Terms of Reference: discussion is open

> I pointed out to Keith on IRC a while ago that it was simply  
> impossible
> for the board to "break the rules" since we have never had any  
> rules. He
> has kindly suggested a possible set of such rules and I think that  
> is a
> good starting point for a discussion.
>
> In the page in the blog I have added some links to the rules or
> organizations of other Free Software projects. Most other project have
> no rules that I could find and even these are pretty informal.
>
> Given that our community is pretty small, that elections are frequent
> (every 12 months) and that re-elections are very common (most of the
> current board was part of the previous one), I don't think most of the
> proposed rules would help very much. I'll make a brief comment on each
> one:

> Given that the next election is at most 12 months away and that any ad
> hoc election would probably pick the exact same board that was just
> kicked out, I am against such a rule. But without it, none of the  
> others
> "have any teeth".
>
> I would be happy with general principals rather than rules, and the
> board has previous tried to define that:
>
> http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/our-mission/
>
> -- Jecel
>
>

> 2009/11/6 Miguel Enrique Cobá Martinez <[hidden email]>:
> > El vie, 06-11-2009 a las 01:24 +0200, Igor Stasenko escribió:
> >
> >> Needless to say, i'm not satisfied with current state of art.
> >
> > It appears that everybody isn't satisfied but that changes nothing.
> >
> > I think that what the board lacks is a real leadership, not like the
> > leadership we have seen, but a real leadership.
> >
> > One that can envision a glorious future
> > One that can find the indispensable steps that lead to that glorious
> > future.
> > One that risk its popularity and sleeps thinking that the next day can
> > be removed from the throne.
> > One that risk lost part of the troops when following that glorious
> > future.
> > One that values the remaining troops as the ones having the same vision.
> >
> > Which one of these has the Squeak board?
> >
> > It doesn't have a glorious future envisioned for Squeak, that can be
> > expressed in some clear text and not in vague words and statements.
> > It can layout a list of basic steps to reach that goal.
> > It tries to be good with everyone by not taking decisions that could
> > upset some of them.
> > Don't want to loose more troops to bad decisions but they are losing
> > them because it can show them a path to follow.
> >
> > I don't know a lot of history, but it is very hard to believe that
> > Alexander asked the troops if they wanted to go to conquer Asia or to
> > continue to build their beautiful homes and finding new techniques of
> > horse riding.
> >
> > So, the summary appears to me, is that there is no future yet for
> > Squeak.
> >
> Well said.
> But if we talking about glorified historical parallels, lets take a
> look on a few other persons to be more
> objective.
> Napoleon - tried to repeat the glorious deeds of the past, defeated
> and ended up dying alone on distant island.
> Hitler - wanted better, glorious future for Germans, and defeated by
> allies, who didn't shared his view.
>
> And at last one - Chengis Khan. One who built the most powerful empire
> and most biggest one in the history.
> But what is left from this empire? Culture - no. It was assimilated by
> different cultures. Architecture? No.
> We have a lot of architecture remnants from more distant past, but
> nothing worth mentioning from the glorious mongol empire.
> The only thing, which left is a memory about raging mongol cavalry,
> which was a most feared power in the middle ages world.
> And the stories about destruction and mass slaughter, when mongols
> defeating another country and sieze control of it.
>

>
> On Nov 5, 2009, at 3:26 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>
>> I pointed out to Keith on IRC a while ago that it was simply impossible
>> for the board to "break the rules" since we have never had any rules. He
>> has kindly suggested a possible set of such rules and I think that is a
>> good starting point for a discussion.
>>
>> In the page in the blog I have added some links to the rules or
>> organizations of other Free Software projects. Most other project have
>> no rules that I could find and even these are pretty informal.
>>
>> Given that our community is pretty small, that elections are frequent
>> (every 12 months) and that re-elections are very common (most of the
>> current board was part of the previous one), I don't think most of the
>> proposed rules would help very much. I'll make a brief comment on each
>> one:
>
> I generally agree with your interpretation/comments on items 1-8.
>
>>
>> 9) There should be a grievance procedure and an equal opportunities
>> policy including disability awareness
>
>>
>> I didn't attempt to paraphrase this because I didn't understand it.
>>
>
> This seems to be two different points (let's call them 9a and 9b though they
> should probably really be 9 and 10):
>
> 9a) a grievance procedure when someone feels that the preceding terms have
> been violated
>
> 9b) I *think* he's talking about the Board having some sort of obligation to
> attempt to work with limitations of individual contributors.  Keith made
> reference several times that he was unable to take one (or more) course(s)
> of action being suggested (in IRC) and at least a couple of board members
> *seemed* to understand what he was referring to (either that or they were
> taking his response at face value)
>
> The intent of these appears to be to have the Board make accommodations to
> the needs of individual contributors and to provide some sort of recourse to
> contributors should they believe that things aren't being handled properly
> at a finer level of granularity than 'wait for the next election cycle'.
>
>> One thing that Keith mentioned, a "vote of no confidence" followed by an
>> ad hoc election, didn't get included in this list. Without that I don't
>> see what the answer could be to "what happens if the rules get broken?"
>>
>
> I think a lot of that was/is the result of how the situation was handled.
>
>> Given that the next election is at most 12 months away and that any ad
>> hoc election would probably pick the exact same board that was just
>> kicked out, I am against such a rule. But without it, none of the others
>> "have any teeth".
>>
>> I would be happy with general principals rather than rules, and the
>> board has previous tried to define that:
>>
>> http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/our-mission/
>>
>> -- Jecel
>>
>>
>
> I agree that adding a lot of mandatory process and rules probably wouldn't
> have changed the outcome of this, or future, situations.
>
> Direction can change for any number of reasons (priorities, contributors,
> pressures internal/external, etc.) and when it does, just have an open and
> inclusive dialog about what and why things need to change.  Also,
> communicating ahead of time with any impacted parties, publicly or
> privately, would be a *very* good idea.  Those seemed to be the key things
> missing here as it appeared arbitrary, and frankly, rather cold in how it
> was carried out.  One can get away with that approach in a business where
> (presumably) people are being compensated to put up with it.  In a volunteer
> arrangement, not so much.
>
> I appreciate this open discussion taking place.  If nothing else, it is a
> worthwhile exercise to discuss Keith's proposal and see what, if any,
> changes people would like to see made in light of recent events.
>
> Phil
>
>

> ...
> With its twenty-something years Alexander was more capable of making
> decisions and lead ahead the people in the search of a dream.
>
> I repeat, no matter if the dream is to be accomplished with the help of
> gods or by own hand and sweat. Isn't also about if the future persons
> will qualify good or bad its own decisions. He just want to fulfill a
> dream before dying.
>
> What is the dream of Squeak before dying?
> Whom is to lead the hordes to reach that dream before the times change
> and the historians study it as a simple academic, incomplete and
> dead-before-time effort?
>
> Better to die trying something magnificent and unreachable that deciding
> where to go and what to do.
>
> Even Don Quixote went for its crazy dreams. That is not something you
> can deny him. The action by itself it is worth the effort.
>
>  
>>> Thanks for the answers
>>> --
>>> Miguel Cobá
>>> http://miguel.leugim.com.mx

>
> I can tell you about mine. Or you can read in this list and my web page
> about Cuis and Morphic 3. I can tell about Bert, Yoshiki and VPRI
> (Etoys, OLPC, FONC). I can tell about Andreas (Balloon 3D, Tweak,
> Croquet, Teleplace). I can tell about Gulik (the Unnamed Grand Project).
> Same for many others here. What about you?
>
> This community can only achieve what its members actually do. For
> instance, the last 2 years I gave up about 1/3 of the money I was making
> just to have time to work on Cuis, Morphic 3 and to contribute to
> Squeak. You can see some of the results of that in the trunk. What about
> you?
>
> And no, thanks. We don't need yet another non-contributing visionary.
>

>Ronald Spengler wrote:
>> When the announcement that there was going to be a trunk repository
>> and a contrib repository was made, I suddenly had hope again. The fact
>> that there was a two-man release team that I didn't even know about
>> (being a noob, I guess) didn't make a whit of difference to me,
>> because they weren't shipping anything.
>
>There was actually a one man release team (Matthew for 4.0) and another
>two man release team (Keith and Matthew for 3.11), and though they both
>were very busy with other things in their lives I think the board's
>position (which I fully agreed with) that the relicensing was the
>priority and new development would complicate it was the main cause of
>the seeming lack of progress in Squeak. And I actually looked at the
>archives of the Pharo mailing list at the time and compared it with the
>number of entries on Mantis and found out that though they seemed very
>different, the level of activity in both projects was comparable.
>
>Unfortunately, appearance can matter more than reality. The *right*
>thing for the board to have done would be to talk to Matthew and Keith
>about the new direction, have a final vote in the following meeting and
>then announce it here. Letting Keith find out with everybody else was
>bad, so I see where the scheme explained by Phil would come in. But my
>impression at the time was that two weeks of silence on squeak-dev (to
>wait for the next board meeting) would cause lots of people to leave and
>they might not later hear about the new process and decide to come back.
>So I voted we do the wrong thing instead (the needs of the many outweigh
>the needs of the few and that sort of thing) and still stand by that
>decision.
>
>I can't imagine some higher authority defending a developer from the
>board even if this episode shows the need for something like that. So
>the alternative is to complain about anything you don't like here on
>squeak-dev. That has been done and even though there seemed to be no
>immediate results it might have an effect (or not) in the next election.
>
>-- Jecel

> ...
> My question, in simple terms is, what are the goals of Squeak. Something
> like, for example:
>
> - minimal under 10 MB core image.
> - Etoys removal
> - All packages removed from image and easily loaded from squeak source
> - In core only collections, compiler, kernel and I/O.
> - Purge of squeaksource or new squeak source with maintained packages
> - fix of squeakmap mess
> - new framework for managing packages/dependencies/configuration
> (sake/packages, metacello, other) in next minimal squeak core
>
> Things like that.
> They are only examples. But show to those that want to contribute what
> points are the most important to aim for the next Squeak version.
>  

> It has been said many times that 3.11 is all about tool but, for the
> common, unsavy squeak list subscriber, what are the tools, what can be
> help, maybe not code but documentation, blog posts, publicity,
> announcing.
>
> I could never make my own Squeak version like you, but that doesn't
> means that I couldn't help by promoting squeak and making tutorials and
> in general making the world aware of this little thing called Squeak
> that I think that is marvelous but I can also note that _nobody_ knows
> and use. I would like to help fix that but that attitude of *we are
> doing good and we don't need that a newbie that hasn't contributed
> anything the size of Cuis, Etoys, Croquet ask anything about the squeak
> future* doesn't help and only push the people to other forks with more
> *visible* future stablished.
>  

>> I can tell you about mine. Or you can read in this list and my web page
>> about Cuis and Morphic 3. I can tell about Bert, Yoshiki and VPRI
>> (Etoys, OLPC, FONC). I can tell about Andreas (Balloon 3D, Tweak,
>> Croquet, Teleplace). I can tell about Gulik (the Unnamed Grand Project).
>> Same for many others here. What about you?
>>
>> This community can only achieve what its members actually do. For
>> instance, the last 2 years I gave up about 1/3 of the money I was making
>> just to have time to work on Cuis, Morphic 3 and to contribute to
>> Squeak. You can see some of the results of that in the trunk. What about
>> you?
>>
>> And no, thanks. We don't need yet another non-contributing visionary.
>>
>>    
>
> Pity for the 90% of squeak list subscribers. We are not as smart to
> pertain to this community
>  

> El vie, 06-11-2009 a las 07:22 -0300, Juan Vuletich escribió:
>
>> Hey, nice talk. Now, what are your own great dreams with Squeak? What
>> are you doing to pursue them?
>
> I must say that I am not as great programmer as Andreas or Yoshiki or
> any other you list. But that is not the point. The 90% of the squeak
> subscribers aren't and that is not to be ashamed. So I'm not.
> If we can't write a new Morphic or a Ballon 3d or whatever that doesn't
> mean that we don't want or could contribute to squeak.
>
> Besides, Tweak, Etoys, UGP aren't the squeak future or goals, but
> projects built on top of Squeak.
>
> My question, in simple terms is, what are the goals of Squeak. Something
> like, for example:
>
> - minimal under 10 MB core image.
> - Etoys removal
> - All packages removed from image and easily loaded from squeak source
> - In core only collections, compiler, kernel and I/O.
> - Purge of squeaksource or new squeak source with maintained packages
> - fix of squeakmap mess
> - new framework for managing packages/dependencies/configuration
> (sake/packages, metacello, other) in next minimal squeak core
>
> Things like that.
> They are only examples. But show to those that want to contribute what
> points are the most important to aim for the next Squeak version.
>
> It has been said many times that 3.11 is all about tool but, for the
> common, unsavy squeak list subscriber, what are the tools, what can be
> help, maybe not code but documentation, blog posts, publicity,
> announcing.
>
> I could never make my own Squeak version like you, but that doesn't
> means that I couldn't help by promoting squeak and making tutorials and
> in general making the world aware of this little thing called Squeak
> that I think that is marvelous but I can also note that _nobody_ knows
> and use. I would like to help fix that but that attitude of *we are
> doing good and we don't need that a newbie that hasn't contributed
> anything the size of Cuis, Etoys, Croquet ask anything about the squeak
> future* doesn't help and only push the people to other forks with more
> *visible* future stablished.
>
>>
>> I can tell you about mine. Or you can read in this list and my web page
>> about Cuis and Morphic 3. I can tell about Bert, Yoshiki and VPRI
>> (Etoys, OLPC, FONC). I can tell about Andreas (Balloon 3D, Tweak,
>> Croquet, Teleplace). I can tell about Gulik (the Unnamed Grand Project).
>> Same for many others here. What about you?
>>
>> This community can only achieve what its members actually do. For
>> instance, the last 2 years I gave up about 1/3 of the money I was making
>> just to have time to work on Cuis, Morphic 3 and to contribute to
>> Squeak. You can see some of the results of that in the trunk. What about
>> you?
>>
>> And no, thanks. We don't need yet another non-contributing visionary.
>>
>
> Pity for the 90% of squeak list subscribers. We are not as smart to
> pertain to this community
>

> Thanks for your time.
>
>
>
>> Cheers,
>> Juan Vuletich
>>
> --
> Miguel Cobá
> http://miguel.leugim.com.mx
>
>
>

> IMHO, such smart guys that are doing the majority of contributions  
> to trunk could have figured out the way forward with Keith's  
> established future methodology using Installer, Sake/Packages, Bob  
> the Builder, MC 1.5/1.6 in about ten minutes.  Some were already up  
> to speed on the way forward. They could then have contributed fixes  
> to the tools for that methodology where required and we would be now  
> in the future instead of stuck in the past, forked yet again with  
> the old trunk methodology (it's not a 'new' development model) that  
> got us into the difficulties in the first place.
>
> Ken G. Brown

> Ken G. Brown
>
>
> At 2:23 PM -0300 11/6/09, Jecel Assumpcao Jr apparently wrote:
>>Ronald Spengler wrote:
>>> When the announcement that there was going to be a trunk repository
>>> and a contrib repository was made, I suddenly had hope again. The fact
>>> that there was a two-man release team that I didn't even know about
>>> (being a noob, I guess) didn't make a whit of difference to me,
>>> because they weren't shipping anything.
>>
>>There was actually a one man release team (Matthew for 4.0) and another
>>two man release team (Keith and Matthew for 3.11), and though they both
>>were very busy with other things in their lives I think the board's
>>position (which I fully agreed with) that the relicensing was the
>>priority and new development would complicate it was the main cause of
>>the seeming lack of progress in Squeak. And I actually looked at the
>>archives of the Pharo mailing list at the time and compared it with the
>>number of entries on Mantis and found out that though they seemed very
>>different, the level of activity in both projects was comparable.
>>
>>Unfortunately, appearance can matter more than reality. The *right*
>>thing for the board to have done would be to talk to Matthew and Keith
>>about the new direction, have a final vote in the following meeting and
>>then announce it here. Letting Keith find out with everybody else was
>>bad, so I see where the scheme explained by Phil would come in. But my
>>impression at the time was that two weeks of silence on squeak-dev (to
>>wait for the next board meeting) would cause lots of people to leave and
>>they might not later hear about the new process and decide to come back.
>>So I voted we do the wrong thing instead (the needs of the many outweigh
>>the needs of the few and that sort of thing) and still stand by that
>>decision.
>>
>>I can't imagine some higher authority defending a developer from the
>>board even if this episode shows the need for something like that. So
>>the alternative is to complain about anything you don't like here on
>>squeak-dev. That has been done and even though there seemed to be no
>>immediate results it might have an effect (or not) in the next election.
>>
>>-- Jecel
>
>
>

> On 06.11.2009, at 18:46, Ken G. Brown wrote:
>
>> IMHO, such smart guys that are doing the majority of contributions to
>> trunk could have figured out the way forward with Keith's established
>> future methodology using Installer, Sake/Packages, Bob the Builder,
>> MC 1.5/1.6 in about ten minutes.  Some were already up to speed on
>> the way forward. They could then have contributed fixes to the tools
>> for that methodology where required and we would be now in the future
>> instead of stuck in the past, forked yet again with the old trunk
>> methodology (it's not a 'new' development model) that got us into the
>> difficulties in the first place.
>>
>> Ken G. Brown
>
> If it all sounds so easy (which in fact it wasn't, neither for the
> board members nor the community at large half a year ago) then why
> don't you contribute a tool everybody can use to easily harvest Mantis
> fixes into Trunk? Or add Installer support for trunk development? Or
> set up a Bob server to churn out ready-built trunk images and test
> results? Or make a trunk image with MC 1.5/1.6?
>
> It may take you more then 10 minutes but *that* might get us moved
> forward even faster. Trunk development does progress fine, but we're
> all for improved tools and processes, so let's see them.
>
>

>On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Ken G. Brown <<mailto:[hidden email]>[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>At 7:15 PM +0100 11/6/09, Bert Freudenberg apparently wrote:
>>On 06.11.2009, at 18:46, Ken G. Brown wrote:
>>
>>>IMHO, such smart guys that are doing the majority of contributions to trunk could have figured out the way forward with Keith's established future methodology using Installer, Sake/Packages, Bob the Builder, MC 1.5/1.6 in about ten minutes.  Some were already up to speed on the way forward. They could then have contributed fixes to the tools for that methodology where required and we would be now in the future instead of stuck in the past, forked yet again with the old trunk methodology (it's not a 'new' development model) that got us into the difficulties in the first place.
>>>
>>>Ken G. Brown
>>
>>If it all sounds so easy (which in fact it wasn't, neither for the board members nor the community at large half a year ago) then why don't you contribute a tool everybody can use to easily harvest Mantis fixes into Trunk? Or add Installer support for trunk development? Or set up a Bob server to churn out ready-built trunk images and test results? Or make a trunk image with MC 1.5/1.6?
>
>I believe you are looking at this the wrong way around. The trunk started at an old position.
>As you surely know, latest Installer, lpf and Sake/packages are already in the latest <http://ftp.squeak.org/3.11/Squeak3.10.2-lpf>ftp.squeak.org/3.11/Squeak3.10.2-lpf or <http://ftp.squeak.org/3.11/Squeak3.10.2-lpf-atomic/>ftp.squeak.org/3.11/Squeak3.10.2-lpf-atomic/, ready to go for Bob the Builder. If the trunk additions were added to the latest, using Sake/Packages I believe we would have something. Andreas and I showed that the trunk repository gets quite far along loading into Keith's latest but with hacks required to overcome the divergence that trunk has taken. Someone with the intimate knowledge of what is going wrong could most likely fix the remaining issue/issues easily.  Adding lpf, MC 1.5/1.6 etc. to trunk, just continues the divergence.
>
>
>>It may take you more then 10 minutes but *that* might get us moved forward even faster. Trunk development does progress fine, but we're all for improved tools and processes, so let's see them.
>
>You only need to look at Keith's documentation, videos, and emails to see where it is all at. He has explained this all in my opinion in enough detail over and over again.
>
>
>We've already been over this.  A disparate set of communications is inadequate.  It is too onerous to try and understand the system from a long and multi-media thread.  This needs to be committed to some web pages, e.g. a wiki.
>