What is Squeak To Me (Was a bunch of bickering about the squeak community)

All,

I’ve been reading the back and forth about the squeak community.  The comments about people going off and doing their own thing do not bother me.  It seems to me that Andreas is very busy working on Croquet and Tweak.  I think we are lucky to have any of his time, and it appears to me that he continues to contribute and participate.  I also think that we are lucky to have anybody’s time since we are all very busy, but we continue to attract very hard working and talented people.  The fact that Andreas doesn’t want a leading role I believe is “mostly” an hours-in-the-day issue, since he continues to try to encourage a more open process and actually doing something.  I would personally like to thank Andreas for his hard work and contributions.  I appreciate his stick-to-itiveness in dealing with this community.  I would also like to thank everyone that has participated and is still working hard to make Squeak what it is.

With that said, does anyone really believe that Andreas, Alan, SqueakLand, and Croquet have time to bicker about our organization?  I don’t really think it matters.  They already have a full plate dealing with their own organizations.  If you believe that squeak as a community and a separate organization is important then you should ask yourself why.

What the community brings to me is a development language that is not for children, does not change the internet with 3d worlds, and does not rewrite Morphic from scratch.  What we are doing here is something different.  Our success will be based on our own goals and accomplishments.  Granted we should try to keep it all together, and incorporate each others code, when possible, but there shouldn’t be any worry that we are being left out of some cool code or some neat features that others are developing.  When and if decisions to merge back are made they will be made from considerations other then those we are discussing, or from people just standing up and doing the work (since after all it’s all written in Smalltalk).  The real test of our community is can it stand on its own, or should we just shut down and all join Tweak and follow Andreas, or all join the Croquet effort?  I believe we as a community have a lot to offer but there is a lot that needs to be done.

I believe strongly that there should be an openSource Smalltalk for development and research.  My focus is on business development.  I firmly believe that most business software is extremely simple, and doesn’t come close to solving real complex problems.  Things are changing so incredibly fast.  I’m amazed at how much can actually be done in today environments, but most people are still not utilizing these systems to their potential.  I believe our community should be focused on bridging that potential gap.  We should be building tools that build business systems.  We should be solving complex problems, and simplifying their implementation so that others can benefit from them.  We should be communicating our progress, be professional, and be organized.  

We need to get our house in order.  I believe we are going down the right path.  We are looking at forming a legal entity and changing our license.  In our cryptography group we are discussing certification.  I think there is more we could offer business like supporting business protocols, having a deployment model, and integrating wxSqueak, which would encourage more businesses to adopt squeak, and maybe more contributions from business developers.  There is more we could offer web developers; tools like seaside, and other web components built on squeak.  There is more we could offer to advanced educational institutions, which may lead to more Smalltalk classes for our next generation squeakers.  There is more we could offer to science research, and bio-tech.

I think instead of looking around we need to look inward, do our own thing first and do it well.  Then we can look around and join back up having something substantial to offer, after all what’s a 3d world without cool applications to run on it?  By the way, I believe that Traits will eventually be a key to the success of Croquet.

For what it’s worth,

Ron Teitelbaum

President / Principal Software Engineer

US Medical Record Specialists

www.USMedRec.com

[hidden email]

Squeak Cryptography Team Leader

Squeak News Team Member