[squeak-dev] Re: Funding

Stephen Pair stephen at pairhome.net
Mon Apr 7 16:32:32 UTC 2008


On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Derek O'Connell <doconnel at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Stephen Pair <stephen at pairhome.net> wrote:
> > Squeak has been around more than 10 years now.  It's not evident to me
> that
> > the community is significantly larger today than it was just a couple
> years
> > after its debut.
> Are you saying that is good/bad/not-a-problem?


I think it's bad for exactly the reasons you articulate below.  It's not
some vain desire to be popular.  It's about engaging more people, creating a
viable economy (by a variety of means) and in the end, spur more rapid
progress.


> >  As for alienating, I don't see anything exclusive or
> > alienating about this approach.
>
> I don't disagree with your proposal in principle but I think
> willingness to contribute (if at all needed) may only come after the
> fee paying period. OTOH if that period is kept short enough then maybe
> people will play along with the idea.


You may be right.  I personally am very reluctant to invest effort in
something that is not open source.  However, something that I knew would
become open source on a relatively short time horizon would be a different
matter.

...snipped stuff about Blender...
With Blender, my only point was that it started life as a commercial
product...dabbled with some hybrid approaches along the way, and then
ultimately became open source.  Now that there is a substantial community
around it, there are lots of options available to that community to sustain
an economy.  The question is, would it have evolved if it tried to start out
life as open source?  Or, would it have gained 5 followers and fizzled out
long before anything materialized?  It's also interesting to note that
Smalltalk (and hence squeak) began life as a proprietary system (corporate
research at first, then later commercialized, and even later open sourced).
Would Smalltalk have happened without the economy around corporate
research?  Would we even be having this discussion if that had not
happened?  Has there been substantial progress since squeak was open
sourced?  Are there not a substantial number of people on this list that are
frustrated by the slow progress?  Or frustrated with their own incapacity to
do anything about it (or to do as much as they would like)?  I would love
nothing more than to be in a position where I could focus 100% of my
professional attention at squeak and the community around it.


> OTOH where Squeak leads others follow and it's community has some of
> the brightest, ingenious, helpful and dedicated people I have come
> across... but it is clearly not enough. My stance is more users = more
> activity = more visibility = more willingness to adopt = more chance
> of general funding (rather than just for occasional specific tasks).
> Then again recent comments on the ML claiming new users not required/
> community is large enough, etc, make me despondent and dents my
> enthusiasm.


Yes, I agree.  More brains, more vitality, more progress and more fun.

BTW, welcome back after your five year absence! Care to explain why
> you left/ what brought you back? May be some lessons there :-)
>

Well, it comes down to a scarcity of time.  I had kids and I have a job and
there is very little time left over.  I had also failed to make
swiki.net(hosted wikis) into a viable business, which, being based on
squeak, would
have enabled me to continue using squeak as part of my work.  As for what's
brought me back, I'd say it's a desire to find inspiration combined with the
fact that the demands on my time are somewhat less severe (though still very
constricting).  I'd say the lesson is this: let's figure out a way to make
working on squeak and putting food on the table less mutually exclusive.

- Stephen
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