Survey finally published etc

Hi all!

As you are aware the time for me on the board is running out quickly and
the election is coming up. I have a guilty conscience about one thing
that I really need to clear before stepping off the board, and that is
the survey to the Stakeholder contacts I sent out on 2005-09-09.

I have now (finally) gathered up and published the survey and the
results on the old castaways swiki (wherever, we can move it). Only 4
months late... sigh:

        http://swiki.krampe.se/castaways/26

As you can see only Stephane, Yoshiki, Craig, Dan (through Craig) and
Scott responded. Avi responded that he was working on it but got stuck
due to thoughts about how to draw the line between personal opinions and
community representation - and then I assume he simply forgot about it.

We got no replies (and I sent out at least two reminders) from Andreas,
Steve, Diego or Jeff. John responded that he had no time.

I would also like to note that one of the two reminders was badly
formulated by me, and Avi set me duly straight (and I apologized
carefully), and one could also question the short timeframe for
answering.

Finally a very, very personal comment on this:

I think it was a disappointing result. Not the answers that came in, but
the lack of responses.

One reason for me not publishing this at the time is of course also the
lack of responses, but that is not an excuse - I should have published
it anyway.

One other thing I would like noted is that Andreas explicitly did not
"acknowledge" the Coordinators-group in any way when we contacted him as
a contact person for Croquet and Tweak, but he took the role anyway as
an "envoy". I would only assume that goes for the current board too
(after the merge with Stephane and Noury).

So personally, when I read the recent posts about decision processes
etc, I do it in the light of the above - with a tired ironic smile on my
face.

regards, Göran

On 23.01.2006, at 08:57, [hidden email] wrote:

Exactly. We (Stef, Michael and I) did, well before the Castaway thing, a
first run at a Sqf. Not democratic, more an "industrie consortium"  
thing of
the projects using Squeak.

We contacted the Croquet and Tweak and Squeakland people, but we
got a response from Andreas that a) This was the dumbest Idea ever, that
b) he did not want the be involved in any such "talking clubs".
(I did not look at the exact wording, but that's how I understood it).

And shortly after that Michael had to stop his activities wrt. to a Sqf
(for "political reasons"), and we got never even a single answer from
any of the squeakland/croquet people... thus the thing was dead.

Of course, subsequent runs at the SqF did not involve Andreas,
Croquet,Tweak, Squeakland as they clearly communicated
that we are idiots and that they did not want to be involved.

       Marcus

Hi Goran,

[hidden email] wrote:
> One other thing I would like noted is that Andreas explicitly did not
> "acknowledge" the Coordinators-group in any way when we contacted him as
> a contact person for Croquet and Tweak, but he took the role anyway as
> an "envoy". I would only assume that goes for the current board too
> (after the merge with Stephane and Noury).

I'm actually looking forward to changing that relation when there is a
board that has an actual mandate by the community. Even if it's a rough
cut with the elections it will be indefinitely better than the current
or (even worse) the initial situation.

> So personally, when I read the recent posts about decision processes
> etc, I do it in the light of the above - with a tired ironic smile on my
> face.

*Shrug* If that's what it takes. I was just trying to be helpful in what
I considered an actual (non-rethorical) question in the context of a
discussion. I really do think that transparent decision processes are
important to address these issues.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Hi Andreas!

Andreas Raab <[hidden email]> wrote:
Good! And btw, what are *you* doing to help this forward? It is all
about talkers and doers - you do *tons* of stuff technically (and you
know I respect and admire that immensely) but AFAIK you haven't helped
us move an inch forward regarding our self organization - on the
*contrary*.

So sure, fee free to "look forward" to a new board - but even better:
*help* this community getting it. And if you think I am the only one
feeling this - read Marcus' post.

I just humbly wonder why you didn't bother to even *reply* to the survey
emails which AFAIK asked quite a few questions regarding these things.
Regarding the question at hand - of course, I agree - a better decision
process *is* important - we all agree on that. The problem is *getting
it*. I mean, if the stakeholder contact persons don't even bother answer
our emails - then what chance do we have? A decision *process* involves
all parties - not just the board.

It is also worth remembering that the *current* team model delegates how
each team works to the team leader. The minimalism in that is
intentional to make it as "easy" as possible to step up as a team
leader. If we add too much bureaucracy to the team model it will
probably have a negative effect.

Concrete proposal to the new board:

One idea to tackle this without introducing bureacracy in the team model
is to make the board offer a "service" for this (using the board contact
that each team leader has) so that the team leader doesn't need to
bother too much with the hows and whats. To be more concrete:

If say the release team leader thinks he needs to get a vote on planned
features to make some tough decisions - he simply asks the board contact
to "make it happen" with a list of things to vote on. The board knows
how to perform such a vote (software, announcement, document it for
posterity etc) and feed the result back to the team leader. In short -
the board could offer a "decision process" to the team leaders that they
can use when they see fit.

regards, Göran

Andreas Raab a écrit :
It is a bit like moving the cursor on step, but without a solution.

Now can you define community?  Hum, even more important define what is
"a representative community" with voting power?

I will give one example. The Debian project, at a first look it is very
democratic, there are regular election to take decision on the direction
to take. But looking more accurately about what is this community (with
the right to vote) it is quite restrictive. Indeed, the Debian community
is only composed of Debian developpers which are coopted after a quite
long examination process.
Therefore, this Debian developper community is not the larger Debian
user community. Hug! it will be a real mess if this whole community
could vote and probably it will just make collapse the Debian project.

I still think that the 1st important thing who matter is to have
brillant people, like you, working all together. And only those people
making real the things should have the right to vote to make choice in
the direction to take. It is just common sense.

Hilaire

Hi Goran,

Well, I'm sure it's all my fault, somehow ;-) If that makes you feel any
better, be my guest (I actually mean it the way I say it). And one of
the things I'm currently doing (or rather "trying" but I'm getting a
little better) is to attempt to not rise to a rethorical bait that's
thrown my way. Let's see if I can make it through this email safely...

> So sure, fee free to "look forward" to a new board - but even better:
> *help* this community getting it. And if you think I am the only one
> feeling this - read Marcus' post.

If I would know how to respond to it, or if I would feel that I could
actually help clarifying matters, I certainly would. I have started a
number of discussions with Marcus about these issues in the past (in
German, as you may guess as it's the native language for both of us and
somewhat limits the number of misunderstandings) but unfortunately, it
seems that these days Marcus can't even use my name without an
accusation right next to it. To bad, but I'm trying hard not to follow
him there. It is not going to get either of us anywhere, anyway.

> I just humbly wonder why you didn't bother to even *reply* to the survey
> emails which AFAIK asked quite a few questions regarding these things.

Honestly? Really, there were a couple of things. First, I'm busy.
Second, I didn't find the questions neither terribly relevant, nor
terribly interesting, nor terribly related to what we are doing. Most of
it seemed like reflections on the state of affairs ("what do you think
about the islanders", "what do you think about m17n", "would you like to
set up a team") and while this is all nice and well I felt that the only
relevant parts at that point where those that related to the future. And
here, I didn't dare to speak my mind freely - simply because you
promised to publish the results and if I would say what the most likely
course of action is it would get me even more of a reputation of being
an evil guy who wants to prevent everyone from doing anything. So none
of this was really appealing to me.

And I actually almost wrote you a message saying just that, when I got
your "order to comply or else" and let me just say, that *really* pissed
me off. I simply deleted all of those messages to make sure I don't even
accidentally reply (because that would've been seriously out of whack
even for my measures). And I'm glad I did that. And you should be, too.

End of story.

> Regarding the question at hand - of course, I agree - a better decision
> process *is* important - we all agree on that. The problem is *getting
> it*. I mean, if the stakeholder contact persons don't even bother answer
> our emails - then what chance do we have? A decision *process* involves
> all parties - not just the board.

This almost reads as if that survey wasn't so voluntary after all. Every
now and then I'm still wondering a little about this btw, and it is
interesting to see how you react to the fact that people choose not to
participate in an unsolicitated and (from what I could tell) entirely
voluntary survey.

> It is also worth remembering that the *current* team model delegates how
> each team works to the team leader. The minimalism in that is
> intentional to make it as "easy" as possible to step up as a team
> leader. If we add too much bureaucracy to the team model it will
> probably have a negative effect.

I'm actually perfectly fine on the team-level but this is about
strategic directions. Remember I was specifically mentioning the "big
ticket items". I don't think it's worth having decisions about each and
every individual feature (that sure as hell would be way to
bureaucratic). But the question whether an entire new package should be
included in a "basic" image is something where I think a bit of a
process wouldn't hurt - in particular if there are (as usual) strong
proponents as well as strong opponents.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Hi Andreas!

Long post, but what the heck.

Andreas Raab <[hidden email]> wrote:
I really don't think it is "all your fault" and I didn't imply that. I
just meant that there is a group of people here (the board and lots of
people in teams working too) that is trying as good as we can using our
own free time. Sitting on the side complaining isn't helping, simple as
that (no offense intended - stating a fact).

The whole point with the current board was that we needed to "get going"
- and the SqF bootstrap wasn't going anywhere. Now we are getting
dangerously close (IMHO) to a similar fate with the upcoming election.
If you really mean that you are positive towards the new upcoming board
and election, help out with it so that it turns out successful.

> And one of
> the things I'm currently doing (or rather "trying" but I'm getting a
> little better) is to attempt to not rise to a rethorical bait that's
> thrown my way. Let's see if I can make it through this email safely...

I am taking a deep breath and will try to make this reply less emotional
too. :)

Well, it has been lots of water under the bridge but I still feel quite
uneasy about what happened and I really can't get a grip on your
intentions/motives anymore. Yes, this is a vague statement - but it is
just how I feel and I don't want to dwelve deeper into the reasons in
public.

And to me personally it doesn't matter much soon anyway - since I will
not be sitting on the board anymore.

> > I just humbly wonder why you didn't bother to even *reply* to the survey
> > emails which AFAIK asked quite a few questions regarding these things.
>
> Honestly? Really, there were a couple of things. First, I'm busy.

Too busy to reply and say so? For two weeks?

> Second, I didn't find the questions neither terribly relevant, nor
> terribly interesting, nor terribly related to what we are doing. Most of
> it seemed like reflections on the state of affairs ("what do you think
> about the islanders", "what do you think about m17n", "would you like to
> set up a team") and while this is all nice and well I felt that the only
> relevant parts at that point where those that related to the future.

And what about:

"On 2006-02-15 the Coordinators are stepping down. At that time (or
earlier) the Squeak community needs to have a new regime in place.
        - Do you have any suggestions or specific ideas on how such a regime
should look and work?
        - Do you have any specific views on how it definitely should NOT
look/work?"

If that question (for example) wasn't about the future then... what?

> And
> here, I didn't dare to speak my mind freely - simply because you
> promised to publish the results and if I would say what the most likely
> course of action is it would get me even more of a reputation of being
> an evil guy who wants to prevent everyone from doing anything. So none
> of this was really appealing to me.

I would like to note that the email said:

"If you wish to give "off the record" feedback you can do so by simply
separately emailing [hidden email] which
is the non public mailinglist of the Coordinators."
 
> And I actually almost wrote you a message saying just that, when I got
> your "order to comply or else" and let me just say, that *really* pissed
> me off. I simply deleted all of those messages to make sure I don't even
> accidentally reply (because that would've been seriously out of whack
> even for my measures). And I'm glad I did that. And you should be, too.
>
> End of story.

Ok, for people to understand what this is about I here include both
reminders sent out AND the subsequent apology:
----first reminder-------------
Hi people!

This is a reminder about the Stakeholder survey sent out on the 9th
september. We really want your views in order to make the best of it
all. The deadline is 23rd september.

regards, Göran Krampe

PS. Dan? Craig said he will fill it out for you (WeatherStation), so you
can probably ignore this.
----end-------
----second reminder-------------
Hi people!

This is the last reminder about the Stakeholder survey sent out on the
9th september. We really want your views in order to make the best of it
all. The deadline is tomorrow, 23rd september.

If you choose to not answer the survey then we would appreciate if you
reply with the reason or that you reconsider being the contact person
for the Stakeholder community you represent.

You may very well have good reasons for not having responded, like being
very busy or perhaps these emails are stuck in your spam filter - but we
can't really know. :)

regards, Göran Krampe
-----end--------------

The part upsetting Avi and obviously you is the "reconsider" bit. I
admit that paragraph was clumsily written but there was also a sincere
intention behind it - if you (and I admit it was subconsciously aimed at
you Andreas) don't want to have this role then you can give it to
someone else.

It was not meant as a "threat" because I have never viewed the contact
persons as "chosen" by us but rather self chosen by the community (or
whatever).

I then sent out a third email with the apology - ok, including that too
without Avi's text:
-----apology--------------------
Avi is of course totally right - and I am sorry if I upset people. My
reminder was badly written, and it is my fault.
I agree that it sounded offensive (I honestly didn't mean to, but it
does sound bad). And no, we will not refuse to listen to what you say
nor will we appoint anyone else to be the contact person. We can't do
that anyway, IMHO it is the Stakeholder communities that choose who
takes that role, not us.

When I sent out the survey (which was crosschecked with the other
Coords) I wanted to set a deadline because we want to present the
results "all together" and we want to be able to discuss the results
publically in squeak-dev and hopefully plan ahead based on it. So it is
important that it includes feedback from all 12.

2 weeks sounded like fair time to me, but perhaps it is too short for
many of you. Feel free to reply and tell us when you will have time to
reply - because it is important to us to know the timeframe.

And this *is* an attempt of cooperation, not "management". In short - we
want your thoughts and the idea was to ask questions instead of just
saying "Got any feedback?" - which probably wouldn't lead to much. So
again, I am sorry if this turned bad - it was never the intention - I
just wanted to put in words how important we think this is - and I
failed miserably. ;)

And yes, of course you can send feedback at *any* time - though we
haven't gotten any AFAIK yet. :)

So... can you forgive me for the clumsiness and either:
        - Send in your survey answers
        - Reply with an approximation on when we can otherwise get it
        - Or reply in any other way for that matter. :)

Ok? We are fine? I hope so.

regards, Göran
----end-------------


Now there you go. I can't judge if my reminders were really *that*
upsetting, and IMHO the apology was pretty darn clear - but it doesn't
matter. Fact remains, we got ZERO replies from 5 out of 12 stakeholder
communities.

Sigh. Everything in this community is voluntary. And just answering
"sorry, no time now" or whatever would have been quite ok (like John
did).

But what is the whole point being a contact person if you don't want to
communicate with us? Let me quote from the email inviting you to be a
contact person:

"We want to find a single individual for each project willing to become
a
"contact person" for that project. There are no obligations in this role
- we just want to:

        - Be able to send out questions and info and request potential feedback
before going forward with certain plans that may affect you.

        - Be able to get alerts from you if you need to grab our attention for
some reason."

Now, sure - it says "there are no obligations" but it also clearly says
that we want to be able to send out questions etc. And no, there is
nothing forcing you to answer - but IMHO the least we could expect is
that you bother to reply.

And note that we didn't spam you or anything - it was the *only* thing
we have ever sent out!

Yes, I agree - but I still am uncertain where this "belongs". Some
people might prefer a "strong" board taking these decisions themselves
simply by being the board (but using votes or whatever as input). Others
may argue that the board should primarily coordinate and that these
decisions belong in some team. I really don't know.

> Cheers,
>    - Andreas

cheers (really), Göran

+ 1

Pissing on our past efforts to build the squeakFoundation does not  
help, and is rather easy and
populist. "Yeah squeak is not democratic"

We have an archive full of trials to motivate people to participate  
and failure.

Stef

>
> I still think that the 1st important thing who matter is to have  
> brillant people, like you, working all together. And only those  
> people making real the things should have the right to vote to make  
> choice in the direction to take. It is just common sense.


I agree. If you read what we wrote with mike and marcus at that time  
on http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/squeakfoundation
this was the idea. This does not force us to be a closed club, but  
trust and having fun is important especially when
talking about free time. Because I'm wondering how many people get  
money to work on (not with) squeak and
that they work get used by the community.

Stef

> If I would know how to respond to it, or if I would feel that I  
> could actually help clarifying matters, I certainly would. I have  
> started a number of discussions with Marcus about these issues in  
> the past (in German, as you may guess as it's the native language  
> for both of us and somewhat limits the number of misunderstandings)  
> but unfortunately, it seems that these days Marcus can't even use  
> my name without an accusation right next to it. To bad, but I'm  
> trying hard not to follow him there. It is not going to get either  
> of us anywhere, anyway.

This is not my contribution.
And I think that marcus is smart enough and have his analysis that I  
respect as much as I respect you.
And I would like to see a better communication between us, which was  
an explicit goal of the squeakfoundation
that we have a way to communicate....

        But we as a community failed there.
        Nobody from etoys responded, nor tweakers, .... to our discussions  
or will of communication in the
        context of the old dead squeakfoundation.

At least we can acknowlegde that we tried hard and failed.

Stef

Hi Goran -

[hidden email] wrote:
> The whole point with the current board was that we needed to "get going"
> - and the SqF bootstrap wasn't going anywhere. Now we are getting
> dangerously close (IMHO) to a similar fate with the upcoming election.

I think this is at the heart of our disagreement. I do not agree that
the "SqF bootstrap wasn't going anywhere" in a form that would require
such drastic actions. Sure, it wasn't the fastest, but it was trying to
get agreement, and that was part of its appeal. Neither do I think that
the election "is in danger". It may be in danger wrt your deadline but
that was your deadline, not theirs IIRC.

> If you really mean that you are positive towards the new upcoming board
> and election, help out with it so that it turns out successful.

I really mean that. But please keep in mind that I do have a number of
other things on my plate (#1 being Hedgehog right now) and will probably
not have much spare time to spend on these issues.

> Well, it has been lots of water under the bridge but I still feel quite
> uneasy about what happened and I really can't get a grip on your
> intentions/motives anymore. Yes, this is a vague statement - but it is
> just how I feel and I don't want to dwelve deeper into the reasons in
> public.

Strangely enough, this almost precisely describes my feelings towards
the islanders group (and in particular yours truly).

Now, from my point of view, my motivations are simple: Technically, I
need a robust basis for the work going on in Tweak/Croquet. The smaller
the basis the better because it limits maintenance efforts. If you look
at the work I do for the community you'll find that there is an obvious
overlap of interests: ToolBuilder, Graphics, FFI, Compression are all
core technologies that we use heavily in our projects and where it makes
perfect sense to put some work in.

In the larger picture, because of the dependency on other parts of the
system, I am in the conservative camp - changes are generally bad since
we have no control and little influence on what precisely happens where
(just two days ago I got reminded again how small that influence is in
practice). You should therefore be prepared that if I comment on such
issues that I'll raise the conservative voice - this is part of my
responsibility to the other projects I'm in.

 From the community point of view (meaning Squeak-dev community) I have
actually very little motivations - I am not trying to achieve anything
in particular (which may explain your vague feeling). Mostly I'm just
throwing in my $.02 for what it's worth. I do dislike the islander
setup, I dislike the way it came about, and I will be happy to see
something that represents the community in the best way possible.

If you look at what I generally do and say in light of the above I think
you won't find many inconsistencies.

>>>I just humbly wonder why you didn't bother to even *reply* to the survey
>>>emails which AFAIK asked quite a few questions regarding these things.
>>
>>Honestly? Really, there were a couple of things. First, I'm busy.
>
> Too busy to reply and say so? For two weeks?

More for like eight weeks. And originally, like I was saying I was
planning on writing something back. That was up until the point of
"that" message.

> And what about:
[... snip ...]
> If that question (for example) wasn't about the future then... what?

Yes, they are. But like I said:

Actually, I don't remember this and I probably interpreted that
differently (e.g., as "if you have any OTHER feedback" outside of that
survey). Sorry, my bad.

> Ok, for people to understand what this is about I here include both
> reminders sent out AND the subsequent apology:
[... snip ...]
> The part upsetting Avi and obviously you is the "reconsider" bit. I
> admit that paragraph was clumsily written but there was also a sincere
> intention behind it - if you (and I admit it was subconsciously aimed at
> you Andreas) don't want to have this role then you can give it to
> someone else.

I didn't exactly volunteer for that role either. I was asked to do it
and since there wasn't a compelling logical argument against it I went
along with it.

> Now there you go. I can't judge if my reminders were really *that*
> upsetting, and IMHO the apology was pretty darn clear - but it doesn't
> matter. Fact remains, we got ZERO replies from 5 out of 12 stakeholder
> communities.

Yes, and? (I'm not sure if you are trying to make an argument here - if
you do, I don't get it)

> But what is the whole point being a contact person if you don't want to
> communicate with us? Let me quote from the email inviting you to be a
> contact person:
>
[... snip ...]
>
> Now, sure - it says "there are no obligations" but it also clearly says
> that we want to be able to send out questions etc. And no, there is
> nothing forcing you to answer - but IMHO the least we could expect is
> that you bother to reply.

You know, you're right. I should have sent an email saying "thanks for
sending this, I received it, and I may or may not reply within the time
frame you set". I apologize for not doing that, I will definitely do it
in the future.

I don't think this would've changed the gist of this discussion (in
which case we would discuss "not answering the questions" instead of
"not answering") but I should've done it nonetheless. Sorry for that.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

On [various days], Andreas Raab and Goran Krampe wrote:
>[a lot of text]
>

Err.... guys - these discussions where everything is quoted paragraph
by paragraph always give me the creeps. It's the sort of stuff one
should reserve for a court of law, not for (hopefully) friendly
discourse.

So please hug and kiss and let's kickstart that election, ok? ;-)

Regards,

Cees

On 24-Jan-06, at 11:22 AM, Andreas Raab wrote:
Here you are expressing the major problem in a group project-
- You want everything else to stay the same so your massive changes  
can go ahead.
- So does everyone else doing any work!

We simply can't make any useful progress under such conditions.  
Forward progress causes breakage and it costs much effort to provide  
invisible mogration support. Spending time on that prevents forward  
progress - and puts people off ever bothering.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
If you never try anything new, you'll miss out on many of life's  
great disappointments

tim Rowledge skrev: :-)
Karl
>
>
>
>
>

On 24-Jan-06, at 12:27 PM, karl wrote:

It is quite remarkable how a random number generator can provide such  
appropriate commentary on an email. Makes you wonder how so many  
people cannot cope with the idea of randomness causing evolution.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer.

> From: [...] Hilaire Fernandes
> Now can you define community?  Hum, even more important
> define what is
> "a representative community" with voting power?

That's where we got hung up for a long, long time within the elections
team.  At the moment, I believe the proposal is to go for a very broad
definition of representative community in order to get the process
running.  If that becomes unpleasant, the team working on the election
process* will probably have to narrow it down.

                - Peter

* Which will itself have to be made 'legitimate' at some point in the
near future, possibly by having its own set of elections.

On 1/24/06, Peter Crowther <[hidden email]> wrote:
> At the moment, I believe the proposal is to go for a very broad
> definition of representative community in order to get the process
> running.  If that becomes unpleasant, the team working on the
> election process* will probably have to narrow it down.
>
I'll chip in with some experience from the Jini community. Some safety
measures there were built in because the 'board' was built up from
three groups: Sun (as original contributor), Commercial Licensees, and
Individuals. Each group got three seats on the board.

Definition of the first two groups was clear, and then things got
stalled about defining the last group. In the end of the day, it was
decided just to go ahead by letting the group define itself - as with
Squeak, the community was mostly friendly, not a lot of trolls and
stuff, and it turned out to go well. As far as I know (I was only
running in the first election and left the community after my first
year on the board), this broad definition still holds up.

I think the Squeak community and the Debian user community are
entirely different beasts...

> * Which will itself have to be made 'legitimate' at some point in the
> near future, possibly by having its own set of elections.
>
Bootstrapping always makes my head spin :-)

Hi Andreas!

Trying to wrap this up so that we can put it behind us (hopefully). Kiss
and make up is probably a lofty goal :), but at least we could get it
off our backs.

Andreas Raab <[hidden email]> wrote:
Well, it is fine if you disagree with that - we are all entitled
different opinions. It is in the past anyway. I just skimmed the email
exchange over those couple of days and well, it is a lot of email and it
is hard to reconstruct all thoughts etc.

It is still very clear to me that the SqF formation was going *nowhere*
and that we felt that something needed to be done to get *something* set
up *in the meantime*. But again, who knows - perhaps SqF would have
gotten going eventually, we will never really know.

> Neither do I think that
> the election "is in danger". It may be in danger wrt your deadline but
> that was your deadline, not theirs IIRC.

We will see. Just let it be noted that I am worried. I am worried about
it getting done at all and I am worried about too few people showing up
to vote.

> > If you really mean that you are positive towards the new upcoming board
> > and election, help out with it so that it turns out successful.
>
> I really mean that. But please keep in mind that I do have a number of

Good, then I choose to believe you.

> other things on my plate (#1 being Hedgehog right now) and will probably
> not have much spare time to spend on these issues.

Which is of course all fine.

And my humble opinion is that the people who *do* take the time for
these "community things" (and that is *free* time, not payed time)
should be respected for that and not distrusted. And this is directed to
the whole squeak-dev - not to you.

> > Well, it has been lots of water under the bridge but I still feel quite
> > uneasy about what happened and I really can't get a grip on your
> > intentions/motives anymore. Yes, this is a vague statement - but it is
> > just how I feel and I don't want to dwelve deeper into the reasons in
> > public.
>
> Strangely enough, this almost precisely describes my feelings towards
> the islanders group (and in particular yours truly).

Which I still don't understand. The fact remains that I have zero
economic investments in Squeak beside the fact that I have invested my
own time to know it as a tool and that I have gotten a payback in the
form of being part of a fantastic community. But if I am not mistaken
you have quite a lot of real investments "in Squeak", right?

Anyway, it is quite funny that you *still* say you distrust me/us after
all that has been done and the fact that I am stepping down and that we
are holding an election etc etc. You still think I have some dark agenda
stuck up my sleeve? :)

Oh, and btw - Dan have gotten all emails exchanged internally in the
group (and continues to do so after merging with Stephane/Noury) so if
there was any dark deeds brewing you could just ask him. :)

I understand your POV here but I don't really understand why you say you
have "no control" and "little influence". IMHO you have lots of
influence being in the position that you are (Croquet, Tweak, Win32 VM,
Toolbuilder/Graphics etc etc) and the community listens very carefully
to whatever you have to say. And that has always included the board too.

>  From the community point of view (meaning Squeak-dev community) I have
> actually very little motivations - I am not trying to achieve anything
> in particular (which may explain your vague feeling).

No, my feeling is based on earlier happenings.

> Mostly I'm just
> throwing in my $.02 for what it's worth. I do dislike the islander
> setup, I dislike the way it came about, and I will be happy to see
> something that represents the community in the best way possible.

Hehe, the election will turn out interesting then.

You know - *noone* is so busy that it takes 8 weeks to hit reply and
type in "I am busy as hell, take a raincheck in 8 weeks?"... well,
depending on your typing speed I would estimate it to 10-15 seconds.
Probably shorter than the time to actually read the survey - which you
did. :)

Anyway, I see your apology below so it's fine.

The email can be read in full at: http://swiki.krampe.se/castaways/28

[SNIP]
> > Now there you go. I can't judge if my reminders were really *that*
> > upsetting, and IMHO the apology was pretty darn clear - but it doesn't
> > matter. Fact remains, we got ZERO replies from 5 out of 12 stakeholder
> > communities.
>
> Yes, and? (I'm not sure if you are trying to make an argument here - if
> you do, I don't get it)

I just mean that I found it quite depressing (lack of responses) and
that if this was because I stumbled with the words in the second
reminder sent out after 13 days (and then apologized) then I don't think
*that* is a fair reason for not giving any reply at all.

<rant>
Whatever - feel free to hang me out as the bad guy for that single
sentence. I mean, hey, it is not like I had *anything* better to do than
to hunt down contact persons, explain what we wanted with them, answer
questions about that, get confirmations that they wanted the role, craft
a survey, get agreement on the survey with the others on the board, send
it out, send out a small correction, send out reminders etc etc. Hey, I
do that for fun every sunday! Bah.
</rant>

It would have changed quite a lot I can tell you - John replied in
exactly that way and fine, what can we do. Hey, this is btw what I sent
to John at the time:
-------------------------
Hi John!

John Maloney <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I don't have time to respond.
>
> -- John

Do you wish to respond later? We can always include answers later on -
better than not getting them at all. :)

Since we will base our course forward on these results the sooner we get
them the more likely we will be able to take them into account.
Obviously! :)

Otherwise feel free to answer "at will" - it still serves a good purpose
showing the larger community your specific wants, thoughts and needs.

regards, Göran
-----------------------------

> Cheers,
>    - Andreas

Cheers, Göran

> From: [...] [hidden email]
> I am worried about
> it getting done at all and I am worried about too few people
> showing up to vote.

The election will get done - the process is workable.  I'm worried about
it getting done on time - the team leader hasn't made any announcement
on here about the process.  I would do so in his stead, but (a) I'm
standing as a candidate and (b) I don't want to bypass the
communications structure.

That said, I *would* recommend that anyone interested in voting either
gets an account on SqP or subscribes to one of the mailing lists for
Squeak's stakeholder communities...

                - Peter

tim Rowledge wrote:
> Here you are expressing the major problem in a group project-
> - You want everything else to stay the same so your massive changes  can
> go ahead.
> - So does everyone else doing any work!
>
> We simply can't make any useful progress under such conditions.  Forward
> progress causes breakage and it costs much effort to provide  invisible
> mogration support. Spending time on that prevents forward  progress -
> and puts people off ever bothering.

I don't believe that is true in general. I agree there are some changes
where backward compatibility is very hard (or basically impossible) but
for most of the changes that's not true. Generally, I've come to opt for
the "parallel subsystem approach" where you don't simply destroy an
existing subsystem just because you can but rather create a parallel
hierarchy of entities so that both subsystems can be loaded side by side.

For example, I hope that if we ever get a new set of Stream/File classes
they would be done in a way that the old classes could be loaded and
used side-by-side. For example, I hope that if we ever get a new
compiler, this would be done in a way that the old compiler can be
loaded and used side-by-side. For example, if we ever get a new set of
tools, I would hope that... etc.

Cheers,
   - Andreas