Ok I'm resting now on holidays but I understand your point. Now to reply to your question: have a look at the welcome slide of last year esug there are pie chart about where esug is spending money and the percentage it represents. 4K is less than two Summer Projects - where often we do not have real output. :) Our goal is to make sure that we can always take the risk not to break even and that we can continue to organize ESUG. Some years we make money like at Brest, Barcelona and sometimes we lose money like at Amsterdam - even if the conference was great. We have no umbrella or insurance so we are picky about our actions but at the same time we want to get impact and move the community. Stef PS: now I have a couple of questions of us: - what really exciting happened recently in our little computer world? d3 the javascript framework? luaJit? Dart? I do not count the crazy number of excellents JS or Ruby projects nor the Java one. - I see a couple but not much in our micro world: Amber, Pharo, Xtream, FS, Roassal, Athens, PetitParser, Seaside (now getting old) - Passion is cool but rationally why should somebody start a project in Smalltalk nowadays? when we can see the ecosystem of Java in terms of libraries (soon it will be the same with JS)? So as a little community how can we create a niche where wealth can bloom? I think that this is with such mindset that people should think about what ESUG is doing and what they could be doing, they are plenty of simple actions. Now the goal of Pharo is to create such a niche. ***We are not doing Pharo for the fun or the fame***, I would love not to have to do it, I would prefer to be able to use a nice cross platform smalltalk with amazingly well design libraries and the rest… but so far we had to do it, so we do it and we try to give it a real chance. Stef
Stef,
I partly understand your frustration about this dsicussion. But take a step back: how many people said they do not want ESUG to help sponsor the Pharo consortium? If I remember correctly, nobody said it's completely unacceptable.
Most commenters either said they fully support the idea, some expressed doubts about the fact that ESUG joining the Pharo Consortium could water lines that should better be sharp, just to avoid possible problems for either ESUG or the community. People who expressed their worries came up with real arguments, maybe not always expressed in a clear or "neutral" way. I can only see one or two comments which either say "I'd rather not want ESUG to do that" or strictly are negative about the idea.
So I am not sure I see the reason why you and Marcus are so upset about this thread and the fact that doubts/worries were expressed. The way you react to counter-arguments probably keeps some people from joining this thread, most of which might even support the suggested idea per se.
To me the essence of the thread so far is that most people like the idea of ESUG supporting the Pharo Consortium, but some have doubts whether Membership would be better than sponsorship. And the arguments that were brought up make sense.
So we should possibly rather use this thread to find out what ESUG can do to supprt the evolution of Pharo and how it should best do it.
I think it already became obvious that it's neither about the amount of 4K p.a. nor the question if ESUG would lose neutrality (is it even possible?), but only about how to do it without risking that it seems as if ESUG is misused for Pharo's advantage.
Maybe all people really ask for is that ESUG makes it more transparent what it does with money that it uses to sponsor. At least that is my feeling when I skim through some of the comments. And it's probably understandable: would 4000 Euros be more like 100% of the money ESUG donates to Smalltalk efforts (no matter if lectures, books, student volunteers, project sponsorship, whatever) or is it closer to 30%. What is the plan for years in which the conference is a financial desaster, would ESUG still give 4K to Pharo and nothing to anybody else?
I think between the lines people are only asking questions, not accusing you or anybody else of corruption, bad intentions or anything like that. All they want to make sure is that the good work that has been done will continue and bare fruit.
Does it make us a bad community? I don't think so. We are a caring community, and some of us do really invest time and emotion into Smalltalk, some by helping ESUG and/or Pharo directly, some by doing something else.
Joachim
Am 12.07.12 08:27, schrieb Stéphane Ducasse:
Simply thanks.
And not counting the amount of hours organizing ESUG (I even payed all the registrations to the conferences I organized)!!!! Silly me.
Stef
Steve,
I do not agree with you on all points. The fact that they (Stef) managed to convince INRIA to keep on spending about 200k€ year on Smalltalk must take them a huge effort. So the frustration is very much understandable. Critisizing is easy selling ideas however is about the most difficult thing to do, we all know that !
If you are looking for problems you invite the juridical guys we all know that too !! (and for 3000€ stop stop stop !!)
Besides maybe leaving my app as a free dwonload I do absolutely nothing for the community so what can I do else then just admire these guys !!!
Even for us as VW users the Pharo principles are really cool and I only hope they find their way to our phones and desktops the sooner the better !
Regards,
@+Maarten,
Message du 06/07/12 09:00 De : "Steven Kelly" A : esug-list@lists.esug.org Copie à : Objet : Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium
Hi Stef,
You seem angry. Let's try to keep things civil and calm, even if we have different opinions.
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.
I think in some cases the reason is simply that we didn't know, or we weren't asked. If VW is the flagship Smalltalk as you said, it's not that surprising if sometimes the board has lots of VW users. But if the board was led by a Cincom manager, had top figures from within Cincom, and suggested paying 2000 EUR per year to Cincom "to foster business around VW and to promote VW", I think you would have some questions.
The case for VW is easy you should give it in person to Holger Kleinsorgen for having written the Windows 7 Look and feel !!
I would be really curious to see if cincom wants this kind of press and marketing. It would be really funny. VisualWorks the Smalltalk flagship sponsored by a free association to develop better product. I'm not sure that it will make laugh a lot of people but at least I would laugh a lot.
Holger isn't a Cincom employee. His code is released for free to the Smalltalk community. Why would it be ridiculous to give a VW user 100-150€ once? That sounds like just the kind of project that ESUG has funded in the past.
Personally I'm happiest with ESUG sponsorship going to individual Smalltalk users of any dialect, for projects that benefit other Smalltalkers. I'm happy to consider a project on the core of any particular dialect on its merits. But a large, repeating, non-earmarked sum of money to one dialect is something I am unlikely to support.
Please, for the sake of both ESUG and Pharo, talk to the INRIA lawyers about this. IANAL, but I think you'd be risking your reputation and that of ESUG and Pharo, by being one of 3 Pharo board members, asking for money no strings attached, and then agreeing to that as the President of ESUG.
If the lawyers are happy and the board decides to do this, that's fine by me, I just want to make sure.
All the best, Steve
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> > >> Treasurer: Luc Fabresse> > >> Damien Cassou> > >> Jordi Delgado> > >> Marcus Denker> > >> Alain Plantec> > >> Serge Stinckwich> > 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
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