On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 11:19 AM Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com> wrote:
But lets also consider something at least as important as all the other points... "resourcing". Assuming all technical and political issues were dealt with, who will do this reintegration work? Assuming You were at a point where you were familiar with both platforms to be capable of doing the work, would You be willing to put aside your other interests to do at least 50% of that work?
I know Pharo has the consortium, which funds some of the work that goes on. I also know that Squeak has a foundation, but that it barely keeps the servers running. Even if there were just one open source Smalltalk out there, resources are limited. VM developers, especially, need to be compensated somehow. I have often wondered why there is not some Patreon like option for the developers of the Opensmalltalk-vm or similar unity efforts. I would gladly part with $20/mo or whatever to ensure that development happens in a coherent and agreeable way. In short, I don't think this is just about "people doing the work." Most smalltalkers can't do the VM work, for example. It requires a lot of knowledge and experience. People have day jobs, and that saps not only their time, but their mental capacity to program. I'm thinking small amounts of money from members of the community would go further in enhancing the big parts of these systems than minor, scattered programming contributions. But that's just my $0.02. -- Eric