[UI] Well, shall we do something then?

[Bill Schwab]

Jason,

The buyout _should_ have a chance.  The target is $230k US, which means
that 50 people could do it for under $5k each.  There is an effort now
to spread the load (as much as possible) over a wider audience.  I am
hopeful (who wants to pay more than necessary), but not optimistic about
that working.  OTOH, I will be very disappointed if we cannot scrape up
50 people willing to pay the cost of a VA license.  However, the
possibility of Dolphin going away has always existed.  At first, I had
nothing to lose; when that changed, I also started noticing that M$ was
going a little nuts, and started looking elsewhere as an escape valve,
hoping I would not need to press the shiny red button.  Anyway, keep
your fingers crossed.  You will see an announcement when we are ready to
accept donations.

A good first step would be to collect the documents you describe.  We
should further be able to make something compatible with Dolphin's MVP;
we simply have to be careful about how we do it.  Unfortunately, I am
too familiar with Dolphin to clone the system w/o a careful plan. 
AFAIK, it is perfectly acceptable for me to test and offer guidance.  I
would be a natural choice to write import/export filters for Dolphin
users wanting to move view resources to Squeak.

What if any use of other Smalltalks are used as references for Squeak's
development?  How is that done?  Clearly it wasn't done for streams and
certain characters related to assignment :(

Bill






Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bschwab at anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029

>>> jason.johnson.081 at gmail.com 09/14/07 11:45 AM >>>
On 9/14/07, Bill Schwab <BSchwab at anest.ufl.edu> wrote:
> Jason, Gary,
>
> Sorry for the delay in response.  I am a little nervous about mining
> Dolphin, because it would be easy to trick ourselves into thinking we
> have a cleanroom implementation.

Hadn't thought about that.

> The other Dolphin-related topic is the buyout effort.  If we succeed
> with it, then Dolphin would be open, and one could simply port its
> framework to Squeak.  I dread putting the brakes on enthusiasm, but in
> this case, it might be appropriate to do other things while the buyout
> works its way forward.

Does this buyout realistically have a chance?  I mean don't they want
like half a million USD or so?

> With that said, how do you envision a rewrite working?  How would I
> ensure that I am not simply copying OA's work?  Typically, I have seen
> this kind of thing done by two people, one or more consultant/guides
> familiar with (aka tainted by knowledge of) the reference system, and
> developers sworn to never look at the reference system.  The "blinded"
> developers write the actual code.  In that model, I would be a very
good
> guide, but I know too much about Dolphin to write the framework
myself.
>
> Fair?
>
> Bill

Well, I hadn't thought about it honestly, but there are several papers
on the subject matter.  One from Dolphin at at least one other one
that predates the Dolphin effort.  I think we could work from there,
no?
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