[squeak-dev] I wish retake old good practice

keith keith_hodges at yahoo.co.uk
Thu Mar 11 02:54:55 UTC 2010


>>>>>> "Ian" == Ian Trudel <ian.trudel at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Ian> I agree with you, Bert. It's important to keep some buzz and  
> excitement
> Ian> but more importantly involvement of the community in any such
> Ian> discussion. Having too much low traffic or too specific mailing  
> lists
> Ian> will only fragment the community's attention. Sometimes going  
> smaller is
> Ian> making things bigger.
>
> In particular, I think what was missing was a call to action on the  
> part of
> *developers* on squeak-dev, about how to use Keith's tools.

Those that were interested were invited to have a tour of the bob  
server via vnc and a look around in February I think it was, and to  
try builds for themselves.

The one person who tried it out liked what they saw and is the only  
person qualified to comment. That person is Ken Brown, and as Ken says  
if he can do it anyone can.

>  The reasons for
> this boggled me when I heard them -- apparently, Keith was forbidden  
> to post

Not forbidden just unwise.

> on the developer list because of his work arrangement.  I'm still a  
> bit
> flabberghasted at that... the guy creating the tools couldn't talk  
> about tools
> in the one place that the developers who wanted to use the tools would
> consistently be.  Certainly not a recipe for communication or  
> leadership.

Except that we had already decided that the release list was the place  
for that conversation, and this arrangement had worked for the two  
previous releases. We also had irc,  a wiki, and mantis, and allegedly  
a board liaison person.

The squeak-dev conversation that I saw was predictably driven by a  
group of about 5 newbies whom I had never seen before, and as far as I  
know have no community contributions to squeak before or since, and no  
knowledge of any historical context.

These guys beat up on my 3.11 consolidating maintainance development,  
(needed as 3.x reaches the end of its life according to the board)  
when really they should have been complaining that the brand new  
flashy promised Squeak5.0 was nowhere to be seen.

In my book the only people qualified to make significant direction  
changes as far as a release goes are those who have an active  
interest, and those who are making an active contribution, and those  
who have put their time and effort into actually volunteering to do  
stuff. Those people would be on the release list. The rest is noise,  
that would only confuse and confound.

Keith




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