I did not have any problems understanding that Keith had proposed what
Andreas has just described. But when voting for the current process, I
asked if it was going to be compatible with the ongoing 3.11 effort and
was told yes. Even though I now see this was due to some confusion, I
still believe "yes" was actually correct and is what is now being
detailed.

To me, it isn't at all Keith's fault that people didn't understand what
he was trying to do. Nor do I blame anyone who didn't get it before now
(or still doesn't understand). The problem is mostly with the various
communication channels we have. There are several examples I could give
of failing miserably to explain something over email (even with attached
drawings) to really brilliant people while at the same time being able
to explain the exact same thing live to far less brilliant audiences.

Of course, sometimes we think we have understood when we realling
haven't (see people who think they "got" OOP after playing a bit with
C++, for example) and that is when discusions become really complicated.

So I should really say I *think* I have understood Keith's efforts,
except for one detail: in a system that is about automation and
contributions from everyone there seems to be a lot of manually edited
scripts by single authors. The explanation is that I am probably
thinking about things backwards (in terms of which script calls which
script), but that is a another thread.

Andreas Raab wrote:
> I can't speak for the board, only for myself. From my perspective this 
> is an issue of mislabeling. When I see something called "3.11" I expect 
> this to be about Squeak 3.11, the software, not a set of tools. I'm also 
> a little at a loss why then, if this is all about tools, so many noises 
> are made about the 3.11 release artifact. If the entire goal of the 
> process is to be able to load these tools into arbitrary versions, then 
> why don't we just load them into the trunk and get over it? There is 
> clearly still a level of disconnect somewhere but I'm hoping it's not 
> quite as drastic as the last one.

This was caused by a series of steps in which things got renamed. The
whole thing started when the previous board announced "Squeak 3.x is
dead, 4.0 is Spoon" and Keith reacted saying he had already put in a lot
of effort for a process for future 3.x versions and that others felt the
same and would fork if needed. After discussions, the board approved
Keith's project as an official 3.11 with 4.0 now being just a clean
license version of 3.x and Spoon renamed 5.0 (the current board has not
discussed the latter at all).

So Keith was just saying "3.x forever!" (consistent with his proposal)
while the board used the 3.11 name.

Since we are having this discussion on #squeak-dev, it is important for
the community to know that each board member can have their own opinions
but then we reach a common decision. For example, I would far prefer to
see Squeak move to a binary based development model (I would mention
Projects and Etoys here) than the current source based things we are
doing (trunk, bob or whatever). But if the community likes Monticello,
that will get my vote.

-- Jecel