress website is there now and new  
items are in the pipeline (the mugs).
	- Squeak Distribution CD and DVD: is available and downloaded quite  
a lot. 	

Under Progress:
	- A written simple to use explanation of the license (Thanks to Cees)
	- Build process for the image (we are slowly and stuck a bit right now)
	- Migration of the web site to the foundation.squeak.org (thanks to  
the Web Team)
	- Having one account only for the money (managed by Noury the  
tresaurer of ESUG)

Future:
Now here is where we really need your input (you can also comment  
past actions or mistakes).
The Foundation collected a bit of money around 3000 Euro (this is not  
much but we can start to think about
what we would like to do and how. We would like to thanks all the  
people believing in our will to make Squeak better).

But there is a danger that the money may corrupt/break the community.  
This was happening in
other communities so we should be cautious. What we would like to do  
is to allocate part of it to support
the spread of Squeak and the other part on making squeak better for  
everybody. Right now we would like to
spend the money on items that have an impact for everybody.

Here is a list of items that we would like to pay some people to work  
on :
	- Speeding up MC loading (may be a kind of parcel for Squeak or  
imageSegments)
	- Supporting the harvesting process and build (right now this is  
messy and based on my time)
		- by helping at the tool level
		- by helping at the review, bug fixing level
	- A dependency mechanism for package (MC or others)
	- Files logic fixing.
	- Better support for package in the image (enhancing OB to have a  
good browser
	for packages).

We believe that we should learn by doing but we want to minimize the  
risk of mess.
So the first projects should be simple or small. Our impression is  
that the harvesting support can be one the
less riskiest one. Now we have been thinking to put in place a  
process so that you can vote.
Before we start to do something we would like to get your input.

If you also have ideas on how SqueakFoundation can promote squeak (ie  
help publishing books, cds....)
please do not hesitate to send ideas.

Stef
Cees, Goran, Marcus, Noury, Ken, Doug




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