[squeak-dev] Election 2008: Answers from Matthew

I posted my campaign platform. Read it first:
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/81.html 

> 1. Approximately, how much time do you plan on spending on
>    Squeak during the coming year (in any kind of unit)?

I am currently spending 1-2 hours per day in hobby work for
squeak, and 3-5 hours per day on weekends. That would include my
board work. I can keep up this schedule at least until August
2008, when I start grad school.

> 2. What are in your mind the three most important issues (not
>    necessarily technical) we need to address in the coming year?

1. establish forums for the sharing of code and ideas between
   our various sub-groups
2. establish a spec for the release
3. finish the relicense

See my platform article for details:
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/81.html 

> 3. What is your view on fund raising and how any such collected
>    money should be dealt with?

I've never dealt with fund raising. I would say we should hire
someone full-time to work on the release.

> 4. What is your view on the ongoing process of making
>    SqueakFoundation a not-for-profit legal entity?

I don't really get the point, but it seems like a good idea to
smarter people than I, so I'm all for it. Maybe I'll understand
it more once it is done.

> 5. Do you think the Team model is appropriate for organising our
>    efforts or should we come up with something else?

I said in my article, I think the team model is very good, but
it suffers from idealism: We haven't yet seen a successful,
organized team that can act as a role-model for how the rest of
the teams should work. Bootstrapping a successful release team
should be a top priority of the board's, for two reasons:

- Get people excited and make a plan so that volunteers will
  know what needs to be done
- Show people how to organize and run a successful team

> 6. Do you have any specific views on how the Squeak board and
>    the Squeak community should work together with the Squeak
>    satellite communities (Croquet, Seaside, Sophie, Squeakland,
>    Scratch etc), also referred to as "stakeholder communities"?

I think the release team should package up bug fixes for all the
forks of squeak, letting them know we don't consider them
"second class citizens" as opposed to squeak.org and squeak-dev.

Andreas and Yoshiki have both said that a merger would be a bad
idea, so, let's stop pressing the idea of relocating them on top
of a minimal image. It ain't gonna happen. Let's build roads,
not move mountains.

> 7. The squeak.org release is our most important asset. How do
>    you see it evolving over the next few years?

I don't see it evolving at all unless we write a spec on what it
should look like in the future, then make a schedule on how to
get there.

> 8. Do you have any thoughts on the current relicensing effort?

I'm glad Craig made all the effort he has on that front and left
so little for us to do. Thank you Craig.

Finishing this effort will require the creation of an organized
release team to carry out the kernel audit and rewrite.

> 9. How would you like Squeak to be positioned in the open source
>    world in year 2012?

Randal and Seaside are bringing in developers, and if we get a
good release ready for them before they arrive en masse, we
could really make Squeak a respectable system.

If not, we will still continue to be one of the best education
tools that the world has ever seen.

> 10. What do you see as the overall role of the board?

To make the decisions nobody wants to make, and take the blame.

> 11. What actions would you take to promote Squeak as an
>     environment for professional software development?

Pay Randal.

--
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808

>>>>> "Matthew" == Matthew Fulmer <[hidden email]> writes:

>> 11. What actions would you take to promote Squeak as an
>> environment for professional software development?

Matthew> Pay Randal.

:-)

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

Seriously though.  I consider this the most critical question for the  
Squeak Foundation.

Any ideas?

- on

On Feb 27, 2008, at 19:11, Matthew Fulmer wrote:

>> 11. What actions would you take to promote Squeak as an
>>    environment for professional software development?
>
> Pay Randal.

>>>>> "Oscar" == Oscar Nierstrasz <[hidden email]> writes:

Oscar> Seriously though.  I consider this the most critical question for the
Oscar> Squeak Foundation.

Oscar> Any ideas?

I think he was spot on.  If you want Squeak to be taken seriously as a
development platform, you need to find people like me who can take an open
source product and provide all the infrastructure around it (tutorials,
courses, books, trainings), and find a way to be financially self-supporting.

For success in the marketplace, you need:

* a stable usable working product
* expectation of responsiveness to bug fixes and enhancement requests
* documentation (user, developer, maintenance)
* after-market support: conferences, trainings, books, tutorials
* consulting and contracting companies
* job boards to indicate a marketplace of human resources
* user groups (real or virtual)
* manager acceptance (requires press releases and other publicity)
* active solicitation of visible large "design wins" (like OLPC and Qwaq)

If Squeak has all that, Squeak will succeed.  Fail any of those,
and Squeak will become "just another interesting project".

By the way, show that as my answer to #11.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

Good answer!  But I press on.

What concrete steps would you and Matthew see as being realistic for  
the Squeak Foundation to take in the coming 12 months?

I personally see Squeak as floundering, and I think it is a terrible  
shame.  This can be a great platform for serious development, but it  
needs a community committed to a common goal.

I agree 100% with your point number 1 as a first step.  How do we  
achieve that?  (It is not so easy.  Your point #2 is also critical but  
not so easy.)  I will vote for people to join the board that have  
concrete ideas how to get there (and then on to all the other points  
you list)!

How do we get there from here?

- on

On Feb 27, 2008, at 21:50, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:50:15 +0100, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

*very* good points. I put the Squeak-based products under your lines;  
comments+corrections appreciated.

> * a stable usable working product

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * expectation of responsiveness to bug fixes and enhancement requests

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * documentation (user, developer, maintenance)

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * after-market support: conferences, trainings, books, tutorials

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * consulting and contracting companies

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * job boards to indicate a marketplace of human resources

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * user groups (real or virtual)

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * manager acceptance (requires press releases and other publicity)

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

> * active solicitation of visible large "design wins" (like OLPC and Qwaq)

EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?

>
> If Squeak has all that, Squeak will succeed.  Fail any of those,
> and Squeak will become "just another interesting project".
>
> By the way, show that as my answer to #11.
>

On Feb 28, 2008, at 11:00 , Klaus D. Witzel wrote:

The problem is that you have to become a Squeak expert on your own  
before you could confidently start such a project. It's virtually  
guaranteed that you will run into issues with Squeak in any serious  
project. It takes a lot of experience to work around all the quirks.  
Squeak already is a very powerful tool for experts, but for regular  
users (like, someone not subscribed to squeak-dev) there really are  
too many obstacles to be productive.

- Bert -

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:43:21 +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

I fully agree. I employ developers for our projects for some decades now;  
many of them after they have demonstrated their talent during an  
internship; and any of them only if my teams have reviewed a work sample  
of the candidate. When new team member has no or lack of experience with  
parts of the project's tool-chain, newbee runs into issues in the project,  
virtually guaranteed.

> It takes a lot of experience to work around all the quirks.

Sure. OT: so they tend to invent "their" framework in which their  
project's working experience is accumulated and can be maintained, in  
order to become more productive.

> Squeak already is a very powerful tool for experts, but for regular  
> users (like, someone not subscribed to squeak-dev) there really are too  
> many obstacles to be productive.
>
> - Bert -
>
>

2008/2/28 Klaus D. Witzel <[hidden email]>:
>
>  Sure. OT: so they tend to invent "their" framework in which their
>  project's working experience is accumulated and can be maintained, in
>  order to become more productive.
>
Sorry for offtopic. Your statements sounds like, that learning squeak
to become productive
in future projects is more about learning programming than actually programming.
And you know what? I think its very close to truth, given my personal
experience :)

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
Assuming that you're not planning to solve all of the above issues
single-handedly yourself, what do you think needs to happen to address
the above and how would you approach it?

Cheers,
   - Andreas

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 11:28:59PM +0100, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
I assume by "point number 1" you mean "you need a stable usable
working product", and by "point #2", you mean "you need an
expectation of responsiveness to bug fixes and enhancement
requests". My answers below.

>> I think he was spot on.  If you want Squeak to be taken seriously as a
>> development platform, you need to find people like me who can take an open
>> source product and provide all the infrastructure around it (tutorials,
>> courses, books, trainings), and find a way to be financially
>> self-supporting.
>>
>> For success in the marketplace, you need:
>>
>> * a stable usable working product

This we already have. +1

>> * expectation of responsiveness to bug fixes and enhancement requests

We have this in the projects that have a defined group of
maintainers, but the core has floundered as all (or most) of the
original developers moved on to something else. For this, One or
several of us will have to spend our time on learning and
enhancing the core instead of working on a more personal
project. I am willing to do that. +0.5

>> * documentation (user, developer, maintenance)

Thanks to SBE, we have great user documentation. I assume
developer documentation means "where in the image is the code I
want". I haven't seen a project that had good documentation in
this regard. Or maybe you mean documentation on the libraries in
the image. This is lacking. I don't really know how to fix it.

I have no idea what "maintenance" documentation is.

+0.5. A year ago this was +0

>> * after-market support: conferences, trainings, books, tutorials

I don't know how to do this. It is probably the one that needs
the most work

+0

>> * consulting and contracting companies

Many of the members of the community already do this. +1

>> * job boards to indicate a marketplace of human resources

We have at least one of these. +1

>> * user groups (real or virtual)

This is our biggest strength, in my opinion. We have a lot of
smart people, and a lot of helpful people, and they are mostly
the same people.

+1

>> * manager acceptance (requires press releases and other publicity)

I don't know how to do this either. It will go up as more
successful projects gain publicity.

+0

>> * active solicitation of visible large "design wins" (like OLPC and Qwaq)

This is really starting to happen from what I can tell. I don't
have any worries here.

+1. A year ago this was +0 I think

>> If Squeak has all that, Squeak will succeed.  Fail any of those,
>> and Squeak will become "just another interesting project".

If that is the case, I think we score about 6 out of 9. A year
ago, we were at about 4.5, so I think we are improving. We can
continue knocking off each of these barriers to entry. My main
interest is in "responsiveness to bug fixes"

--
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808