Smalltalk › ESUG

ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

_‹ Previous Topic Next Topic _›

Classic

List

Threaded

95 messages Options

12345

Paolo Bonzini-2

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

Il 05/07/2012 08:47, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto:
> Reading this thread after all we did for Smalltalk is quite taught.
> The wolfs are back apparently. Sad period. I think the esug board
> will have to really decide if ESUG is worth after all. Now may be
> ESUG popularity is a problem for certain people or this is the pharo
> popularity. May be this is good to not give a chance to a promising
> open source project (especially when we see that such question never
> arose when it was about other Smalltalks). Life is so funny
> sometimes.

No Stephane, it's not that. Part of it is just misinformation and I
think that was clarified; the other part is just basic handling of
conflict of interest, and I think it's in ESUG's interest to keep its
usual level of transparency.

Paolo

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Stéphane Ducasse

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Damien Cassou

Thanks damien. I know what we did for smalltalk and for Squeak in particular. My names is written on a lot of what I did.
Sadly I should have done the same in Java my h-index would be much higher :)

There is a lesson in that story. Doing and been successful always make people jaleous. Apparently Smalltalk is in so good condition that it is
good to shoot on one of the few organization promoting it. So I was considering looking at Javascript or Lua and may be this is the time to do that and
let the sunday and happy small talkers (in the literal sense) have fun.

I will check that. Marcus quitted the esug-list so this is an indication of the sickness of this wonderful community.

Stef

On Jul 4, 2012, at 11:32 PM, Damien Cassou wrote:

> Hi ESUG members,
>
> On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Michael Haupt <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> how many people on the ESUG board can be considered representatives of
>> communities of Smalltalk dialects other than Pharo?
>
> here are the members of the ESUG's board:
>
> President: Stéphane Ducasse
> Treasurer: Luc Fabresse
> Damien Cassou
> Jordi Delgado
> Marcus Denker
> Alain Plantec
> Serge Stinckwich
>
> The rest of this email is my personal opinion and does not necessarily
> reflect the one of the board.
>
> Even though I'm unsure about your definition of "representatives of
> communities", I don't see myself as being one, whatever the community
> you pick. When I decided I wanted to join the board this was not to
> represent Smalltalk or Squeak, this was because I loved both and
> wanted to spend some time helping. I got elected by participants of
> the conference during the last talk, three years ago. I believe this
> is the same for most other members, i.e., we don't represent a
> particular Smalltalk, we just want to help and do some work for
> everyone. Now, if a representative of a community wants to work with
> us, we would love to receive his application.
>
> For 3 years now that I'm in this board, we received *a lot of*
> requests for sponsoring (being projects, participation to the
> conferences, books, articles, ...). If we didn't accept all requests,
> I think we are very very close. Most of the times, requests arrive in
> already a good shape, we see a great potential for the community or a
> real need, and we accept them. Sometimes, we ask people to work some
> more on the proposal and most of the time we will eventually accept
> them as well. I invite any interested Smalltalker out there to send
> founding proposals, we are always happy to help when we can.
>
> Now, let's face it: 2 of the most active participants of the ESUG
> board (Marcus and Stéphane) are leaders on the Pharo project. But we,
> as a community, must not forget that both where among the most active
> participants of Squeak before (I'm talking about code, organization,
> presentations, books, ...). These two are very active for the
> Smalltalk community and have been for quite some time now. If they
> decide to quit the ESUG board (and we already talked about that among
> members of the board), who will step up and do their job? I think each
> of them spends roughly 1h per day (probably more than that) on ESUG
> tasks: preparing the conference, taking care of legal issues,
> administrating the web servers, taking care of requests for
> sponsoring... Not so funny jobs. They both prefer coding, believe me.
> I don't see anyone else in the current board who could do their job
> and we didn't receive any application to join the board for at least 3
> years.
>
> Finally, the board decided to raise this issue with you today for 1
> reason: we are aware of the conflict of interest! We want your opinion
> about founding a particular dialect that shares some active
> participants with the board itself. But while giving your opinion
> please remember one thing: ESUG did help other communities in the past
> and we will continue to do it.
>
> My even more personal opinion: would it be fair not to help Pharo
> create a consortium simply because some members are so prolific that
> they can be very useful for two organizations at the same time? I
> don't believe so and I vote for becoming a member of the Pharo
> consortium just as much as I would vote for becoming a member of any
> other Smalltalk consortium/association/organization/group/whatever.
>
> Best regards,
>
> --
> Damien Cassou
> http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st
>
> "Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them
> popular by not having them." James Iry
>
> _______________________________________________
> Esug-list mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Michael Haupt-3

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Paolo Bonzini-2

... thanks, Paolo, I was about to write that.

Best,

Michael

On 5 July 2012 08:49, Paolo Bonzini <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Il 05/07/2012 08:47, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto:
>> Reading this thread after all we did for Smalltalk is quite taught.
>> The wolfs are back apparently. Sad period. I think the esug board
>> will have to really decide if ESUG is worth after all. Now may be
>> ESUG popularity is a problem for certain people or this is the pharo
>> popularity. May be this is good to not give a chance to a promising
>> open source project (especially when we see that such question never
>> arose when it was about other Smalltalks). Life is so funny
>> sometimes.
>
> No Stephane, it's not that. Part of it is just misinformation and I
> think that was clarified; the other part is just basic handling of
> conflict of interest, and I think it's in ESUG's interest to keep its
> usual level of transparency.
>
> Paolo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Esug-list mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Stéphane Ducasse

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Paolo Bonzini-2

On Jul 5, 2012, at 8:49 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:

Why did we send the mail if this is not about that?
Now I see so much frustration in some mails that I laugh a lot.
Personally when I wake up the morning I feel good and I know that I'm doing a good
job for my community. Now may be I should do something else.

I also really like the mails from people that never put on finger in the ESUG conference
and that do not know what is it to organize it, promote Smalltalk, give lecture worldwide and
other little things like writing stupid books.
Anyway I'm leaving on vacation and let people have fun.

Stef
_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Stéphane Ducasse

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Michael Haupt-3

Dear Michael

How are you doing these days?

>> In contrast to my earlier e-mail on process transparency, I have
> noticed that while the election itself is transparent, the path to
> being eligible in the first place is not. Is there actually such a
> thing as a call for applications when board members' terms end? Is
> there a nomination phase? A Q&A period to help people make up their
> minds?

People can propose themselves. Now they should show that they are not applying to show themselves.
So the board will value their accomplishment for the community.
For example, we appreciated so much the work of alain and jordi for the organization of esug at Brest and Barcelona
that we ask them if they had some energy left for ESUG.

Now it should be clear that we do not want a bad fruit in the basket because this would break ESUG board gentle and respectful
atmosphere. We are doing that on our free time and it takes a lot lot lot and lot of energy and time.
So the atmosphere of the board should be friendly, respectful. We experienced some problems in the past
with the organization of some satellites events and we learned the hard way.
ESUG is about positive energy around Smalltalk.

>
> In short, how does this work?
>
>> Now, let's face it: 2 of the most active participants of the ESUG
>> board (Marcus and Stéphane) are leaders on the Pharo project. But we,
>> as a community, must not forget that both where among the most active
>> participants of Squeak before (I'm talking about code, organization,
>> presentations, books, ...). These two are very active for the
>> Smalltalk community and have been for quite some time now. If they
>> decide to quit the ESUG board (and we already talked about that among
>> members of the board), who will step up and do their job?
>
> Good question; see above.
>
>> My even more personal opinion: would it be fair not to help Pharo
>> create a consortium simply because some members are so prolific that
>> they can be very useful for two organizations at the same time? I
>> don't believe so and I vote for becoming a member of the Pharo
>> consortium just as much as I would vote for becoming a member of any
>> other Smalltalk consortium/association/organization/group/whatever.
>
> What amount is being considered? What percentage of the ESUG budget is that?

It should be either 2000 Euros or 4000 Euros or around that level.

Notice that nobody ever complained when ESUG supported the work of John McIntosh to clean
a bit the Squeak Virtual machine and it was more if I recall correctly.
Now was it not in the global interest to have a stronger open-source community?

May be not. ESUG decided to give a chance.
May be people prefer that we do all our research and teaching in python, Javascript or Ruby?
Who knows. I'm not in the mind of people and I'm happy about it :).

Have a nice day.

>
> Regards,
>
> Michael
>
> _______________________________________________
> Esug-list mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Geert Claes

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

Administrator

In reply to this post by Michael Haupt-3

Michael Haupt-3 wrote

...

What amount is being considered? What percentage of the ESUG budget is that?
...

Just curious, do you ask because you contribute funds or are you just stirring the pot?

Paolo Bonzini-2

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Stéphane Ducasse

Il 05/07/2012 08:59, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto:

>
> On Jul 5, 2012, at 8:49 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>
>> Il 05/07/2012 08:47, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto:
>>> Reading this thread after all we did for Smalltalk is quite taught.
>>> The wolfs are back apparently. Sad period. I think the esug board
>>> will have to really decide if ESUG is worth after all. Now may be
>>> ESUG popularity is a problem for certain people or this is the pharo
>>> popularity. May be this is good to not give a chance to a promising
>>> open source project (especially when we see that such question never
>>> arose when it was about other Smalltalks). Life is so funny
>>> sometimes.
>>
>> No Stephane, it's not that. Part of it is just misinformation and I
>> think that was clarified; the other part is just basic handling of
>> conflict of interest, and I think it's in ESUG's interest to keep its
>> usual level of transparency.
>
> Why did we send the mail if this is not about that?

Sending email about this is great, because it makes the community part
of the decisions. But it doesn't eliminate the conflict of interest
inside the board. Note that CoI is not a problem, it is a fact of life,
but it must be handled properly.

When you are a member of an academic program committee, you are asked to
leave when your paper is being discussed. We are asking for something
similar in the context of the ESUG board; again, it is standard practice
and I don't see why there should be any opposition to this.

If I were a member of the ESUG board, I certainly would do the same on
any decision that mentioned GNU Smalltalk.

> Now I see so much frustration in some mails that I laugh a lot.
> Personally when I wake up the morning I feel good and I know that I'm doing a good
> job for my community. Now may be I should do something else.

I believe that you are; for both Pharo and ESUG. And I believe
everybody knows the effort that you put into promotion of Smalltalk.
But you shouldn't take things too personally: your effort requires you
to be _more_ careful about not pissing people off, not less. :)

Paolo

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Michael Haupt-3

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Geert Claes

Geert,

On 5 July 2012 09:14, Geert Claes <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Just curious, do you ask because you contribute funds or are you just
> stirring the pot?

I'm interested, that's all. Really.

Best,

Michael

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Michael Haupt-3

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Stéphane Ducasse

Hi Stéphane,

On 5 July 2012 09:07, Stéphane Ducasse <[hidden email]> wrote:
> How are you doing these days?

living happily in Java-land - yes, that is possible ;-) -, not having
abandoned Smalltalk at all.
Details: http://labs.oracle.com/projects/maxine

> People can propose themselves. ...

Thanks for clarifying. How long are terms?

> ... So the atmosphere of the board should be friendly, respectful. We experienced some problems in the past
> with the organization of some satellites events and we learned the hard way.

I know. There has been learning on both ends of the story, I presume,
and one particular insight might have been that communication always
has two ends with potential to fail, and that putting all blame on one
end only merely reveals half the truth.

>> What amount is being considered? What percentage of the ESUG budget is that?
>
> It should be either 2000 Euros or 4000 Euros or around that level.

One of the corporate sponsorships then; I could have figured that one
myself. :-P

Regards,

Michael

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Stéphane Ducasse

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Paolo Bonzini-2

BTW since everybody wants to give lessons here is our internal process. A board member never votes when he has a
conflict of interest. For example when a student applies for an article sponsoring (even 150 Euros), if a board member is in the group of the student
or may have any conflict of interest, the board member does not take part of the discussion or the voting process.
This is always like that.

Now as a good exercise for our little community, it would be good that everybody check what he did recently not for its own little
assets (my little program my precious my little business my precious) but for somebody else asset.
I wrote and edited the seaside book and I should have better wrote something on ruby on rails
because we earned a ridiculous amount of money and it was 4 years of work (but this does not count) and I pushed so that we get
all dialects represented, while I could have simply focus on Pharo.
Similarly, we sponsored conferences like FAST and Smalltalk Solutions, summerTalk projects, user groups and we are systematically promoting Smalltalk.

Now I'm a bit worried about some reactions especially the rhetorical part of them. It seems to me
that in our community we do not like success - probably because this is better to be the king of a small castle than
a knight in a kingdom. Personally I would prefer to be able to build graphical system like D3 in Javascript with my Smalltalk but I cannot. So may be Javascript is
the future of any smart smalltalker.

Personally I want the success of Smalltalk and I built the tools to make it happen. Pharo is one of such tool. We built pharo because the tools in presence
were not there to push the way we wanted. Just for your information, we are making pharo not for US but for people to be able to
make money with it. Now if somebody would come, fork pharo and make our dream reality by being better than pharo we would
be more than happy. Why because doing pharo is a pain. People complain, doing is slow, we have other agendas.

I'm talking with lawyers INRIA since two years for the consortium. INRIA put 180 Keuros for pharo on the table and we are negotiating to get another 60 K.
Our little team will also put 30 Keuros plus a massive amount of our free hours. Of course smart people can think that this is because this is for us. No it is not,
we are building pharo for the community. In fact I would like to build other systems than pharo but so far the state of the system
implementations does not let us experiment (proprietary or old systems), so we are basically forced to build pharo if we want to invent our future.
May be some people do not want to have a future. But we do. Now you can not trust us or be against it this is your rights.

So it would be a problem that ESUG the organization promoting Smalltalk has a problem
to pay 2000/4000 Euros, when I see what our group is putting or INRIA.
Seriously, if this is the case we should really be clear about that and rethink what is ESUG and also probably do something else of our free time.

Stef

On Jul 5, 2012, at 8:49 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Paolo Bonzini-2

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

Il 05/07/2012 09:30, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto:
> BTW since everybody wants to give lessons here is our internal
> process. A board member never votes when he has a conflict of
> interest. For example when a student applies for an article
> sponsoring (even 150 Euros), if a board member is in the group of the
> student or may have any conflict of interest, the board member does
> not take part of the discussion or the voting process. This is always
> like that.

You should have said this before, since it answers many questions that
were asked. Nobody _wants_ to give lessons.

Paolo

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Stéphane Ducasse

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Paolo Bonzini-2

>>
>
> Sending email about this is great, because it makes the community part
> of the decisions. But it doesn't eliminate the conflict of interest
> inside the board. Note that CoI is not a problem, it is a fact of life,
> but it must be handled properly.

exactly
>
> When you are a member of an academic program committee, you are asked to
> leave when your paper is being discussed. We are asking for something
> similar in the context of the ESUG board; again, it is standard practice
> and I don't see why there should be any opposition to this.

As the number two of my research center, I deal with it daily
for hiring people for their life, hiring phd students, engineers…
And this is always the same. Shut up when concerns.
Why people think that we do not apply that in ESUG board?

Because of my personality? May be this is a compliment :)….

>
> If I were a member of the ESUG board, I certainly would do the same on
> any decision that mentioned GNU Smalltalk.

Not only if one of your student send a request for summer talk, paper sponsoring or anything else.
Even not related to GNU. ;)

>> Now I see so much frustration in some mails that I laugh a lot.
>> Personally when I wake up the morning I feel good and I know that I'm doing a good
>> job for my community. Now may be I should do something else.
>
> I believe that you are; for both Pharo and ESUG. And I believe
> everybody knows the effort that you put into promotion of Smalltalk.

Thanks

> But you shouldn't take things too personally: your effort requires you
> to be _more_ careful about not pissing people off, not less. :)

I do not know why we would be pissing people.
Pissed people would be taking our actions are aggressive or wrong but this is their misinterpretations not our actions.

>
> Paolo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Esug-list mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

marten

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Stéphane Ducasse

Stephane,

I see here more and more over-reactions and I quite do not understand
these reactions.

I can not believe, that posters here do not like the success of ESUG or
behave jealous in some way.

But ideas/contributions like the ones Paolo (and others) posted here are
still valid and I am more than surprised, that people are angry about it.

But you answered many questions and that is ok - and I've seen NO
posting here so far saying, that the ESUG members are doing their job
badly. ESUG has been done quite a good job in the past promoting
Smalltalk in various ways.

Marten

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Geert Claes

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

Administrator

In reply to this post by Michael Haupt-3

No worries, it's just that drama threads like this are destructive and don't serve any purpose :) The most vocal people often tend to be those who are not even active contributors or community members.

I reckon the ESUG board should just have used the authority they were given when elected and gone ahead with what they thought was a sound decision (which is why there is a board). Who currently is on that board and how they were elected is a completely separate issue. Any conflict of interest was already highlighted and deemed acceptable when elected.

To clarify, I am not a candidate, I also did not cast a vote and I am more than convinced that anyone who is willing to sacrifice their free time to contribute to ESUG will be welcomed there with open arms ... I just have a feeling the line of candidates is not that long :)

jtuchel

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Stéphane Ducasse

Hi Steph,

Thank you very much for these insights.

I must say I am a bit surprised how emotional this discussion gets. Nobody is doubting that the amount and quality of work and passion you and others put into Smalltalk as a community on one side and Pharo on the other are really worth a lot. And of course the success of Pharo is a succes for Smalltalk. We as a Community profit so much from the small and big things hapenning.

But this whole discussion is about another topic. It is about whether people would like ESUG to spend between 2000 and 4000 Euros per year in support of the Pharo consortium. I think we even haven't heard enough opinions yet to judge what the community thinks. I guess you were prepared for negative responses, so what makes you upset is hopefully not the fact per se, but the rhetorics.

I think ESUG should support the Pharo project. But ESUG should not seem to be an entity that somewhat guarantees a steady cash flow for Pharo. Let's put it another way: if an ESUG member/sponsor wants to support Pharo in particular, they can always go for a membership or sponsorship in the Pharo Consortium.

So sponsorship is fine with me, and a cheaper membership level is also fine, even when combined with additional sponsorship (e.g. when the ESUG conference is a financial success and there's more money on the bank than needed), but I fear that a corparate membership level would bring up the question of CoI over and over again, for as long as there are people active in both entities. Which, by itself, is neither bad nor a problem from my standpoint. Thinking of ESUG as "neutral" or "independent" is an illusion, because it will always be run and sponsored by enthusiasts - and an enthusiast cannot be neutral ;-)

Joachim

P.S.: So what did I do for the Smalltalk Community? My company sponsors ESUG for a few years now, and I try to help promote Smalltalk by blogging and trying to motivate VA Smalltalk users (because these are the kind of Smalltalkers I am in touch with most of the time during my day job) to participate in the community. I try to transport the enthusiasm, knowledge and code from the community into legacy Smalltalk projects (again, mostly VAST). You could say I try to build a sub-community in the VAST world that somehow feels quite offline for many reasons. My company has spent quite some time and money on organizing events in which VAST users can find out they are not the last ones on earth. Together with Marten and Sebastian I do the Smalltalk Inspect Podcast, in which we try to cover all Smalltalk dialects and all kinds of topics. I know this still is far less time and passion than what you or Marcus or other Board members put into the Smalltalk community, but I hope this shows that my intention here is to help build and sustain the community, not to troll about the ESUG board.

"Stéphane Ducasse" <[hidden email]> hat am 5. Juli 2012 um 09:30 geschrieben:

> BTW since everybody wants to give lessons here is our internal process. A board member never votes when he has a
> conflict of interest. For example when a student applies for an article sponsoring (even 150 Euros), if a board member is in the group of the student
> or may have any conflict of interest, the board member does not take part of the discussion or the voting process.
> This is always like that.
>
> Now as a good exercise for our little community, it would be good that everybody check what he did recently not for its own little
> assets (my little program my precious my little business my precious) but for somebody else asset.
> I wrote and edited the seaside book and I should have better wrote something on ruby on rails
> because we earned a ridiculous amount of money and it was 4 years of work (but this does not count) and I pushed so that we get
> all dialects represented, while I could have simply focus on Pharo.
> Similarly, we sponsored conferences like FAST and Smalltalk Solutions, summerTalk projects, user groups and we are systematically promoting Smalltalk.
>
> Now I'm a bit worried about some reactions especially the rhetorical part of them. It seems to me
> that in our community we do not like success - probably because this is better to be the king of a small castle than
> a knight in a kingdom. Personally I would prefer to be able to build graphical system like D3 in Javascript with my Smalltalk but I cannot. So may be Javascript is
> the future of any smart smalltalker.
>
> Personally I want the success of Smalltalk and I built the tools to make it happen. Pharo is one of such tool. We built pharo because the tools in presence
> were not there to push the way we wanted. Just for your information, we are making pharo not for US but for people to be able to
> make money with it. Now if somebody would come, fork pharo and make our dream reality by being better than pharo we would
> be more than happy. Why because doing pharo is a pain. People complain, doing is slow, we have other agendas.
>
> I'm talking with lawyers INRIA since two years for the consortium. INRIA put 180 Keuros for pharo on the table and we are negotiating to get another 60 K.
> Our little team will also put 30 Keuros plus a massive amount of our free hours. Of course smart people can think that this is because this is for us. No it is not,
> we are building pharo for the community. In fact I would like to build other systems than pharo but so far the state of the system
> implementations does not let us experiment (proprietary or old systems), so we are basically forced to build pharo if we want to invent our future.
> May be some people do not want to have a future. But we do. Now you can not trust us or be against it this is your rights.
>
> So it would be a problem that ESUG the organization promoting Smalltalk has a problem
> to pay 2000/4000 Euros, when I see what our group is putting or INRIA.
> Seriously, if this is the case we should really be clear about that and rethink what is ESUG and also probably do something else of our free time.
>
> Stef
>
>
> On Jul 5, 2012, at 8:49 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>
> > Il 05/07/2012 08:47, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto:
> >> Reading this thread after all we did for Smalltalk is quite taught.
> >> The wolfs are back apparently. Sad period. I think the esug board
> >> will have to really decide if ESUG is worth after all. Now may be
> >> ESUG popularity is a problem for certain people or this is the pharo
> >> popularity. May be this is good to not give a chance to a promising
> >> open source project (especially when we see that such question never
> >> arose when it was about other Smalltalks). Life is so funny
> >> sometimes.
> >
> > No Stephane, it's not that. Part of it is just misinformation and I
> > think that was clarified; the other part is just basic handling of
> > conflict of interest, and I think it's in ESUG's interest to keep its
> > usual level of transparency.
> >
> > Paolo
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Esug-list mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Esug-list mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

jtuchel

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Geert Claes

Gert,

Geert Claes <[hidden email]> hat am 5. Juli 2012 um 09:43 geschrieben:

> No worries, it's just that drama threads like this are destructive and don't
> serve any purpose :)

Not sure about that. It's some of the answers in the thread that made it that way.

The question was clear: The board wanted to know what people think about this. And I guess this question was asked because they've already knew there would be a COI problem.So it was intended to serve a purpose.

This is good and I am glad they ask.

> The most vocal people often tend to be those who are> not even active contributors or community members.

That's what a community must handle: filter useful input from noise.

> > I reckon the ESUG board should just have used the authority they were given
> when elected and gone ahead with what they thought was a sound decision
> (which is why there is a board).

I see it like this: The ESUG board asked the community for help in preparation of a decision. If they were absolutely sure, they wouldn't have asked. We should help with input, and some people asked additional questions, hopefully the ansers will help them come up with a final opinion.

> Who currently is on that board and how> they were elected is a completely separate issue.

Correct. As is the question if the Pharo efforts are good or bad.

Joachim

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Steven Kelly

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Damien Cassou

Since I didn't really see an answer to Michael Haupt's question, about what is the main Smalltalk dialect of the board members, I did a quick Google on their home pages, looking there or on CVs for which Smalltalk is mentioned. Obviously this is not an accurate method, and I'd much rather the board members answered the question - please, please don't get annoyed because Google says this, just tell us what the real situation is. But for what little it's worth:

> here are the members of the ESUG's board:
>
> President: Stéphane Ducasse <- Pharo
> Treasurer: Luc Fabresse <- Pharo
> Damien Cassou <- Pharo
> Jordi Delgado <- Pharo
> Marcus Denker <- Squeak, Pharo
> Alain Plantec <- Pharo
> Serge Stinckwich <- none on home page, adding various Smalltalk names to the search terms shows several, with Pharo giving most hits

If that's the impression a casual web browse gives, then even if it is totally and utterly incorrect, hopefully the board can understand why it seems reasonable to members who don't know all the details to mention potential conflicts of interest.

So, what does it mean that if so many on the board have a Pharo link? First, it's brilliant that these people are active in doing something for a Smalltalk, as well as their great work in ESUG. Second, it's brilliant that Pharo people are active in wider promotion of Smalltalk in general. And third, it's going to be rather difficult to have a sensible vote on the board, and discussions on the members email list may be a little tense :).

No worries from me, though. I think it's great what ESUG are doing, and great what Pharo is doing. Personally I'd rather not have ESUG sponsor Pharo, but that's just one person's opinion, and hopefully nobody gets upset about it.

Go Smalltalk!
Steve

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Damien Cassou

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Michael Haupt-3

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Michael Haupt <[hidden email]> wrote:
> How long are terms?

as far as I know, we don't have such a thing:

- the board has no minimum/maximum size
- anybody willing to help seriously is invited to send an email to the
board to offer his free time. Then we ask the community during the
conference if they accept this new board member.
- when somebody wants to quit to take back part of his free time, he
just does so (as Noury recently did after years and years of handling
ESUG's money, a job that requires a lot of effort and rigor). In this
case we ask all board members who is willing to take some more work to
replace the leaving member (and Luc accepted to do that, thank you
Luc).

You are right, we should improve our communication and probably have a
dedicated web page, let me add that to my todo list :-).

--
Damien Cassou
http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st

"Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them
popular by not having them." James Iry

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Graham McLeod

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

Hi All

Reading the thread, I just wanted to add my .02 worth.

I have no problem in ESUG sponsoring Pharo Consortium, like it has sponsored many other worthwhile Smalltalk related projects.
The history of decisions taken by the board is comforting as it shows impartiality across dialects and initiatives. These facts speak more loudly than
principles and discussion.
The quantum of sponsorship mentioned is very reasonable in the light of other assistance given to much more focussed projects.
I believe that all dialects of Smalltalk have benefitted from the work on Pharo and its use as a platform to evolve products like Seaside, Magritte, Fuel and many others
which flow into the broader Smalltalk community.

I would like to publicly thank all volunteers on the ESUG board and the Pharo group for their work and efforts which have made and are making major contributions.
Please don't be discouraged by the discussion on this thread. C++ has users, Java enthusiasts, and Smalltalk zealots! People are passionate and want to see good things -
lets harness the positive energy.

At a technical level, I have had experience over 20 years of working in various Smalltalks and attempting projects in C++, Java, Java Script and various other languages.
Every time I come back to the comfort zone that is Smalltalk. It is simply more "right", better and consistent than the other environments. I have looked at Python, Ruby, Coffee Script,
Objective C, Erlang.... etc. There is still nothing with the breadth of capabilities, purity, accessibility and openness (in the sense that an average developer can get at the internals and implementation of the language and libraries) of Smalltalk. Yes, it is old and there are some messy bits and frustrations. Alan Kay himself has said he is frustrated that there is not something better to replace Smalltalk. What I see in the Pharo space over the last two years gives me hope that this could be it. There is a critical mass of innovation and community activity that is generating a very dynamic, capable system and eco-system. I would hate to see the very good work of many towards this dissipated when we are close to realisation of a really great environment. We should give every encouragement to those pushing things forward.

Go, Stef, Damien, Luc, Marcus, et al....

Best
Graham

Damien Cassou wrote:

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Michael Haupt [hidden email] wrote:

How long are terms?


as far as I know, we don't have such a thing:

- the board has no minimum/maximum size
- anybody willing to help seriously is invited to send an email to the
board to offer his free time. Then we ask the community during the
conference if they accept this new board member.
- when somebody wants to quit to take back part of his free time, he
just does so (as Noury recently did after years and years of handling
ESUG's money, a job that requires a lot of effort and rigor). In this
case we ask all board members who is willing to take some more work to
replace the leaving member (and Luc accepted to do that, thank you
Luc).

You are right, we should improve our communication and probably have a
dedicated web page, let me add that to my todo list :-).

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

mcleod.vcf (559 bytes) Download Attachment

SergeStinckwich

Re: ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

In reply to this post by Steven Kelly

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Steven Kelly <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Since I didn't really see an answer to Michael Haupt's question, about what is the main Smalltalk dialect of the board members, I did a quick Google on their home pages, looking there or on CVs for which Smalltalk is mentioned. Obviously this is not an accurate method, and I'd much rather the board members answered the question - please, please don't get annoyed because Google says this, just tell us what the real situation is. But for what little it's worth:
>
>> here are the members of the ESUG's board:
>>
>> President: Stéphane Ducasse <- Pharo
>> Treasurer: Luc Fabresse <- Pharo
>> Damien Cassou <- Pharo
>> Jordi Delgado <- Pharo
>> Marcus Denker <- Squeak, Pharo
>> Alain Plantec <- Pharo
>> Serge Stinckwich <- none on home page, adding various Smalltalk names to the search terms shows several, with Pharo giving most hits

Yes, I'm mostly involved in Pharo. I'm in board but not really active
at the moment because I'm living in Asia where I do some Smalltalk
advocacies in the vietnamese, korean and japanese communities.

> If that's the impression a casual web browse gives, then even if it is totally and utterly incorrect, hopefully the board can understand why it seems reasonable to members who don't know all the details to mention potential conflicts of interest.
>
> So, what does it mean that if so many on the board have a Pharo link? First, it's brilliant that these people are active in doing something for a Smalltalk, as well as their great work in ESUG. Second, it's brilliant that Pharo people are active in wider promotion of Smalltalk in general. And third, it's going to be rather difficult to have a sensible vote on the board, and discussions on the members email list may be a little tense :).

The board is aware of these problems and we are trying to take care of
all Smalltalk communities if there need some support.
Look at our promotion program here: http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Promotion
If you need some support for your program or to develop a new
community, just ask.

Regards,
--
Serge Stinckwich
UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC), Hanoi, Vietnam
Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk
http://doesnotunderstand.org/

_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

12345