[Squeakfoundation]Hosting and Legal

Squeak News squeakfoundation@lists.cdegroot.com
Fri, 27 Apr 2001 04:38:24 -0400


It would be a good idea to register squeakfoundation.org and even squeakfoundation.com asap.

Actually, when talking about the name Paul's interesting comments:

> A good reason to work from the point of purpose rather than projects is
> to encourage the broadest support for the foundation. Also, needs change
> over time, so a purpose linked too closely to a specific project may
> turn obsolete quickly. A good purpose will be one that twenty years from
> now will still make sense and be worth supporting. To an extent, a
> really good purpose is more like a process than a goal. [For anyone with
> real experience with chaordic processes, like Cees, feel free to chime
> in with corrections and/or more process suggestions.]

Maybe we want to call this foundation something like "The Blue Plane Foundation". Hmm. On second thought, if we are to promote Stable Squeak and the likes than it should be called "The Pink Plane Foundation", but on third thought, (!) hey! our pink is someone else's blue, so it can stay blue!

Seriously if this foundation is to be active 50+ years and promote bleeding edge blue stuff, this is a name that we should consider. We can also publicize meaning of the blue plane analogy and this would intrigue people.

Honestly neither Squeak nor Smalltalk are names that are catchy for people who hear them the first time. I for one don't care about names. If I did, I wouldn't be a staunch follower of fuzzy logic. But fuzzy logic suffered a lot because of its name. Many people who have heard of it before have the notion of something old and a "has been". Others who hear the first time their first response is "chitchat?", jokingly. It takes time to make them take this seriously. I was talking to one of the VPs of Citicorp, and he said it would be very difficult for his organization to develop anything on "Squeak" because people wouldn't take it seriously just for the name. If they did, they wouldn't mention the name "Squeak".
Maybe this is our chance to introduce Squeak as something new.

After people are introduced to the technology, then we can tell them about the background and its strong foundation, but we can introduce Squeak as a "breakthrough technology derived from a quarter of a century of wisdom".

BTW blueplane.org is surprisingly available, so is theblueplane.org. If you are interested in this idea we should get one or both of them at once.

I'll send a separate posting on our intended contributions to the list.

Cheers

Tansel