Forward: An update from Viewpoints Research

  Hello,

  Kim and the group at Viewpoints had a chat recently, and Kim would
like to write up an update of what is going on with Viewpoints.
Hopefully, this clarifies some of the questions around Squeak and
Viewpoints.

  (This has really nothing to do with the SqF election, BTW.  Find
that there is no mention to it in the following.)

  Thank you!

-- Yoshiki


Dear Squeak developer community,

A recent query to the Squeak-dev list relative to the Squeak
Foundation's formation of a non profit entity and that relationship
to Viewpoints Research was recently brought to my attention.

In light of this, I thought I'd take the opportunity for a short
response and also to provide you with a brief summary of the current
activities of the Viewpoints Research Institute.

Viewpoints would certainly have no objection to the Squeak Foundation
becoming a non profit dedicated to the development of Squeak. In fact
it seems that the creation of more organizations forming around
Squeak would just help to broaden its community.  Whereas Viewpoints
is involved with a variety of research activities, and not solely
dedicated to the continued development of Squeak, we think it would
be a fine thing for another entity to dedicate itself to that end.

Our recently updated website http://www.vpri.org is really the best
place to become current on our directions and work, papers and team.
We're working to add more content behind each of the four "Our Work"
areas, but this will give you an idea of the current focus of our
research.  As you'll realize our work with the One Laptop Per Child
Initiative relates to several of these areas.

Many of you are aware that we received a sizeable grant from the
National Science Foundation (NSF) late last year --  "Steps toward
the Reinvention of Programming".   The proposal can be obtained via
the "writings" section of the vpri website.  A large part of
Viewpoints focus and efforts will be directed to this work over the
next 5 years.

We continue to work closely with people from both the "Squeak" and
"Squeakland" communities.  A few people on our team are more closely
involved than others.  As many of you know, Viewpoints also supported
John McIntosh's work last year to make Squeak compatible with the
Intel-based Macs.

In addition, Viewpoints has worked closely with the leaders at the
Squeak Foundation on the relicensing efforts -- to get approval from
contributors to move to the MIT license.  This is going very well!
The hardest part has been locating some of the contributors as there
were literally hundreds of you that contributed to the Squeak code
base. Thanks to those of you who have agreed to the relicensing, sent
your approval form, helped to contact others, and continue to finish
up this most worthwhile effort.

One of our philosophies at VPRI is that we create prototypes of tools
to be put into the open source and ask the individuals that these
tools (Etoys, Croquet) resonate with to get more involved and to
continue to develop the tool, develop content, documentation --
whether open source or commercial -- and help grow those emerging
technologies and communities.  This model allows Viewpoints to put
our research ideas, writings and prototypes out and then to carry on
research and explore areas we believe critical to our overall mission.

We thank each of you for your efforts within this community and
appreciate all of your work and efforts.  We encourage you to become
involved with the Squeak Foundation and be sure to show your support
during their upcoming elections for members of the Board.

thanks and cheers to all,
Kim