> 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.
>   
Why thank you Ken G Brown,
>   
in answer to SOB Ken

Ken G. Brown has followed our progress as a casual but interested
observer. He did take the time to understand the image build process and
to apply the scripts as instructed in order to build 3.11 prototype
images. He experienced varying degrees of success along the way and
provided valuable feedback. AFAIK Ken essentially managed to prove to
himself that you could get a new image out of the process as promised
and he did succeed on at least one occasion. We have been doing this in
different forms since 3.9.1 so its not that we don't know it works, its
about deciding which bits are done by bob (cleanUp, bumping the release
number, testing  etc) and which bits are done by the release generation
tasks.

As far as I know the list of fixes that were applied were hard coded at
the time. Work in the subsequent months, included the addition of the
extra statuses to mantis and the automation of that step, so that you
did not have to manually write the code to apply the fixes. The question
then was whether to generate code (so that it could be under scm) from
the mantis list or whether to just apply them. I also have all of the
contents of mantis exported into MC packages so that it can be scm'ed.

Ken was also the only person who responded to the announcement that Bob
was available on a public server via VNC, such that he logged in to take
a look.

Ken basically knows that all the bits are there, and has seen all/most
of the bits work individually. He, like most of us haven't seen the
whole thing deliver a 3.11 image from end to end.
> Sure, there are bound to be improvements that could be applied, and I feel that is where the SOB could have put their efforts,
Agreed,

Having just had a commercial project go belly up, having not been paid
for two months, and since Randal had said that 3.11 was not as important
as 4.0, I spent the entire month of June watching TV and doing other
things in a fairly demoralised state.

If the board had spoken to me at all in the month of June,  even once,
they didn't even have to be nice, I could easily have added the 3/4
lines of code to bob, to essentially prove the viability of, if not
finish the project. I sincerely believe that even the slightest warning
of what was coming would have made all the difference, we were that close.

As some of you know, the day before the board meeting, I had regained my
motivation to the extent that I had started documenting things with
screencasts, and I was enjoying myself again, we were on the home
straight, I just needed someone to tell about it, and through the
screencasts I had found my medium and my audience.

The line to add to bob would have been...

ReleaseAfterSqueak310 taskMakeTestCandidate run.

followed by a bit (?) of debugging...

and

ReleaseAfterSqueak310-taskApplyFixes

Installer mantis select: [ :ea | ea status = 'Testing' ifTrue: [ ea
ensureFix ] ].

(except that the code generation method would probably have been preferable)
> 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.
>   
no thank you

Ken Causey wrote:

> little is going on on this side of things.  And yet this is the only way
> to submit a change under Keith's proposal.
Ken Brown wrote:
> '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.
Ken Brown is essentially correct. However the build task for 3.11 was already specified, and this build task had already selected what packages were to be loaded and that the only other contributions to be added were from mantis when the status of a fix is set to "Resolved in 3.11".

The most important part of 3.11 was to re-organise the image into smaller parts, split up System, and reorganise Test packages ao that they could be farmed out for refactoring and improvement as projects to be carried out offline and integrated in 3.12 or 3.13 etc.

There is no place in the build script for the next release to include work that has not been completed yet. If you want to make a contribution, then you finish your contribution first. The release consists of finished contributions, not places/trunks to start hacking. After all we want the next release to work dont we? If you have a small contribution that you have finished, then mantis is currently the best and only place to put it since your contribution was not roadmapped in the 3.11 plan, and that way you know it will be at least tested (if not included) automatically. There is nothing to stop you requesting that your contribution be roadmapped into the 3.12 plan but obviously we are not quite there yet.

The plan is to release often, so not having your contribution in 3.11 should not be a big deal since the build script for 3.12 alpha would be finalised within a week of releasing 3.11

Ken Causey wrote:

>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?


Ken Brown replied:

> 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.
Before anything like this takes place, the board should have a good look at its articles and terms of engagement.

My assumption was that the board, being a primarily a political body should behave like any counsel or governing body. i.e. Members of a town council or parliament have to declare their interests and if a member of the council was to award a building contract to their own company this would be against the rules.

In the context of squeak SOB, members of the board are supposed to liaise and provide encouragement, advice leadership and direction. If a person or group volunteers to do a job, then the board is able to endorse that person or not. In my opinion the board is primarily there to give the thumbs up to proposals, and give them that little bit of extra credibility and support.

Edgar was never fired from the release team as he states, he simply failed to get the thumbs up for his 3.11 proposal, since there were other options on the table. Edgar was invited to contribute his knowledge but declined. I have looked at harvesting his knowledge the hard way.  If my proposal was to be voted down and out by the board then Edgars should be given equal opportunity to compete against Andreas', however Edgar isn't on the board either.

Board members therefore should abide by the same rules that every other member of the community abides by. If they want to make a contribution to the community they should also have to submit a proposal to the board after public review and discussion, after which the board may vote and give it the thumbs up. The board can then ensure that it doesn't give the thumbs up in conflicting directions.

It is not acceptable for a board member to use the fact that they have the privilege of the position on the board, and they are present at the meeting, while other interested parties are excluded, to submit a proposal, have it voted on, and carry it out in one sitting. The board exists to represent the community, not themselves or their own agendas.

Currently following private discussions it appears that 3 members of the board believe that being on the board gives them the remit to instruct the community. Andreas says he was elected to kick butt in the release arena, and so he sincerely believes that all of his actions, emails etc were entirely justified.

I disagree, he was elected to liaise, oversee and offer leadership advice to the release team who were perceived as flagging a bit. Anyone who knows their bible will know that those who wish to be leaders must be servants first. Therefore in his capacity as a board member his discussions about the next release should at least have been limited to the release team list, and offering to serve and motivate the release team, not instruct them.

I was invited to run for the board myself, and I decided not to, due to the fact that I was already committed elsewhere, and I considered that the board was officially supposed to be relatively non-involved in technical issues. Basically I don't like politics, or endless discussions about relicencing. If I had run and been elected (a big if) then I would have been able to represent myself at the meeting.

I do not think that members of the release team should even be on the board, I would even question whether craig should be on the board since he has a vested interest in seeing spoon adopted in the future. (Craig nothing personal you understand). Craig promised spoon would be ready this time last year, I havent seen the board give him a hard time for not delivering anything. If haven't seen a message on the spoon list for a very long time indeed.

I personally think that someone with the experience of Andreas might be better put to use kicking spoon into touch.

I do think that the leaders or representatives of teams should be invited to board meetings every other meeting or so.

best regards

Keith