[squeak-dev] Keith Hodges

To all Keith Hodges of Earth,

Would you be so kind to trash Andreas in private? Stop wasting our
valuable time with your ever lasting bitter comments. The community is
focusing on you rather than meaningful discussions. For example, Ramon
spent quality time replying to your message rather than, let's say,
commenting on my idea about a migration tool. I am spending the time
to write this letter. A real waste of time. The spot light is on you
and in a very negative way. Isn't it what a "prima donna" is?

Please, I mean no disrespect to your efforts. You have resurrected
Squeak 3.11 and done a phenomenal work. There are many of your ideas
that have their technical merits. You are probably 100 times better
with Squeak than I will ever be and you have contributed much more
than I might ever contribute.

It is said that Altas held the world on his shoulders but what if
Atlas Shrugged?

Perhaps Keith Hodges is the Atlas of Squeak. You have put way too much
pressure on your shoulders, my friend. Then you eventually have
frustrations because you might not always get the recognition you
ought for. Reading through your emails, opinions and solutions make me
feel that you actually enjoy being one of the main articulation of the
future of Squeak and it is a private club with only one member. You
really enjoy throwing at people "You contributed nothing!". Or "Fork
off!@#".

My business experience made it clear to me that a project is not
successful on his technical merits alone. The projects with the most
interesting technical aspects tend to fail while others focusing on
other aspects tend to do rather well, still according to my
experience. Technical people should be part of the decisional process
but I would not agree they would be the sole to decide. That would be
a recipe for disaster.

Whether you like it or not, the turn of events is doing good to the
community, even *I* contributed (very modestly compared to you but
still) to Squeak because it's bloody easy. It's an act of
unselfishness since I still cannot and might never be able to use
Squeak on a professional front.

Remember, there are CCTV cameras everywhere in UK. We watch you Keith. :P

Your attitude stinks. Really.

Ian.
--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

2009/7/14 Ramon Leon <[hidden email]>:

> To all Keith Hodges of Earth,
>  

They woudn't all be interested.
> Would you be so kind to trash Andreas in private?
I am pointing out that this way of working is not what we need. Andreas
is not going to listen to me in private or in public. This process is
locking the future direction of squeak in to the decisions that Andreas
is making now.

This requires words that people understand, and so I used them.
>  Stop wasting our
> valuable time with your ever lasting bitter comments.
Like I said no bitter comments here, that's your assumption.
> The community is
> focusing on you rather than meaningful discussions. For example, Ramon
> spent quality time replying to your message rather than, let's say,
> commenting on my idea about a migration tool. I am spending the time
> to write this letter. A real waste of time. The spot light is on you
> and in a very negative way. Isn't it what a "prima donna" is?
>  
The prima donna is the one making all the decisions, without any concern
for the opinions of anyone else. It's not a private club, however if you want to make a release team of
your own, do put your proposal to the board, like everyone else has to.
(except Andreas of course, who has imo abused his position on the board)
> You
> really enjoy throwing at people "You contributed nothing!". Or "Fork
> off!@#".
>  
Not at all. It is my concern that contributions to trunk, for example,
are wasted by default. How does a fix added to trunk help the cobalt
fork? How does it help my production images? etc etc. So is uploading a change set to mantis. That is easy too, and that
process has been in place for some years.
> Remember, there are CCTV cameras everywhere in UK. We watch you Keith. :P
>
> Your attitude stinks. Really.
>  
How does it stink? What is wrong with pointing out the way a process is?

You are band new to this list, I haven't seen you before last week, with
respect I dont think you know anything of the difficulties of delivering
and maintaining a project using squeak.

Andreas forked squeak years ago, he has his own fork, croquet/qwaq. If
he was so clever he would have been able to keep his fork up to date
with changes in 3.9 and 3.10, but it didn't work qwaq, like most forks
is still based upon 3.8.

Why didnt it work? Simply because the release team at the time went off
on their own prima-donna direction and as a result for better or worse
we got traits added tot he image. This is exactly the same set up. The
release team for 3.9 didnt make the knowledge that they put in to 3.9
available in a form that was useful to exisiting 3.8 forks. They
purposefully left everyone in the dust.

This is a hard problem, a very hard problem, and its not one that one
person, even one of Andreas' technical calibre can fix, by only
technical means. Instituting a fork, controlling it, and recruiting
people to work on it, based purely on driving forward a technical vision
has been done before, it's called Pharo.

So given a vote between Andreas' approach and simply using Pharo as the
future of squeak you might as well pick Pharo, because philosophically I
can't see anything to choose between them.

Keith




> Ian.
>  

2009/7/14 Keith Hodges <[hidden email]>:
>> Would you be so kind to trash Andreas in private?
> I am pointing out that this way of working is not what we need. Andreas
> is not going to listen to me in private or in public. This process is
> locking the future direction of squeak in to the decisions that Andreas
> is making now.

You're also locking everybody in your process. It feels like mummy and
daddy arguing. Which one are you?

> This requires words that people understand, and so I used them.
>>  Stop wasting our
>> valuable time with your ever lasting bitter comments.
> Like I said no bitter comments here, that's your assumption.

I am telling you. Others did tell you. Are you gonna get the hint?

> The prima donna is the one making all the decisions, without any concern
> for the opinions of anyone else.

This one seems to make sense. HOWEVER, I believe that Andreas is
trying to inject energy into Squeak to restart the engine and
stimulate the community. And if the community is contributing, you're
not alone anymore in your crusade.


> Not at all. It is my concern that contributions to trunk, for example,
> are wasted by default. How does a fix added to trunk help the cobalt
> fork? How does it help my production images? etc etc.

I've understood that inter-polarity has taken an important part of the
current direction. This however should not hinder the immediate
potential of Squeak nor its contributions. You seem to be obsessed by
forks. How about being obsessed by Squeak? I have suggested a
migration tool. You said nothing about it.


> So is uploading a change set to mantis. That is easy too, and that
> process has been in place for some years.

It's awkward. It is my feedback to you and you will have to accept it.
You might disagree and you're entitle to it. Nevertheless, I did
contribute a little bit to Squeak Community Repositories and never to
mantis. Get the hint?

>> Your attitude stinks. Really.
>>
> How does it stink? What is wrong with pointing out the way a process is?

Keep your extra bitter comments for yourself and it should be fine. :)

> You are band new to this list, I haven't seen you before last week, with
> respect I dont think you know anything of the difficulties of delivering
> and maintaining a project using squeak.

I have been reading Squeak mailing list since 2001.

> Andreas forked squeak years ago, he has his own fork, croquet/qwaq. If
> he was so clever he would have been able to keep his fork up to date
> with changes in 3.9 and 3.10, but it didn't work qwaq, like most forks
> is still based upon 3.8.

Andreas does what he wants on his own time. He is however elected
member of the SOB. To the light of your saying, I guess some people
might vote against his reelection. That's call democratic process.

> So given a vote between Andreas' approach and simply using Pharo as the
> future of squeak you might as well pick Pharo, because philosophically I
> can't see anything to choose between them.

I am not ready to leave ship. But thank you for the pointer.

> Keith

Keith, I do feel that you are fighting the wrong battle and you're
being emotional about it. This is really not going to end well. Can
you stop stirring people attention in a negative way, yes or no? I
think that your opinion matters because it can bring counterbalance
and further ideas. You're clearly knowledgeable in what you do. Can we
focus on that?

Ian.

--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 03:50:53AM +0100, Keith Hodges wrote:
>
> It's not a private club, however if you want to make a release team of
> your own, do put your proposal to the board, like everyone else has to.
> (except Andreas of course, who has imo abused his position on the board)

Let me make one point perfectly clear: I as a voter cast my ballot for
Andreas specifically because of his published, publicly announced, intention
to address these problems. As a reminder, the announcement is here:

  http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2009-February/134124.html

It is not an accident that Andreas was the number 1 vote getter in the election.
I am happy to see Andreas taking concrete action to implement his campaign
promises, and I am happy that the board is taking meaningful action to support
the effort to move Squeak forward.

So as a voter, the board has my full support, Andreas has my full support,
and any talk of "abuse of position on the board" is complete nonsense.

Dave

David T. Lewis wrote: Ok so whats the point of having a release team then, or any form of
protocol, we have just devolved the whole thing into a meaningless mess....

Dear team leaders,

every year someone new will be elected and they on a whim can do
anything they like in the domain that we asked you and trusted you to
work on. So you have been warned, your efforts working in this team are
but one election away from being discarded.

yours electedly the bored.

Keith

2009/7/14 Ian Trudel <[hidden email]>:
>> You are band new to this list, I haven't seen you before last week, with
>> respect I dont think you know anything of the difficulties of delivering
>> and maintaining a project using squeak.
>
> I have been reading Squeak mailing list since 2001.

My apologies to Keith Hodges. It doesn't seem to be accurate at all.
Searching a little bit shown messages as far as March, 1999.
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1999-March/author.html

I have used Squeak ever since but I am simply a very quiet person.

Usually, that is.

Ian.
--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Hodges <[hidden email]> writes:

Keith> Ok so whats the point of having a release team then, or any form of
Keith> protocol, we have just devolved the whole thing into a meaningless mess....

What's the point of having a release team that hasn't, in a year, produced a
meaningful release that people can download, or provided a system that invites
contribution?

This is what Andreas noted, and we (on the board) supported.  If you want us
out next year, vote us out.  But *we* want contribution and new releases,
because we believe *y'all* want that too.

It's that simple.  The barrier to contribution was too high, or maybe too
ill-defined.  Andreas came up with a way to get us back to "people can make a
difference".  I agreed.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

David T. Lewis wrote:
+1

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich