Survey finally published etc

goran at krampe.se goran at krampe.se
Tue Jan 24 21:39:20 UTC 2006


Hi Andreas!

Trying to wrap this up so that we can put it behind us (hopefully). Kiss
and make up is probably a lofty goal :), but at least we could get it
off our backs.

Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Goran -
> 
> goran at krampe.se wrote:
> > The whole point with the current board was that we needed to "get going"
> > - and the SqF bootstrap wasn't going anywhere. Now we are getting
> > dangerously close (IMHO) to a similar fate with the upcoming election.
> 
> I think this is at the heart of our disagreement. I do not agree that 
> the "SqF bootstrap wasn't going anywhere" in a form that would require 
> such drastic actions. Sure, it wasn't the fastest, but it was trying to 
> get agreement, and that was part of its appeal.

Well, it is fine if you disagree with that - we are all entitled
different opinions. It is in the past anyway. I just skimmed the email
exchange over those couple of days and well, it is a lot of email and it
is hard to reconstruct all thoughts etc.

It is still very clear to me that the SqF formation was going *nowhere*
and that we felt that something needed to be done to get *something* set
up *in the meantime*. But again, who knows - perhaps SqF would have
gotten going eventually, we will never really know.

> Neither do I think that 
> the election "is in danger". It may be in danger wrt your deadline but 
> that was your deadline, not theirs IIRC.

We will see. Just let it be noted that I am worried. I am worried about
it getting done at all and I am worried about too few people showing up
to vote.

> > If you really mean that you are positive towards the new upcoming board
> > and election, help out with it so that it turns out successful.
> 
> I really mean that. But please keep in mind that I do have a number of 

Good, then I choose to believe you.

> other things on my plate (#1 being Hedgehog right now) and will probably 
> not have much spare time to spend on these issues.

Which is of course all fine.

And my humble opinion is that the people who *do* take the time for
these "community things" (and that is *free* time, not payed time)
should be respected for that and not distrusted. And this is directed to
the whole squeak-dev - not to you.

> > Well, it has been lots of water under the bridge but I still feel quite
> > uneasy about what happened and I really can't get a grip on your
> > intentions/motives anymore. Yes, this is a vague statement - but it is
> > just how I feel and I don't want to dwelve deeper into the reasons in
> > public.
> 
> Strangely enough, this almost precisely describes my feelings towards 
> the islanders group (and in particular yours truly).

Which I still don't understand. The fact remains that I have zero
economic investments in Squeak beside the fact that I have invested my
own time to know it as a tool and that I have gotten a payback in the
form of being part of a fantastic community. But if I am not mistaken
you have quite a lot of real investments "in Squeak", right?

Anyway, it is quite funny that you *still* say you distrust me/us after
all that has been done and the fact that I am stepping down and that we
are holding an election etc etc. You still think I have some dark agenda
stuck up my sleeve? :)

Oh, and btw - Dan have gotten all emails exchanged internally in the
group (and continues to do so after merging with Stephane/Noury) so if
there was any dark deeds brewing you could just ask him. :)

> Now, from my point of view, my motivations are simple: Technically, I 
> need a robust basis for the work going on in Tweak/Croquet. The smaller 
> the basis the better because it limits maintenance efforts. If you look 
> at the work I do for the community you'll find that there is an obvious 
> overlap of interests: ToolBuilder, Graphics, FFI, Compression are all 
> core technologies that we use heavily in our projects and where it makes 
> perfect sense to put some work in.
> 
> In the larger picture, because of the dependency on other parts of the 
> system, I am in the conservative camp - changes are generally bad since 
> we have no control and little influence on what precisely happens where 
> (just two days ago I got reminded again how small that influence is in 
> practice). You should therefore be prepared that if I comment on such 
> issues that I'll raise the conservative voice - this is part of my 
> responsibility to the other projects I'm in.

I understand your POV here but I don't really understand why you say you
have "no control" and "little influence". IMHO you have lots of
influence being in the position that you are (Croquet, Tweak, Win32 VM,
Toolbuilder/Graphics etc etc) and the community listens very carefully
to whatever you have to say. And that has always included the board too.

>  From the community point of view (meaning Squeak-dev community) I have 
> actually very little motivations - I am not trying to achieve anything 
> in particular (which may explain your vague feeling).

No, my feeling is based on earlier happenings.

> Mostly I'm just 
> throwing in my $.02 for what it's worth. I do dislike the islander 
> setup, I dislike the way it came about, and I will be happy to see 
> something that represents the community in the best way possible.

Hehe, the election will turn out interesting then.

> If you look at what I generally do and say in light of the above I think 
> you won't find many inconsistencies.
> 
> >>>I just humbly wonder why you didn't bother to even *reply* to the survey
> >>>emails which AFAIK asked quite a few questions regarding these things.
> >>
> >>Honestly? Really, there were a couple of things. First, I'm busy.
> > 
> > Too busy to reply and say so? For two weeks?
> 
> More for like eight weeks. And originally, like I was saying I was 
> planning on writing something back. That was up until the point of 
> "that" message.

You know - *noone* is so busy that it takes 8 weeks to hit reply and
type in "I am busy as hell, take a raincheck in 8 weeks?"... well,
depending on your typing speed I would estimate it to 10-15 seconds.
Probably shorter than the time to actually read the survey - which you
did. :)

Anyway, I see your apology below so it's fine.

> > And what about:
> [... snip ...]
> > If that question (for example) wasn't about the future then... what?
> 
> Yes, they are. But like I said:
> 
> >>And 
> >>here, I didn't dare to speak my mind freely - simply because you 
> >>promised to publish the results and if I would say what the most likely 
> >>course of action is it would get me even more of a reputation of being 
> >>an evil guy who wants to prevent everyone from doing anything. So none 
> >>of this was really appealing to me.
> > 
> > I would like to note that the email said:
> > 
> > "If you wish to give "off the record" feedback you can do so by simply
> > separately emailing mysterious-island at discuss.squeakfoundation.org which
> > is the non public mailinglist of the Coordinators."
> 
> Actually, I don't remember this and I probably interpreted that 
> differently (e.g., as "if you have any OTHER feedback" outside of that 
> survey). Sorry, my bad.

The email can be read in full at: http://swiki.krampe.se/castaways/28

[SNIP]
> > Now there you go. I can't judge if my reminders were really *that*
> > upsetting, and IMHO the apology was pretty darn clear - but it doesn't
> > matter. Fact remains, we got ZERO replies from 5 out of 12 stakeholder
> > communities.
> 
> Yes, and? (I'm not sure if you are trying to make an argument here - if 
> you do, I don't get it)

I just mean that I found it quite depressing (lack of responses) and
that if this was because I stumbled with the words in the second
reminder sent out after 13 days (and then apologized) then I don't think
*that* is a fair reason for not giving any reply at all.

<rant>
Whatever - feel free to hang me out as the bad guy for that single
sentence. I mean, hey, it is not like I had *anything* better to do than
to hunt down contact persons, explain what we wanted with them, answer
questions about that, get confirmations that they wanted the role, craft
a survey, get agreement on the survey with the others on the board, send
it out, send out a small correction, send out reminders etc etc. Hey, I
do that for fun every sunday! Bah.
</rant>

> > But what is the whole point being a contact person if you don't want to
> > communicate with us? Let me quote from the email inviting you to be a
> > contact person:
> > 
> [... snip ...]
> > 
> > Now, sure - it says "there are no obligations" but it also clearly says
> > that we want to be able to send out questions etc. And no, there is
> > nothing forcing you to answer - but IMHO the least we could expect is
> > that you bother to reply.
> 
> You know, you're right. I should have sent an email saying "thanks for 
> sending this, I received it, and I may or may not reply within the time 
> frame you set". I apologize for not doing that, I will definitely do it 
> in the future.
> 
> I don't think this would've changed the gist of this discussion (in 
> which case we would discuss "not answering the questions" instead of 
> "not answering") but I should've done it nonetheless. Sorry for that.

It would have changed quite a lot I can tell you - John replied in
exactly that way and fine, what can we do. Hey, this is btw what I sent
to John at the time:
-------------------------
Hi John!

John Maloney <jmaloney at media.mit.edu> wrote:
> I don't have time to respond.
> 
> 	-- John

Do you wish to respond later? We can always include answers later on -
better than not getting them at all. :)

Since we will base our course forward on these results the sooner we get
them the more likely we will be able to take them into account.
Obviously! :)

Otherwise feel free to answer "at will" - it still serves a good purpose
showing the larger community your specific wants, thoughts and needs.

regards, Göran
-----------------------------

> Cheers,
>    - Andreas

Cheers, Göran



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