Proposal for a Squeak migration meeting

On 7/3/06, Hilaire Fernandes <[hidden email]> wrote:
> So know I still wonder is the objective of Tweak is still to replace the
> morphic layer or did the objective changed?

As far as I know, that's still the objective.

However, IIRC Andreas has stated at at least one occasion in
unequivocally clear words that Tweak is primarily for his own projects
(Croquet, Etoys(?)). In other words, he is not going to commit to
spend time to work at Tweak for the community (knowing him, he might
still do it, but we can't count on it ;-)).

Which means that for the Squeak community at large, Tweak is a
take-it-or-leave-it deal. People can send patches and/or enhancements
to Andreas, but he is likely to decide on accepting them only in the
context of his work, and not primarily to do the community a favor.

(note: I'm totally fine with Andreas' position here. It is his code
after all, he can do with it as he pleases. Just that people don't
misunderstand why I bring up this issue)

I think that you raise an important question.
Does it make sense that Sophie is based on Tweak in that case?
Should people fork from Tweak (even before starting using it :)).

Stef

Colin Putney <[hidden email]> writes:
> On Jun 30, 2006, at 5:47 AM, Lex Spoon wrote:
> > There is a lot of existing Squeak content.  There are 200 packages in
> > the 3.7 stable package universe.  It takes hours just to *read* this
> > list.  Imagine how long it would take to reproduce it all.
>
> Whoa. So far this is the first suggestion I've seen that we should
> worry about the licensing of anything other than the core image.

We agree, I think.  The point is that if we try and restart the core
image from scratch, then we would have a long way to go before getting
back to Squeak's current functionality.  It is more realistic to
contact the existing contributors and verify that they agree to a
relicense.


Lex

Cees De Groot a écrit :
Okay, I was not aware of that. It is sad if Tweak developers are not
interested to get Tweak maintstream in Squeak. In this case (I hope it
is not the case), bascicly there are only two options:

1. the actual morph stuff can be relicenced (this appear to be very
unlikely as this code AFAIK were developped at Dynsey), and this is just
fine.

2. look for an alternative GUI solution. Very recently  we heard about
Bruno Luca and Goran Krampe working on a GTK+ version. Bootstraping with
a GTK+ version then getting away the Morph/Etoys layer will then remove
a big load of the Dynsey code.

The solution 2. could more or less look like a fork of Squeak, kind of
OpenSqueak fork. I bet it could be very successfull among the developer
users.

Anyway if there are interest to get a Squeak version, free software
community compatible, there are not that much solutions...
If not, the actual Morph version of Squeak is just fine, but Squeak will
still be a marginal things, with very slow evolution, probably slower
than before.


>
> Which means that for the Squeak community at large, Tweak is a
> take-it-or-leave-it deal. People can send patches and/or enhancements
> to Andreas, but he is likely to decide on accepting them only in the
> context of his work, and not primarily to do the community a favor.

Without commitment of the lead developpers of Tweak to get it in Squeak,
it is useless to send such patch and enhancement. Hum, I will even say
it will be unwise to use it to develop application if there are no
community behind.

> (note: I'm totally fine with Andreas' position here. It is his code
> after all, he can do with it as he pleases. Just that people don't
> misunderstand why I bring up this issue)

Sure, this is free software world!

Hilaire

Lex Spoon a écrit :

It is wise. Should the foundation propose a plan to do that?

Hilaire

Hilaire Fernandes writes:
 > Cees De Groot a écrit :
 > > On 7/3/06, Hilaire Fernandes <[hidden email]> wrote:
 > >
 > >> So know I still wonder is the objective of Tweak is still to replace the
 > >> morphic layer or did the objective changed?
 > >
 > >
 > > As far as I know, that's still the objective.
 > >
 > > However, IIRC Andreas has stated at at least one occasion in
 > > unequivocally clear words that Tweak is primarily for his own projects
 > > (Croquet, Etoys(?)). In other words, he is not going to commit to
 > > spend time to work at Tweak for the community (knowing him, he might
 > > still do it, but we can't count on it ;-)).
 >
 > Okay, I was not aware of that. It is sad if Tweak developers are not
 > interested to get Tweak maintstream in Squeak. In this case (I hope it
 > is not the case), bascicly there are only two options:

>From my understanding, they were concentrating on their own
goals. There's a lot of work in getting a major package into
mainstream Squeak, that work could be a distraction to them.

The Tweak developers are using Morphic for development tools, they
might be tempted to co-operate by work on bringing Tweak's development
tools up to Morphic tools levels.

If Squeak was a set of packages then licencing would be easier because
we could deal with each package individually. Also the licencing of
the core image would be less important because being small it would be
easier to replace.

People could then work with a mostly cleanly licenced image with a few
SqueakL packages that were externally loaded while boot-strapping a
fully cleanly licenced image. GNU began development as a set of tools
that ran under proprietary Unix.

Bryce

> Okay, I was not aware of that. It is sad if Tweak developers are not
> interested to get Tweak maintstream in Squeak.

Shouldn't the responsibility of putting Tweak into mainstream Squeak be
the responsibility of the mainstream Squeak development team if that's
what they want?

> Without commitment of the lead developpers of Tweak to get it in
> Squeak,
> it is useless to send such patch and enhancement.

What makes you say that?  I see no correlation..

Chris Muller a écrit :
>>Okay, I was not aware of that. It is sad if Tweak developers are not
>>interested to get Tweak maintstream in Squeak.
>
>
> Shouldn't the responsibility of putting Tweak into mainstream Squeak be
> the responsibility of the mainstream Squeak development team if that's
> what they want?

I remember at least Steph said it will be interested to help to
integrate Tweak in Squeak.
But in the other hand this can only be done in sync with the developers
of the framework, especially when it is about such an important
framework as the GUI.

>
>
>>Without commitment of the lead developpers of Tweak to get it in
>>Squeak,
>>it is useless to send such patch and enhancement.
>
>
> What makes you say that?  I see no correlation..

Well, you may not want to base you work on framework you are not sure it
is viable in the middle term or if you are not sure it will become
mainstream in Squeak.

Hilaire

> From: Bryce Kampjes
> If Squeak was a set of packages then licencing would be easier because
> we could deal with each package individually.

... except for combinations of core plus set of interdependent packages
running in the same address space where the licenses were mutually
incompatible.  It may be that if the packages are *always* loaded from a
repository by the final user and *never* distributed together, this can
be bodged round; it may be that there are in fact no such combinations
and I'm raising a spectre that doesn't exist; it may be that in reality
nobody's worried about the theoretical incompatibilities (except perhaps
Debian).

                - Peter

On 5 juil. 06, at 19:16, Chris Muller wrote:

>> Okay, I was not aware of that. It is sad if Tweak developers are not
>> interested to get Tweak maintstream in Squeak.
>
> Shouldn't the responsibility of putting Tweak into mainstream  
> Squeak be
> the responsibility of the mainstream Squeak development team if that's
> what they want?

Chris,
I think that you have a funny way to looking at us.
If tweak guys do not want to participate why should we do that?

I always said that I would like to help pushing Tweak (ie removing  
MVC....)
but so far nothing.


>> Without commitment of the lead developpers of Tweak to get it in
>> Squeak,
>> it is useless to send such patch and enhancement.
>
> What makes you say that?  I see no correlation..

I let you guess.
Read the mailing-lists and you will see.

Stef

Am 06.07.2006 um 09:50 schrieb stéphane ducasse:

The question wasn't about participation but about responsibility.

> I always said that I would like to help pushing Tweak (ie removing  
> MVC....)
> but so far nothing.

Right. Because nobody from the Squeak community took on that task,  
yet, so there's nobody you could have "helped". Also, there was no  
"decision" yet that Tweak actually should replace Morphic. There are  
many cool features in Tweak, I personally like its ideas a lot, but  
there are also people who dislike it for various reasons. The first  
step would be that more people from the community actually try to do  
something serious in Tweak. Only then could you estimate if it is  
actually worth-while to switch to Tweak as the default UI.

Also, mind you, it took Morphic quite some time until it became the  
default UI. Several people worked full-time on it. That's also a  
reason why the "Tweak developers" don't take on such a task lightly.

>>> Without commitment of the lead developpers of Tweak to get it in
>>> Squeak,
>>> it is useless to send such patch and enhancement.
>>
>> What makes you say that?  I see no correlation..
>
> I let you guess.
> Read the mailing-lists and you will see.

Lighten up you french guys, you're gonna win the soccer world cup,  
right? ;-)

Seriously, if someone came up with the idea to switch to Qt (just to  
name some UI), would you expect the Qt developers to lead that effort?

- Bert -

Bert Freudenberg a écrit :

> Right. Because nobody from the Squeak community took on that task,  yet,
> so there's nobody you could have "helped". Also, there was no  
> "decision" yet that Tweak actually should replace Morphic. There are  
> many cool features in Tweak, I personally like its ideas a lot, but  
> there are also people who dislike it for various reasons. The first  
> step would be that more people from the community actually try to do  
> something serious in Tweak. Only then could you estimate if it is  

People will not do serious things with Tweak as long as they do not have
a middle term visibility about Tweak. Like it or not, this is how it
work. An expression of interest from the Tweak developper to get Tweak
mainstream in Squeak could of course change that. But it seems, as I
learn it recently from other email of the thread, that it is not the case.


> actually worth-while to switch to Tweak as the default UI.
>
> Also, mind you, it took Morphic quite some time until it became the  
> default UI. Several people worked full-time on it. That's also a  reason
> why the "Tweak developers" don't take on such a task lightly.

It is understandable as resource is now tight. However it is not an
excuse to not communicate, which seems to be the problem now.

Tweak is developped with Squeak for Squeak, its integration mainstream
in Squeak can only be done in collaboration with the Tweak developper.
Steph suggested me a few days ago, to play with Tweak as a base for
further development. I look at the tutorial, it was nice, I love many of
the developer features comming with Tweak. Tweak introduced new paradigm
as the annotation. This new features are changes to the core Squeak,
IMHO to integrate thus core modifcation in Squeak a close collaboration
is needed between the Tweak developer and the Squeak integrator. Without
communication between both it is even not a good idea to try to do so,
remember resources is tight for every one.


> Lighten up you french guys, you're gonna win the soccer world cup,  
> right? ;-)
>
> Seriously, if someone came up with the idea to switch to Qt (just to  
> name some UI), would you expect the Qt developers to lead that effort?

Hum, I may say your are mixing two different problems.

One is integrating a framework written in Squeak into Squeak, were
collaboration is needed between the framework and Squeak developers.

The second one is writting a Qt binding for Squeak, which is indeed
abolutely not the problem of the Qt developers.

In the first one, you have to integrate in Squeak additionnal Squeak
code, which  can cause trouble. For example the framework did some
needed modification in the core Squeak, and thus modification may need
to be adjusted both in the framework and the core Squeak. In that case
communication and collaboration between the Squeak and framework
developpers is mandatory.

In the second case, writting a Qt binding. It is unlikely, no it is
impossible, you will need to change the Qt library to get working
binding. More likely collaboration with the VM developper will be needed.

See you in Berlin ;-)

Hilaire

Bert

I agree with you but this is not what I was implying. In the past  
certain people were not
really giving the signal that they want participation from other  
people on their projects.
So few people came to look at what they were doing.

Stef

A concrete case: I proposed hilaire to use Tweak to build his next  
engine.
But he does not have any visibility so discarded that offer. And I  
think that this is normal.

Now Tweaker would communicate more then the situation would be  
different. But apparently
a dead mailing is ok for everybody it seems.

Stef

On 6 juil. 06, at 17:23, Hilaire Fernandes wrote:

+1
+1

Hi Folks -

[Just as a reminder: You may want to consider changing subjects once the
discussion goes as far off as it does here. I dropped off this thread a
while ago and if it weren't for Bert's post would have never looked at
it again]

Hilaire Fernandes wrote:
> People will not do serious things with Tweak as long as they do not have
> a middle term visibility about Tweak. Like it or not, this is how it
> work. An expression of interest from the Tweak developper to get Tweak
> mainstream in Squeak could of course change that. But it seems, as I
> learn it recently from other email of the thread, that it is not the case.

Which email are you referring to?

>> Also, mind you, it took Morphic quite some time until it became the  
>> default UI. Several people worked full-time on it. That's also a  
>> reason why the "Tweak developers" don't take on such a task lightly.
>
> It is understandable as resource is now tight. However it is not an
> excuse to not communicate, which seems to be the problem now.

Not sure why you think this is a problem. If you have any questions,
have you tried asking them on the Tweak mailing list? Or perhaps cc-ing
the relevant messages over to it? I'm much more likely to look at stuff
coming in that way than on my occasional glance over Squeak-dev.

Right. I agree. So what kind of communication do you expect and where
have we failed to provide an appropriate level of communication?

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Andreas Raab a écrit :

>> People will not do serious things with Tweak as long as they do not
>> have a middle term visibility about Tweak. Like it or not, this is how
>> it work. An expression of interest from the Tweak developper to get
>> Tweak mainstream in Squeak could of course change that. But it seems,
>> as I learn it recently from other email of the thread, that it is not
>> the case.
>
>
> Which email are you referring to?

For the history:

Here I reported I read on tweak.impara.de that Teak will replace Morph
and Etoys, and wonder if it is still the objective
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2006-July/105646.html

Then Cees recalled me it may not that simple:
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2006-July/105653.html

Then Steph reported me he offered assistance to help integrate Tweak in
Squeak.org, but did not get result on the offer.

I recall I am an outsider so I may have uncomplete picture. If so it
will be fine the enlight me.


>So what kind of communication do you expect
communication at the metalevel to get Tweak in Squeak.org

After 3.9, Squeak.org could enter in development cycle with the sole and
unique objective to just get Tweak into Squeak.org. So roughtly, we can
say next Squeak.org will just be Squeak.org3.9 + Tweak. No morphic
removal or any other stuff, just to get Tweak in.

The benefice will be quadruple:
 - Tweak developer mays get more feedback from users
 - Squeak developers working on the browser and other Squeak IDE
development tools could start working on Tweak version of these tools
 - People willing to develop Squeak application may fell more
confortable to develop their next application with Tweak (I will)
 - Tweak developers will not have to maintain a separate Squeak version
anymore.

It will be definitively a win-win situation.

You may say this is already possible today with your distribution of
Tweak, but like it or not, it is not mainstream so not every one buy it
(I am not because of the lack of visibility).

Then later step by step Morph could be removed, if not relicensable.
Just a smooth process for the benefice of everyone.

Hilaire

> If tweak guys do not want to participate why should we do that?

Well, I hope "do not want to" is not why; maybe they just "can't".
Because whether Henrik would *want* to help integrate his font
anti-aliasing is irrelevant.  Our only choices were to reject the work
or try to pull it in anyway without him (many thanks to Andrew Tween
for looking at it).  Its a tough situation but one I think we're better
off accepting as a very real possibility.  At least open-source stuff
offers a remote chance of success..

And rejecting is a perfectly fair choice, "support" is a factor as much
as any other in deciding to pull something into your project..

Regards,
  Chris

Hilaire Fernandes a écrit :


So now I have a very direct question for you Andreas, are you interested
by this plan?

[ ] YES
[ ] NO

No answer means, NO of course.

After we know about your though about getting Tweak in Squeak.org, we
can eliminate or keep definitively the Tweak option.

Hilaire

Hilaire Fernandes wrote:
>> It will be definitively a win-win situation.
>>
>> You may say this is already possible today with your distribution of
>> Tweak, but like it or not, it is not mainstream so not every one buy it
>> (I am not because of the lack of visibility).

I wish it were that simple (nice marketing job btw; if this were the
first time I've seen this happening I'd probably buy the whole story
line, hook, and sinker ;-)

Unfortunately, all technologies go through phases and Tweak is still in
an "early adopters" phase. What that means is that essentially those
users who are scared by something not being mainstream are probably not
the right users to have at this point. There are at least three areas
(graphics, object model and messaging model) that require some drastic
simplifications and cleanup before it could be considered easy enough
for mainstream use. Even though various parts have settled down by now
(mostly by actually being used in various projects - Sophie, Croquet,
and TinLizzie have been great forcing functions in the various areas)
there is plenty of work left, some of which I'd say is critical before
considering Tweak ready for mainstream use.

>> Then later step by step Morph could be removed, if not relicensable.
>> Just a smooth process for the benefice of everyone.

If you've experienced similar processes before, they are *never* smooth.
Every last one of the larger technologies that got integrated into
Squeak caused major hickups, major frustrations, and for every last one
there have been serious attempts to avoid/retract them late in the game.
Sometimes these technologies had years of real use behind them. I
wouldn't expect it to be any different this time, and quite bluntly, I'm
not sure I have the energy to deal with the frustrations.

> So now I have a very direct question for you Andreas, are you interested
> by this plan?
>
> [ ] YES
> [ ] NO
>
> No answer means, NO of course.

"This plan" being to add Tweak to 3.9? Depends. For the "basic" image
the answer is No. That's simply because I will not knowingly add to that
20MB whopper that is euphemistically called a "basic" image today. For a
"full" version (which really just means that it'll be loadable via
SqueakMap) that's something we can talk about. Which is not quite a yes,
but thus far I haven't even looked at what it means to get Tweak into
3.9 and I am willing to re-evaluate this option.

Cheers,
   - Andreas