Begin forwarded message:
From: Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr> Date: February 28, 2009 2:07:42 PM CEST To: Matthew Fulmer <tapplek@gmail.com> Cc: Marcus Denker <denker@iam.unibe.ch> Subject: Re: Some personal thoughts and questions about Pharo
Hi matthew
Hi. I stumbled across a rather interesting email while I was researching to write up my campaign platform for the squeak election. Stef wrote this email 4 years ago, and it challenged a lot of what I thought about Pharo:
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-January/087532.h...
It prompted me to write this email, and lay out exactly what I think about Pharo, both good, bad, and not understood.
Ok I think that this is important to have a look at what we did and wrote in the past to understand our attitude today. Lot of people judge without really knowing.
This is not the best email I sent. but it just gives a facett of the problem
From what I can tell, this email was written just before you guys started the 3.9 team.
I imagine.
Firstly, I see that you have really cared about bug response latency for a long time. I'm really glad you care and do something about it.
Yes. We cared also about transparency and trust. The idea is that I already said that to the squeakfoundation and I gave up long time ago. If we do not give a chance to knowlegdaebale people to get a look then we failed. Once janko which I trust sent a fix for network and I thought that we should integrate it but bert had a look and said it was not good. So this makes me thing a lot. So if an opensource movement we do not have communication then nothing good can happen.
For 3.10 I proposed to ralph to help but he declined. They thought we had no process and when I explained him what we were doing he said that this is what he planed to do. I think that people thiught that ralph was Jesus but he was not.
Second, you solved this problem back then by releasing 3.9, and now you are solving it thru Pharo. Why did you choose to fork this time?
If I may be blunt, I've long suspected that there are exactly two reasons why you forked: 1. Edgar J. De. Cleene 2. Andreas Raab
You are not blunt Been called a randomrefactorer is blunt. I do not want to tell more on that but we are a solid group of people all getting the same feeling nd this is not because we are wash-brained. Just our experiences are following the same line. Ask mike why andreas does not talk to him.
Thirdly, I've heard Stef mention a number of times that "Marcus got burned", and therefore doesn't read squeak-dev, or no longer runs for board, or several things most squeak people do. However, this is by far the earliest mention of said burning I've ever seen. I had assumed the burning was people (Edgar and Andreas) complaining about Traits, but this was long before that.
marcus was burnt to the point of been sick of smalltalk. The problem is that marucs dreamt with us at bern about beauty and a better world and that people like andreas were most of the time negative and playing for themselves. Look at Tweak Andreas forked it even people working in Sophie did not have access to his branch.
What is it that happened to Marcus? If you are still bitter about something that happened over 4 years ago, perhaps it is time to forgive and re-join the squeak community.
No we are not bitter. The squeak community has no vision except toying with the past. If I would be you I would not lose my time there. We harvested since squeak 3.6 and we did our best but it failed and it will fail.
As 3.11 release team leader, and Squeak board nominee, I'm really excited about what you guys are doing with Pharo. From my perspective, one thing you have done is take up the reigns for harvesting bugs, and left the release team free to consider a long-standing issue in the community: who is responsible for merging bug fixes from one distribution to another, and how can we make their lives easier
No we did the only thing that make us breath again and not jump into ruby or python or just hack in our little corner stuff in VW or other. Pharo is not an accident this is a survival reflex. You know when you want to fix sometihng that a guy shout at you because you push a fix in his package.... Then after a while you stop this is why there are some fonts problem in 39 because we stop to harvest anything related to andreas.
Another valuable thing you have done is show the community that one image does not fit all; the monolithic image does not work for anybody. Squeakland showed it does not work for end-users Croquet showed it does not work for researchers.
No Croquet shows nothing. Ask lombardi because he gave a presentation last year at ESUG and we felt he was just alone lost. And we are researcher much more than they :). Look at our publication records. Now we want a good Smalltalk and make evolve: first class slots, packages.... It will take time but we will do it.
And now Pharo shows that it does not work for developers. I really think that Pharo finishes painting that picture in the minds of the community, and you have thus paved the way for the release team and the squeak board to get away from the monolithic image, and toward modularity. I really think the community is ready now, and it's all thanks to you guys. I intend to exploit this opportunity.
If you want. But I'm not sure that this is the right analysis.
I sent this email in private, because I don't think it would be appropriate to ask some of these questions publicly. However, feel free to reply to any of this in public, as you see fit.
Sure I have no secret on that topic.
-- Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/