[squeak-dev] tim's answers to the 2008 candidate questions

 > 1. Approximately, how much time do you plan on spending on Squeak
 > during the coming year (in any kind of unit)?
I'm fortunate in that my work situation allows me to work at home  
doing pretty much as I please with my time. This means I can spend  
time on Squeak when I have something useful to do and nothing more  
urgent claims my attention. I'd hazard a guess that it might average  
out to a day a week.

 > 2. What are in your mind the three most important issues (not
 > necessarily technical) we need to address in the coming year?
a) finish the relicensing effort so it is finally complete, done,  
finito, out of the way, never to be let into the light of day again.
b) get the membership of the SFLC completed so we have a safe 'home'  
and banking setup for the future
c) make the commitment to start on a new base image, taking what is  
good, dumping anything below par, with actual design discussions,  
documentation and comments

 > 3. What is your view on fund raising and how any such collected money
 > should be dealt with?
I'm in two minds on the issue. I have no experience on fund raising  
whatsoever and, like Dan, have benefited throughout my life from a  
gentle rainfall of money from mysterious forces above. I'm not sure  
that a squeak foundation *needs* much in the way of fund raising to  
operate perfectly well; enough to keep servers alive etc is plenty for  
that. However, *if* there is a practical way to raise large amounts of  
money for specific projects then one could imagine plans that would  
take many millions of dollars. I'm good at spending large amounts of  
money.

 > 4. What is your view on the ongoing process of making  
SqueakFoundation
 > a not-for-profit legal entity?
It's been slow and somewhat painful but that is what happens when you  
are depending upon the unpaid work of a few people at both ends of the  
process. We're getting there, it should be continued and completed.  
Everyone owes Craig a big thank-you for his work on this, by the way.

 > 5. Do you think the Team model is appropriate for organising our
 > efforts or should we come up with something else?
Teams are the only way anything gets done. Occasionally it's a team of  
one but normally I claim you need someone with the drive and idea and  
at least one other that has the patience, doggedness and sheer bloody-
mindedness to not let things drift or stop.  Given that people like  
that will get on and do things anyway, how can it not be smart to  
accept the world and work with it? One problem I see is that we  
currently have a lot of people with ideas in particular areas but few  
with really broad scope; that was/is I think one of the important  
qualities of Alan Kay that helped to make Smalltalk possible in the  
first place.

 > 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"?
Only that stakeholders must work together if they want to benefit.  
"United we run, divided we SIGHALT", or something like that. We must  
fight back the ravening hordes of java-weenies, rubettes, perly-
queens, CLOSeted lispers etc.

 > 7. The squeak.org release is our most important asset. How do you see
 > it evolving over the next few years?
I disagree with both ends of that sentence. I think the community of  
skilled and involved people is the great asset and I want to see the  
software system go through revolution, not evolution. Software might  
be the only place in the universe where 'Intelligent Design' has any  
validity.

 > 8. Do you have any thoughts on the current relicensing effort?
See 4 above. We do still have a problem with establishing that work  
coming from Disney & HP actually acceptable to the SFLC legal team.  
Lawyers like paper.

 > 9. How would you like Squeak to be positioned in the open source  
world
 > in year 2012?
I don't give stuff about 'the open source world'. That's as  
meaningless to me as 'where would I like squeak to be positioned in  
the christian world'.

 > 10. What do you see as the overall role of the board?
Right now, trying to make a proper legal and operational foundation.  
Later, using  that to provide support for the *real* work - making  
better software.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- An 8086 in a StrongARM environment.