[squeak-dev] Re: [Release] The role of Bob, Installer & Co.

Ken G. Brown kbrown at mac.com
Mon Jul 6 22:52:58 UTC 2009


See comments interspersed below.

At 4:25 PM -0600 7/6/09, Ken G. Brown apparently wrote:
>On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 15:36 -0600, Ken G. Brown wrote:
>> I would like to present my sincere congratulations to Keith for
>> continuing to talk sense against all odds, in presenting the Squeak
>> community with such a well thought out way forward along with the
>> mostly working code to implement the process.
>>
>> Sure, there are bound to be improvements that could be applied, and I
>> feel that is where the SOB could have put their efforts, and not
>> towards presenting yet another way of continuing the development
>> processes that resulted in our current situation in the first place.
>> In my opinion this fundamentally comes from the attitude of  'do the
>> simplest thing that could possibly work', and not do 'the best thing
>> in the best possible way'.
>>
>> And congratulations too to Igor for apparently taking the time to
>> understand what Keith is talking about, as shown by Igor's +100
>> comment below.
>>
>> I am very disappointed in the current extremely short-sighted view and
>> direction that is being taken by the SOB.
>>
>> I am also extremely disappointed in the way the SOB has been treating
>> the people involved ie Keith and Matthew mainly. Might I suggest
>> significant improvement in the area of people skills as a high
>> priority going forward.
>>
>> Thank you Keith.
>>
>> Ken G. Brown
>
>Ken,
>
>I appreciate you providing your point of view but I have to ask you how
>you have actively participated in the development of 3.11.

Lets be clear right at the start here, this is not about my contributions or lack thereof.
However, I've worked with Keith's Installer and helped test his new developments along the way.
I believe I know enough about software development to understand the pitfalls.
I follow the Squeak lists and believe I know something about the history and problems.
I say what I say after a lot thought in the hopes that my comments may help in some way to improve Squeak going forward.

>  I ask this
>not because I don't know the answer or don't remember (which is not to
>say that I do) or because I'm trying to single you out but because I'm
>trying to understand the disconnect that seems to be going on.

>You have to understand that when the SOB discussed this there was
>absolutely no question among the seven of us that the current state of
>the development of Squeak was untenable. 

You could have chosen to help bring the board approved 3.11 proposal forward more quickly.

From:
Squeak311Proposal that the board apparently approved:
http://installer.pbworks.com/Squeak311Proposal
---
Squeak 3.11 Deliverable
 
Since the primary goal of 3.11 is the proving of the process. The base image itself will have no significant new features.
---

>We have frankly been inundated
>with complaints on one hand and near silence from contributors.  To see
>what I mean take a glance at
>
> http://bugs.squeak.org/view_all_bug_page.php
>
>If it is not already, be sure to set the project (upper right) to
>'Squeak').  Note that the 50 most recent issues (any change at all will
>pop an issue to the top of this list, except of course if the issue is
>closed which will remove it from the default view) cover a time period
>of nearly 3 months.  Dig deeper and look at the changes in that time
>period and the number of people participating and you find that very
>little is going on on this side of things.  And yet this is the only way
>to submit a change under Keith's proposal.

I'm not sure that comment is correct, at least not in my understanding.
Anyway, Keith's work would certainly benefit from further community contributions, it is obviously at an early stage.

> Of course you could also be
>directly working on Installer/Bob/MC but as far as I can tell the
>community involved there is similarly small.
>
>Can I take it that your preference now would be for us to completely
>retract the changes proposed by Andreas and go back to the way things
>were say 10 days ago?

That might be a very good and very positive step forward indeed.
In my opinion that would begin the community healing process and start to restore some confidence, in my mind at least, in the way the SOB works.
Start over on the right foot, involving discussions with the release team and come up with a more preferable way forward.
So far in this case, things have been far too dictatorial for my liking.

Ken G. Brown


>Ken
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