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@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 :-).