July 2012 - Esug-list - lists.esug.org

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

by Stéphane Ducasse

> > Personally I'd like to see GST, VW, GemStone ... "people" on the board > some time. Don't you think that we are not welcoming people from other dialects since years? When we started to move esug the board was large but nobody was doing much: there was ***NO*** promotion actions. So now people should show their real willingness to act. Stef > It would make ESUG's broad intentions more obvious. I'd > also love to be able to contribute more directly myself, which I can't > at this time. > > Best, > > Michael > > _______________________________________________ > Esug-list mailing list > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

by Stéphane Ducasse

thanks graham. But you see I think that this all discussions killed my fun. I'm getting sick of Smalltalk. Sad isn't. And marcus probably too. I probably spent too much time pushing this community. Stef > Hi All > > Reading the thread, I just wanted to add my .02 worth. > > I have no problem in ESUG sponsoring Pharo Consortium, like it has sponsored many other worthwhile Smalltalk related projects. > The history of decisions taken by the board is comforting as it shows impartiality across dialects and initiatives. These facts speak more loudly than > principles and discussion. > The quantum of sponsorship mentioned is very reasonable in the light of other assistance given to much more focussed projects. > I believe that all dialects of Smalltalk have benefitted from the work on Pharo and its use as a platform to evolve products like Seaside, Magritte, Fuel and many others > which flow into the broader Smalltalk community. > > I would like to publicly thank all volunteers on the ESUG board and the Pharo group for their work and efforts which have made and are making major contributions. > Please don't be discouraged by the discussion on this thread. C++ has users, Java enthusiasts, and Smalltalk zealots! People are passionate and want to see good things - > lets harness the positive energy. > > At a technical level, I have had experience over 20 years of working in various Smalltalks and attempting projects in C++, Java, Java Script and various other languages. > Every time I come back to the comfort zone that is Smalltalk. It is simply more "right", better and consistent than the other environments. I have looked at Python, Ruby, Coffee Script, > Objective C, Erlang.... etc. There is still nothing with the breadth of capabilities, purity, accessibility and openness (in the sense that an average developer can get at the internals and implementation of the language and libraries) of Smalltalk. Yes, it is old and there are some messy bits and frustrations. Alan Kay himself has said he is frustrated that there is not something better to replace Smalltalk. What I see in the Pharo space over the last two years gives me hope that this could be it. There is a critical mass of innovation and community activity that is generating a very dynamic, capable system and eco-system. I would hate to see the very good work of many towards this dissipated when we are close to realisation of a really great environment. We should give every encouragement to those pushing things forward. > > Go, Stef, Damien, Luc, Marcus, et al.... > > Best > Graham > > Damien Cassou wrote: >> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Michael Haupt <mhaupt(a)gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> How long are terms? >>> >> >> as far as I know, we don't have such a thing: >> >> - the board has no minimum/maximum size >> - anybody willing to help seriously is invited to send an email to the >> board to offer his free time. Then we ask the community during the >> conference if they accept this new board member. >> - when somebody wants to quit to take back part of his free time, he >> just does so (as Noury recently did after years and years of handling >> ESUG's money, a job that requires a lot of effort and rigor). In this >> case we ask all board members who is willing to take some more work to >> replace the leaving member (and Luc accepted to do that, thank you >> Luc). >> >> You are right, we should improve our communication and probably have a >> dedicated web page, let me add that to my todo list :-). >> >> > <mcleod.vcf>_______________________________________________ > Esug-list mailing list > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

by Stéphane Ducasse

Thanks a lot steven for pissing on us. This is fun nobody ever told us anything when the complete board was programming in VW. And nobody told us anything when the complete board was using Squeak. Strange no. And ESUG even manage money for the squeak foundation. But you are welcome. Do you not worry, you are damaging ESUG and this is great. You are an hero. Keep going. Thanks for all these positive energy. Stef On Jul 5, 2012, at 10:35 AM, Steven Kelly wrote: > Since I didn't really see an answer to Michael Haupt's question, about what is the main Smalltalk dialect of the board members, I did a quick Google on their home pages, looking there or on CVs for which Smalltalk is mentioned. Obviously this is not an accurate method, and I'd much rather the board members answered the question - please, please don't get annoyed because Google says this, just tell us what the real situation is. But for what little it's worth: > >> here are the members of the ESUG's board: >> >> President: Stéphane Ducasse <- Pharo >> Treasurer: Luc Fabresse <- Pharo >> Damien Cassou <- Pharo >> Jordi Delgado <- Pharo >> Marcus Denker <- Squeak, Pharo >> Alain Plantec <- Pharo >> Serge Stinckwich <- none on home page, adding various Smalltalk names to the search terms shows several, with Pharo giving most hits > > If that's the impression a casual web browse gives, then even if it is totally and utterly incorrect, hopefully the board can understand why it seems reasonable to members who don't know all the details to mention potential conflicts of interest. > > So, what does it mean that if so many on the board have a Pharo link? First, it's brilliant that these people are active in doing something for a Smalltalk, as well as their great work in ESUG. Second, it's brilliant that Pharo people are active in wider promotion of Smalltalk in general. And third, it's going to be rather difficult to have a sensible vote on the board, and discussions on the members email list may be a little tense :). > > No worries from me, though. I think it's great what ESUG are doing, and great what Pharo is doing. Personally I'd rather not have ESUG sponsor Pharo, but that's just one person's opinion, and hopefully nobody gets upset about it. > > Go Smalltalk! > Steve > > _______________________________________________ > Esug-list mailing list > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

by Stéphane Ducasse

On Jul 5, 2012, at 10:30 AM, Joachim Tuchel (objektfabrik) wrote: > I see it like this: The ESUG board asked the community for help in preparation of a decision. If they were absolutely sure, they wouldn't have asked. We should help with input, and some people asked additional questions, hopefully the ansers will help them come up with a final opinion. We asked because we did not want that people over react but at the end this is the inverse that is happening. Stef

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

by Stéphane Ducasse

Can we compare figures? We are putting (INRIA and my team 260 K Euros in Pharo so far) and you are worried about 2000, sounds good. You are not worried about 2500 K on summer talk projects that do not deliver but for phaor this is a problem. Look rationale to me. Stef On Jul 5, 2012, at 10:21 AM, Joachim Tuchel (objektfabrik) wrote: > Hi Steph, > > Thank you very much for these insights. > > I must say I am a bit surprised how emotional this discussion gets. Nobody is doubting that the amount and quality of work and passion you and others put into Smalltalk as a community on one side and Pharo on the other are really worth a lot. And of course the success of Pharo is a succes for Smalltalk. We as a Community profit so much from the small and big things hapenning. > > But this whole discussion is about another topic. It is about whether people would like ESUG to spend between 2000 and 4000 Euros per year in support of the Pharo consortium. I think we even haven't heard enough opinions yet to judge what the community thinks. I guess you were prepared for negative responses, so what makes you upset is hopefully not the fact per se, but the rhetorics. > > I think ESUG should support the Pharo project. But ESUG should not seem to be an entity that somewhat guarantees a steady cash flow for Pharo. Let's put it another way: if an ESUG member/sponsor wants to support Pharo in particular, they can always go for a membership or sponsorship in the Pharo Consortium. > > So sponsorship is fine with me, and a cheaper membership level is also fine, even when combined with additional sponsorship (e.g. when the ESUG conference is a financial success and there's more money on the bank than needed), but I fear that a corparate membership level would bring up the question of CoI over and over again, for as long as there are people active in both entities. Which, by itself, is neither bad nor a problem from my standpoint. Thinking of ESUG as "neutral" or "independent" is an illusion, because it will always be run and sponsored by enthusiasts - and an enthusiast cannot be neutral ;-) > > > Joachim > > P.S.: So what did I do for the Smalltalk Community? My company sponsors ESUG for a few years now, and I try to help promote Smalltalk by blogging and trying to motivate VA Smalltalk users (because these are the kind of Smalltalkers I am in touch with most of the time during my day job) to participate in the community. I try to transport the enthusiasm, knowledge and code from the community into legacy Smalltalk projects (again, mostly VAST). You could say I try to build a sub-community in the VAST world that somehow feels quite offline for many reasons. My company has spent quite some time and money on organizing events in which VAST users can find out they are not the last ones on earth. Together with Marten and Sebastian I do the Smalltalk Inspect Podcast, in which we try to cover all Smalltalk dialects and all kinds of topics. I know this still is far less time and passion than what you or Marcus or other Board members put into the Smalltalk community, but I hope this shows that my intention here is to help build and sustain the community, not to troll about the ESUG board. > > "Stéphane Ducasse" <stephane.ducasse(a)inria.fr> hat am 5. Juli 2012 um 09:30 geschrieben: > > > BTW since everybody wants to give lessons here is our internal process. A board member never votes when he has a > > conflict of interest. For example when a student applies for an article sponsoring (even 150 Euros), if a board member is in the group of the student > > or may have any conflict of interest, the board member does not take part of the discussion or the voting process. > > This is always like that. > > > > Now as a good exercise for our little community, it would be good that everybody check what he did recently not for its own little > > assets (my little program my precious my little business my precious) but for somebody else asset. > > I wrote and edited the seaside book and I should have better wrote something on ruby on rails > > because we earned a ridiculous amount of money and it was 4 years of work (but this does not count) and I pushed so that we get > > all dialects represented, while I could have simply focus on Pharo. > > Similarly, we sponsored conferences like FAST and Smalltalk Solutions, summerTalk projects, user groups and we are systematically promoting Smalltalk. > > > > Now I'm a bit worried about some reactions especially the rhetorical part of them. It seems to me > > that in our community we do not like success - probably because this is better to be the king of a small castle than > > a knight in a kingdom. Personally I would prefer to be able to build graphical system like D3 in Javascript with my Smalltalk but I cannot. So may be Javascript is > > the future of any smart smalltalker. > > > > Personally I want the success of Smalltalk and I built the tools to make it happen. Pharo is one of such tool. We built pharo because the tools in presence > > were not there to push the way we wanted. Just for your information, we are making pharo not for US but for people to be able to > > make money with it. Now if somebody would come, fork pharo and make our dream reality by being better than pharo we would > > be more than happy. Why because doing pharo is a pain. People complain, doing is slow, we have other agendas. > > > > I'm talking with lawyers INRIA since two years for the consortium. INRIA put 180 Keuros for pharo on the table and we are negotiating to get another 60 K. > > Our little team will also put 30 Keuros plus a massive amount of our free hours. Of course smart people can think that this is because this is for us. No it is not, > > we are building pharo for the community. In fact I would like to build other systems than pharo but so far the state of the system > > implementations does not let us experiment (proprietary or old systems), so we are basically forced to build pharo if we want to invent our future. > > May be some people do not want to have a future. But we do. Now you can not trust us or be against it this is your rights. > > > > So it would be a problem that ESUG the organization promoting Smalltalk has a problem > > to pay 2000/4000 Euros, when I see what our group is putting or INRIA. > > Seriously, if this is the case we should really be clear about that and rethink what is ESUG and also probably do something else of our free time. > > > > Stef > > > > > > On Jul 5, 2012, at 8:49 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > > > > > Il 05/07/2012 08:47, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto: > > >> Reading this thread after all we did for Smalltalk is quite taught. > > >> The wolfs are back apparently. Sad period. I think the esug board > > >> will have to really decide if ESUG is worth after all. Now may be > > >> ESUG popularity is a problem for certain people or this is the pharo > > >> popularity. May be this is good to not give a chance to a promising > > >> open source project (especially when we see that such question never > > >> arose when it was about other Smalltalks). Life is so funny > > >> sometimes. > > > > > > No Stephane, it's not that. Part of it is just misinformation and I > > > think that was clarified; the other part is just basic handling of > > > conflict of interest, and I think it's in ESUG's interest to keep its > > > usual level of transparency. > > > > > > Paolo > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Esug-list mailing list > > > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org > > > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Esug-list mailing list > > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org > > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org > _______________________________________________ > Esug-list mailing list > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG 2012 agenda

by Damien Cassou

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Stephan Eggermont <stephan(a)stack.nl> wrote: > May I suggest replacing inappropriate technology? > Google calendar needs cookies and javascript. > That seems overly constraining for a conference web site. agree with you and I will do it as soon as the conference is close enough that I won't have to do it 10 times. For now, the google calendar will do the job fine :-) -- Damien Cassou http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st "Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them." James Iry

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

by Steven Kelly

Maarten Mostert wrote: > > And except from the difficulty of who to give the money > > to in the case of VW, > > The case for VW is easy you should give it in person to Holger > Kleinsorgen for having written the Windows 7 Look and feel !! Great idea! I hadn't been aware of the 100-150€ that ESUG gives out for each research paper or article published on Smalltalk, or about a product made with Smalltalk (http://esug.org/wiki/pier/Promotion, YourArticle, YourPublication). Another category in a similar vein might be YourCode, for things like Holger's Windows 7 Look and Feel. That would be different from YourProject, where you apply for the money beforehand, and different from the Innovation Technology Awards, in that YourCode would be for things that are useful to a large number of Smalltalkers - a framework or similar rather than a complete product. Cheers, Steve

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

by Bert Freudenberg

On 2012-07-05, at 16:13, Andreas Raab wrote: >> In the past, ESUG supported Squeak e.V. and the Squeak VM. What is the >> difference? > > Squeak e.V. is not about developing Squeak as such you can't compare it membership in the Pharo consortium (it would be more like sponsoring a book or so which ESUG certainly does). As for the Squeak VM, first of all I have no clue who got sponsored by ESUG. Probably John Macintosh because I know neither me, nor Ian, nor Eliot, nor David, nor Dan, nor John ever got any support from ESUG. Secondly, (and I'm guessing here since I really don't know who got sponsored for what) I would think that the scope was probably rather specific, i.e., support for this or that Mac feature or somesuch, rather than "oh, just do some Squeak VM development we don't care what it is" which is the style of support for the Pharo consortium. I think sponsoring specific projects is good, it's handing out money without specific goals and targets that I don't like. > > Cheers, > - Andreas ESUG has given quite a bit of money directly to Squeak a couple of years ago (about 2000 Euros, IIRC). We used that mainly to pay for the squeak.org server hosting. And part of John Macintosh's work on the iPhone / iPad VM was sponsored by ESUG, too (but I don't know the details). - Bert -

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG 2012 agenda

by Karsten Kusche

The problem is actually you being logged in at google. As soon as i log out, i see the calendar. When i log in at google and reload the page, the calendar is gone again. Karsten -- Karsten Kusche - Dipl. Inf. - karsten(a)heeg.de Georg Heeg eK - Köthen Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Dortmund A 12812 Am Donnerstag, 5. Juli 2012 um 17:03 schrieb Stephan Eggermont: > > On 5 jul 2012, at 14:23, Damien Cassou wrote: > > > On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Stephan Eggermont <stephan(a)stack.nl (mailto:stephan@stack.nl)> wrote: > > > Empty, iphone ios 5 safari > > > > > > Have you read "note 2" and applied it thoroughly? > > Read, yes. Applied, no. > May I suggest replacing inappropriate technology? > Google calendar needs cookies and javascript. > That seems overly constraining for a conference web site. > A search on Google reports many issues with Safari and Google calendar. > > Stephan > > _______________________________________________ > Esug-list mailing list > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org (mailto:Esug-list@lists.esug.org) > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org > >

July 5, 2012

Re: [Esug-list] ESUG 2012 agenda

by Stephan Eggermont

On 5 jul 2012, at 14:23, Damien Cassou wrote: > On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Stephan Eggermont <stephan(a)stack.nl> wrote: >> Empty, iphone ios 5 safari > > Have you read "note 2" and applied it thoroughly? Read, yes. Applied, no. May I suggest replacing inappropriate technology? Google calendar needs cookies and javascript. That seems overly constraining for a conference web site. A search on Google reports many issues with Safari and Google calendar. Stephan

July 5, 2012