Hi folks!

> Bill Schwab wrote:
>> Stef,
>>
>> You seem to be making my point w/o realizing it.  There is indeed no
>> need for struggle (with our would-be users),
>
> of course this is not the struggle I am talking about.
>
> I'm talking about struggling to be popular. I just don't see the point.
> But this is only personal, and I understand a lot of people want to make
> it easier to do business with Squeak (that's what you call "realizing
> it's potential" I guess); so let it be if enough developers are
> motivated. I am not.

First of all - I have only skimmed some of the posts in this subject
(which is a bit telling in itself) but here is my view AND a concrete idea
to boot:

I don't think we should be so focused on providing "regular things" in
Squeak to attract people. Sure, I am one of the few users of Celeste and I
like it - but that is just because I am a Squeak-freak. :)

Quite contrary I think the best way to attract people is to offer *unique
things* that noone else can. An example of this is Seaside. Seaside is
pretty unique and has created quite a buzz over Squeak.

Another example with not nearly as much buzz yet is Magma. There are very
few really good open source object databases out there and the fact that
Squeak has one of the most capable ones - written entirely in Squeak - is
something that has potential.

But another thing we could do which I think is *really* unique is to
enhance the Squeak developer environment in ways that no other development
environment can. I have posted about this a few times before but I still
think it would be *way cool* if we could add a "developer events publish
and subscribe" model. Let me present it once more:

----begin idea----
Pretend we hook into the tools and trigger events like:

	User viewing class comment of class X
	User referencing class X in a doit
	User modifying class X
	User installing package X from SqueakMap (or using Installer)
	etc.

Now pretend that we use say Gossip (Cees' neat P2P library) to broadcast
these events out on the net in p2p fashion - well, those events that the
user allows us to broadcast. And let's say you can similarly subscribe to
these events.

Next step is to enhance the tools to visually show us information based on
the received events. For example, it would be way cool to see if someone
is editing the same class I am editing *right now* or to see in real time
if someone just installed my package into their image and so on.
----end of idea----

And oh, let me finish by saying that nothing almost ever gets done just
because someone ELSE thinks it is "a good idea to attract more people to
Squeak". Things get done because someone wants to do it him(or her)self.

That doesn't prevent us *discussing* it of course. :)

regards, Göran