Sorry folks, can't help myself. Reactions below.... On May 26, 2009, at 6:12 AM, stepken wrote:

...

Pharo developers are few and limited. They are trying to do all of their best on Pharo. We know this an important package but perhaps they have more important things to do. Pharo is not even in a beta of first milestone. This can be planned in a future milestone.

Hmmm. How many manyears were invested in Squeak? 1000, 2000?

You have removed lots of code due to "license problems". See R.A. Harmon code. What a pitty to throw away code ...

Do you really think, he really cares about his former code contribution to a system, which from the beginning was free and open?

So anytime you want to, you can just decide what someone else's intention for their code contribution was and do what you want? Each person owns his own code, and Pharo has to be careful and have actual permission to use the code they distribute.

Don't you think, every jugde would confirm, that such code contributions were made in the sense of "giveaways"?

Are you going to pay for the lawyers necessary to defend such an untenable argument?

I think you don't have a real understanding of what you have destroyed now.

Having rewritten array/colletions/streams code ... a bit shorter code now, because of traits. Who really cares?

People write a lot of code because they desire to; what is the point of Traits if you never use it in your system?

You want to build a commercial platform to make money. Supported. Yes.

I have paid (and still am) several squeak/pharo developers for support on these systems. Dolphin is windows only, which kills it for a lot of people.

Didn't you all Smalltalk Developers notice, that even Dolphin was close to give up? They hat to find their new business model. And they also have a very sophisticated *free* version.

GNU Smalltalk 3.0 ... fine thing, free, can run seaside, pier, .... what do i need more? Free!

No, that is GPL, which has plenty of freedom restrictions.

Do you really hope to get one cent for supporting a free smalltalk platform?

Absolutely they will.

I really appreciate your effords. There are things, that had to be done on Squeak. Traits, 5th implemention of closures ...

How many implementations of closures? what are you talking about? Do you take each individual person who had a project on this platform assume that was the will of the community?

But ... you haven't included the old code contributors at Viewpoint Research Institute, MIT (Scratch), HPI Berlin.

Pharo has some very specific goals for a clean, well factored, test- driven base Smalltalk system. I suggest you take that into account; what you want is a giant unmaintainable mess of spaghetti.

Where are your plans to give back your code changes to squeak/ scratch community? No. Very egoistic, IMHO.

All the code is free and available, and there is no stopping of squeak/ scratch/other community members reintegrating anything they like.

Where is the "soft refactoring" without destroying anything ...? At the moment ... i see some developments with pleasure, others are catastrophic ...

Eliot writing the 10th implementation of a squeak jitter. Fine. Every profesional company uses LLVM. Apple e.g.

Again, what are you talking about? I've never heard of 9 previous jit implementations. In one sentence you complain that Pharo throws away code and doesn't use stuff from every other squeak based system, and then you want the whole system re-implemented on LLVM? Wow.

I wanted to know, how fast a programming language with jitter could be done. It took me about 2 weeks ...LL(1) grammar, LLVM ... works like a charm on Intel, ARM, PPC ... and really fast! Other platforms to be tested. Of cause, lots of things to be done .. debugging ... profiling ... no classbrowser ... but i can run older squeak code with morphic. 80%/20% problem ;-) Or rather 90/10? Dunnow, i stopped the development. Was an experiment.

Interesting... where is the code? is it free? why didn't you finish it? Maybe Eliot or someone else could benefit from it, but not now.

Will Eliots jitter run on different processor architectures? No! 386 machine code only. So - no real portability! Who really cares that stuff then? Ever heard of the giant chinese market? They use MIPS clone 32+64Bit processors with Linux now. Everywhere. China can't officially use Intel, because of too much power consumption. I've been there several times. MIPS, everywhere. In China and Japan you find lots of people doing squeak stuff. Potential code contributors code developers for Pharo, partners!

It all comes back to time and money. Eliot is being paid by Qwaq, and they are generously allowing all that work to go back to the community. Who are you funding to do work? Or what work are you contributing?

Morphic code .. from SELF Programming Language development ... then ported to squeak, then to Javascript. Fine. ETOYS on TOP.

Where is my loved ETOYS? The only reason to use Squeak or Pharo! Education was and is the domain of Squeak. Nothing else.

Squeakland.org - OLPC Project (ever hear of it?)

I asked Frank Lesser for EToys / Morphic on top of his Smalltalk. Matured, blindingly fast, Jitter written in Assembler. Now the base for DNG. Not a great problem, he meant, he had it once ported for testing purposes.

If i really needed a sophisticated smalltalk to start new projects ... what do you think, what i would take? Smalltalk for educational purposes, e.g.? I have free choice. But no ETOYS, anywhere. Children really love EToys. It's a marvelous software package for educational purposes.

Many companies are caught in their own jail of huge masses of GUI code. They can't go with other smalltalks. Will they ever change to a "supported Pharo"? I think: No.

Morphic ... no MVC, no MVP. What has happened to Tweak code? ETOYS was ported to that GUI. That code was quite ok. Why haven't the code autors spent that code for Squeak/Pharo?

First you have to be able to remove Morphic from it's death grip on the system and have packages all the way down. Then start integrating new GUI frameworks.

So please ... don't tell me you haven't enough hands at the moment. Do the right things, not just some few things right, beautifying GUI, implemeting the 5th version of closures and well ... traits.

It sounds like you need to start you own Smalltalk system, based on LLVM, or your own super fast jitter that you wrote in two weeks. Then you can crowdsource all you want. Lot's of people are participating and things are going swimmingly. The tone of your emails are offensive and you cast aspersion on everyone working on the Pharo project. If you don't like it, don't read the list and don't use it.

Do 'crowdsourceing', invite people to contribute, learn community organizing first. Give them a reason to contribute. Give them a future, a business modell to participate.

Your egoistic path to make a commercial supported free smalltalk ... good idea, but you are lightyears far from that.

Leo Penta wrote a nice book about that 'crowdsourceing' stuff, or reread "Eric Raymond - Cathedral and the basaar" again and again and again. *PARTICIPATION* Bring people to participate your business model.

LEARN from the mistakes, many, many good programmers did. See TWEAK bad fate. Dead development process. Good sourcecode, lost in space ... like many squeak packages.

*Defective development process*. I posted that as issue, it was deleted by someone not really understanding, what i meant.

thanx for understanding.

cheers, Guido Stepken

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On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:12 AM, stepken <stepken@web.de> wrote:

...

Pharo developers are few and limited. They are trying to do all of their best on Pharo. We know this an important package but perhaps they have more important things to do. Pharo is not even in a beta of first milestone. This can be planned in a future milestone.

Hmmm. How many manyears were invested in Squeak? 1000, 2000?

You have removed lots of code due to "license problems". See R.A. Harmon code. What a pitty to throw away code ...

Maybe for you license is just a bunch of words without meaning, somethink like the EULAs that windows has popularized to not read and click "Accept". For others, the license is the main factor to choose to use a technology. Don't assume that everyone just use everything that is "free as in beer, shareware, freeware, trial" and downloadable from the internet for professional (in terms of money paid by a client, not quality of code produced) work.

Do you really think, he really cares about his former code contribution to a system, which from the beginning was free and open?

Don't you think, every jugde would confirm, that such code contributions were made in the sense of "giveaways"?

Big assumption.

I think you don't have a real understanding of what you have destroyed now.

Of course they have. It is stated in the about page of the pharo project, in the manifesto: Better for the better Beauty to learn from *Not backward compatible* Clean, lean and fast Towards a new generation of Smalltalk It requires a big courage to break with the past. That is the reason that is having so big complains and hurras. I personally, want a clean, core smalltalk that I can load *only* the packages from a *unique* central repository and use that image generated to deploy my apps. That is not currently possible with squeak, because of squeakmap, squeaksource, monticello repositories, sar, etc and because squeak comes loaded with everything and the kitchen sink.

Having rewritten array/colletions/streams code ... a bit shorter code now, because of traits. Who really cares?

That require a more technical discussion before making assertions of utility. Check the squeak list for several discussions

You want to build a commercial platform to make money. Supported. Yes.

Didn't you all Smalltalk Developers notice, that even Dolphin was close to give up? They hat to find their new business model. And they also have a very sophisticated *free* version.

Again, we don't just a "free as beer" version, we want a "free as in freedom".

GNU Smalltalk 3.0 ... fine thing, free, can run seaside, pier, .... what do i need more? Free!

The license used by gnu smalltalk is tricky for me and in the end, if I have to choose between MIT or GPL or LGPL, I choose MIT.

Do you really hope to get one cent for supporting a free smalltalk platform?

The money is not a goal of the pharo project and if as a consecuence the authors can get money from support, that is very good. But, to me, that is no a problem. Same applies for red hat, linux, tomcat, jboss, postgres. The have the right to capitalize the technology. That is not in detrimental of the project.

I really appreciate your effords. There are things, that had to be done on Squeak. Traits, 5th implemention of closures ...

But ... you haven't included the old code contributors at Viewpoint Research Institute, MIT (Scratch), HPI Berlin.

Where are your plans to give back your code changes to squeak/scratch community? No. Very egoistic, IMHO.

A fork is not to contribute back to the original project. Fork means that they are aparting themselves to reach other goals. If by luck or intentional or unintentional effort, the code can be used for the original project, that's good, but not a goal of the forkers. And then, if the fork results in a better product as compared, in practical terms, with the original project, the the people will be using the new project more than the original and new code will be written for the new project. But, that is very long in the future to know. Maybe pharo is doomed to fail, but untild then you have no right to bash the personal efforts of people and the choices they made. If you don't want to participate, fine. If you want to participate, fine. No choice is better than the other.

Where is the "soft refactoring" without destroying anything ...? At the moment ... i see some developments with pleasure, others are catastrophic ...

Eliot writing the 10th implementation of a squeak jitter. Fine. Every profesional company uses LLVM. Apple e.g.

That is his problem. He has the technical ability, that I will never have, and the same applies to you. If he chose to start that effort, he must have reasoned very well, and with better arguments that you and me could give, that it worth the effort.

I wanted to know, how fast a programming language with jitter could be done. It took me about 2 weeks ...LL(1) grammar, LLVM ... works like a charm on Intel, ARM, PPC ... and really fast! Other platforms to be tested. Of cause, lots of things to be done .. debugging ... profiling ... no classbrowser ... but i can run older squeak code with morphic. 80%/20% problem ;-) Or rather 90/10? Dunnow, i stopped the development. Was an experiment.

Good for you, but it only was for you. Eliot's effort will serve a lot more people, even as only for i386 platform at the beginning.

Will Eliots jitter run on different processor architectures? No! 386 machine code only. So - no real portability! Who really cares that stuff then? Ever heard of the giant chinese market? They use MIPS clone 32+64Bit processors with Linux now. Everywhere. China can't officially use Intel, because of too much power consumption. I've been there several times. MIPS, everywhere. In China and Japan you find lots of people doing squeak stuff. Potential code contributors code developers for Pharo, partners!

Morphic code .. from SELF Programming Language development ... then ported to squeak, then to Javascript. Fine. ETOYS on TOP.

Where is my loved ETOYS? The only reason to use Squeak or Pharo! Education was and is the domain of Squeak. Nothing else.

I asked Frank Lesser for EToys / Morphic on top of his Smalltalk. Matured, blindingly fast, Jitter written in Assembler. Now the base for DNG. Not a great problem, he meant, he had it once ported for testing purposes.

...

If i really needed a sophisticated smalltalk to start new projects ... what do you think, what i would take? Smalltalk for educational purposes, e.g.? I have free choice. But no ETOYS, anywhere. Children really love EToys. It's a marvelous software package for educational purposes.

That is an goal that is to be resolved by putting more software from a central repository in a clean, solid, scriptable core image.

Many companies are caught in their own jail of huge masses of GUI code. They can't go with other smalltalks. Will they ever change to a "supported Pharo"? I think: No.

Morphic ... no MVC, no MVP. What has happened to Tweak code? ETOYS was ported to that GUI. That code was quite ok. Why haven't the code autors spent that code for Squeak/Pharo?

So please ... don't tell me you haven't enough hands at the moment. Do the right things, not just some few things right, beautifying GUI, implemeting the 5th version of closures and well ... traits.

Well, some weeks ago we have the smalltalk blog guy screaming in the seaside list. At the end, no code or "hands" to solve all the thing "he" saw as imperfections in seaside. This mail appears to me that that the pharo list has now the same nemesis.

Do 'crowdsourceing', invite people to contribute, learn community organizing first. Give them a reason to contribute. Give them a future, a business modell to participate.

The reasons have many times been exposed. Read the squeak list.

Your egoistic path to make a commercial supported free smalltalk ... good idea, but you are lightyears far from that.

I think that all the people here knows that pharo has a long path to walk before this happens, but a long journey begins with the first step.

Leo Penta wrote a nice book about that 'crowdsourceing' stuff, or reread "Eric Raymond - Cathedral and the basaar" again and again and again. *PARTICIPATION* Bring people to participate your business model.

They won't be begging for support. They have a goal, and working and steady releases of working code that give the impresion that the effort will be successful. If by looking in their results you are motivated to participate, you're welcome. If you aren't motivated, well, they will continue like every day.

LEARN from the mistakes, many, many good programmers did. See TWEAK bad fate. Dead development process. Good sourcecode, lost in space ... like many squeak packages.

*Defective development process*. I posted that as issue, it was deleted by someone not really understanding, what i meant.

thanx for understanding.

Really, I tried to understand you, but I only see complains and no code or help. Miguel Cobá

cheers, Guido Stepken

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