Hi Michael! Good to see you back!

how many people on the ESUG board can be considered representatives of communities of Smalltalk dialects other than Pharo?

In an ideal World, this would be indeed important. However the amount of people willing to actively participate in the ESUG board is really small. And being a small community should not prevent us from moving ahead. Cheers, Alexandre -- _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.

I left Squeak because I was "pissed away". I have no problem to leave ESUG, too. herewith I unsubscribe from the ESUG list. Have Fun Marcus On Jul 4, 2012, at 6:13 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

...

-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Datum: Wed, 4 Jul 2012 17:33:12 +0200 Von: Alexandre Bergel <abergel@dcc.uchile.cl> An: Michael Haupt <mhaupt@gmail.com> CC: ESUG Mailing list <esug-list@lists.esug.org> Betreff: Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

Hi Michael!

Good to see you back!

...

how many people on the ESUG board can be considered representatives of communities of Smalltalk dialects other than Pharo?

In an ideal World, this would be indeed important. However the amount of people willing to actively participate in the ESUG board is really small. Really? I don't recall anyone ever asking. In fact, the whole election process of the ESUG board is a complete mystery to me personally. Googling "ESUG board election" nets me a message from 2002(!) about an upcoming election, that's it. Compare this say, with googling "Squeak board election" and you will find election results each year, plus each candidates announcement, discussions, vote counts etc. A bit more transparency would certainly help here...

Regarding the original question, I think such a membership is unfair to the other open source communities. Sponsoring of specific projects with the goal of fostering the overall Smalltalk community is one thing, paying a perpetual "Pharo tax" quite another. I do not see a compelling reason why Pharo should be supported in such a way by ESUG and not GST, Squeak, Cuis, or any other open source Smalltalk implementation. The money could certainly be used by the other projects for activities like going to and presenting at the ESUG conferences which is often not done for lack of funding. If ESUG wants to sponsor open source Smalltalk dialects by handing out money directly, it should do so fairly and transparently and not favor a single fork of a single dialect.

Cheers, - Andreas

...

And being a small community should not prevent us from moving ahead.

Cheers, Alexandre -- _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.

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Hi, On 4 July 2012 18:36, Rob Vens <rob.vens@reflektis.com> wrote:

Ho ho this is not the proper place to discuss this. The ESUG board selection has always been done quite openly, but on the yearly conference, there is not even ground for any suspition, please.

that is completely correct: the boards are elected by acclamation (usually) when the community is gathered at the conference. IMHO this is as transparent as it gets. Nothing to complain there. Well, yes, the procedure *could* be mentioned on the web page, but the process is OK. Best, Michael

Thanks maarteen 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. Stef On Jul 5, 2012, at 6:36 AM, Maarten Mostert wrote:

Being accused of conflicting interest is not very nice to hear, so please those of you concerned stay above that and with us. I never used Pharo, But If the ESUG board decided to sponsor it, than I just respect their choice.

@+Maarten

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... thanks, Paolo, I was about to write that. Best, Michael On 5 July 2012 08:49, Paolo Bonzini <bonzini@gnu.org> 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

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Il 05/07/2012 08:59, Stéphane Ducasse ha scritto:

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.

Why did we send the mail if this is not about that?

Sending email about this is great, because it makes the community part of the decisions. But it doesn't eliminate the conflict of interest inside the board. Note that CoI is not a problem, it is a fact of life, but it must be handled properly. When you are a member of an academic program committee, you are asked to leave when your paper is being discussed. We are asking for something similar in the context of the ESUG board; again, it is standard practice and I don't see why there should be any opposition to this. If I were a member of the ESUG board, I certainly would do the same on any decision that mentioned GNU Smalltalk.

Now I see so much frustration in some mails that I laugh a lot. Personally when I wake up the morning I feel good and I know that I'm doing a good job for my community. Now may be I should do something else.

I believe that you are; for both Pharo and ESUG. And I believe everybody knows the effort that you put into promotion of Smalltalk. But you shouldn't take things too personally: your effort requires you to be _more_ careful about not pissing people off, not less. :) Paolo

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

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Stephane, I see here more and more over-reactions and I quite do not understand these reactions. I can not believe, that posters here do not like the success of ESUG or behave jealous in some way. But ideas/contributions like the ones Paolo (and others) posted here are still valid and I am more than surprised, that people are angry about it. But you answered many questions and that is ok - and I've seen NO posting here so far saying, that the ESUG members are doing their job badly. ESUG has been done quite a good job in the past promoting Smalltalk in various ways. Marten

Hi guys,

One concrete proposal: let the ESUG board write a short report after every meeting and decision like sponsoring some project. Like Squeak board is doing regularly: http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/.

we do not work with regular meetings talking. We take decision voting over emails. And frnakly I do not have the time to write report. I'm not payed for that. And the results of our decisions are presented at each ESUG. Take the ESUG presentation of each last years and you will see the summary of our actions.

I'm pretty sure with such simple act most of suspicions expressed in this thread will vanish immediately.

Don't worry I do not think that I will stay in the board because I'm fed up with such kind of emails.

Best regards Janko

On 05. 07. 2012 09:42, Marten Feldtmann wrote:

...

Stephane,

I see here more and more over-reactions and I quite do not understand these reactions.

I can not believe, that posters here do not like the success of ESUG or behave jealous in some way.

But ideas/contributions like the ones Paolo (and others) posted here are still valid and I am more than surprised, that people are angry about it.

But you answered many questions and that is ok - and I've seen NO posting here so far saying, that the ESUG members are doing their job badly. ESUG has been done quite a good job in the past promoting Smalltalk in various ways.

Marten

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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@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

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---

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-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Datum: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 11:29:53 +0200 Von: Alexandre Bergel <abergel@dcc.uchile.cl> An: Maarten Mostert <maarten.mostert@wanadoo.fr> CC: esug-list@lists.esug.org, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> Betreff: Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

> Being accused of conflicting interest is not very nice to hear, so please those of you concerned stay above that and with us.

Well, this is something that should be avoided. But again, the community is so small, that is hard to avoid. We almost have permanent interest conflict in the research track of esug.

...

I never used Pharo, But If the ESUG board decided to sponsor it, than I just respect their choice.

I hardly see how supporting Pharo can be seen as unfair. Improving Pharo will help the whole Smalltalk community. It looks like clear to me.

Here is how it is unfair: If I understand the basic process of selecting and supporting projects by ESUG, then the distribution of projects supported by ESUG is roughly equivalent to the popularity of the various communities. This seems entirely fair and reasonable to me, and ESUG is doing a good job with the various projects it supports. However, once ESUG starts giving chunks of money to particular dialects directly, then first of all that money is no longer spent across the various dialects. So for an approx. 3000 EUR Pharo membership the board could sponsor 20 students with 150 EUR each. And while it may be that 15 of those are indeed Pharo related, there is still sponsorshop done for the remaining 5 which would fall under the table if the money went directly to Pharo. That's seems obviously unfair. Secondly, the membership in Pharo is perpetual; if some other project raises in popularity there will *still* 100% of the money be going to Pharo. For eternity. That's just as unfair. There is nothing wrong with sponsoring Pharo projects by ESUG. What's wrong is giving the money, which would otherwise be spent in some relation to the popularity of each dialect, to one dialect only. Cheers,   - Andreas

Hi Damien -

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 3:15 PM, Andreas Raab <Andreas.Raab@gmx.de> wrote:

...

Here is how it is unfair: If I understand the basic process of selecting and supporting projects by ESUG, then the distribution of projects supported by ESUG is roughly equivalent to the popularity of the various communities. This seems entirely fair and reasonable to me, and ESUG is doing a good job with the various projects it supports.

However, once ESUG starts giving chunks of money to particular dialects directly, then first of all that money is no longer spent across the various dialects.

I would agree with you if ESUG was spending 100% of the money it has. Sponsoring Pharo won't affect other potential sponsoring (unless we get 5 times more sponsoring requests than last year in which case we might not positively answer to all of them). I invite all representatives of other dialects to send the board sponsoring requests. But we can't wait for all dialects to ask for money before spending part of it.

Which is fine. And perhaps there is a really simple answer then: First, sponsor all the projects that apply to ESUG. If, at the end of year, there is money left, donate it based on the relative distribution of projects over the year. So for example: ESUG budget: 15k Projects: 5 Pharo projects x 1k = 5k 2 Squeak projects x 1k = 2k 1 GST project x 2k = 2k 2 high profile papers x 500 = 1k Over the year you've spent a total of 10k on those projects. If you split (for simplicity) the remaining 5k based on the total sum used by each project (yeah, yeah, I know there other ways of doing this, I'm just making an example) then you would end up with: Pharo: 2.500 EUR Squeak: 1000 EUR GST: 1000 EUR VW: 500 EUR And except from the difficulty of who to give the money to in the case of VW, the entire process is both transparent and fair. And has an incentive for the various dialects to go out and work with ESUG.

...

There is nothing wrong with sponsoring Pharo projects by ESUG. What's wrong is giving the money, which would otherwise be spent in some relation to the popularity of each dialect, to one dialect only.

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

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

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 -

As I see my name bantered about just a few too many times now, allow me to comment on this tomorrow as it does directly affect me. Since I'm about to start a 7 hour plane trip I don't have the time to give a proper comment right now. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 5, 2012, at 2:57 PM, Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr> wrote:

...

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.

It was officially announced by john

Dear Andreas, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:

sorry andreas but apparently you do not know what is to take the risk to organize a conference and get broken Now it happens with ESUG certain years and

...

...

I would agree with you if ESUG was spending 100% of the money it has.

I agree with Stephane. Over a period of many years, I believe ESUG does spend "all the money it has", in that any money ESUG gets is sooner or later spent on Smalltalk. In a single year, ESUG must budget to ensure the conference succeeds. Last year, I got a special insight ( :-) ) into how that means estimating and hoping. Especially at this time of year, there is both hope and some stress for those who run ESUG. For the good of Smalltalk, failure is not an option! That means the year's budget plan must ensure it is not - and at the same time, deliver great value to all who come to ESUG. So I believe in a given year, ESUG should not plan to spend 100% of all the money it hopes to raise that year. Yours faithfully Niall Ross ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com ______________________________________________________________________

...

I hardly see how supporting Pharo can be seen as unfair. Improving Pharo will help the whole Smalltalk community. It looks like clear to me.

Here is how it is unfair: If I understand the basic process of selecting and supporting projects by ESUG, then the distribution of projects supported by ESUG is roughly equivalent to the popularity of the various communities. This seems entirely fair and reasonable to me, and ESUG is doing a good job with the various projects it supports.

However, once ESUG starts giving chunks of money to particular dialects directly, then first of all that money is no longer spent across the various dialects. So for an approx. 3000 EUR Pharo membership the board could sponsor 20 students with 150 EUR each. And while it may be that 15 of those are indeed Pharo related, there is still sponsorshop done for the remaining 5 which would fall under the table if the money went directly to Pharo. That's seems obviously unfair.

what argument! you could find better. We sponsored students from HPI do attend the talks of eliot, we payed eliot trips and we did not asked them if they were using Squeak or Pharo.

Secondly, the membership in Pharo is perpetual; if some other project raises in popularity there will *still* 100% of the money be going to Pharo. For eternity. That's just as unfair.

ESUG can decide to stop anytime. So your augment is just for the sake of argumenting. Well done. But not recevable.

There is nothing wrong with sponsoring Pharo projects by ESUG. What's wrong is giving the money, which would otherwise be spent in some relation to the popularity of each dialect, to one dialect only.

Fun you never complained when Squeake.v. promoting etoy was sponsored, nor when most of the summer talk projects were done in Squeak. You did not complained when ESUG payed John mcIntosh to clean the mac squeak vm. Of course it was helping pharo too. For ESUG it was pushing the Smalltalk community. Stef

[ this is my personal opinion. I may be wrong, but I do not think so ]

I do not see a compelling reason why Pharo should be supported in such a way by ESUG and not GST, Squeak, Cuis, or any other open source Smalltalk implementation.

There is no reason. Pharo will get a sponsor because people behind Pharo asked for it, in the same way that people behind GST asked.

The money could certainly be used by the other projects for activities like going to and presenting at the ESUG conferences which is often not done for lack of funding. If ESUG wants to sponsor open source Smalltalk dialects by handing out money directly, it should do so fairly and transparently and not favor a single fork of a single dialect.

I am pretty sure that if the Squeak community, or any other community set up a nice and reasonable proposal, the esug board will consider it. This discussion reminds me a large project that got founded recently in Chile. Everybody said they are interested in participating (and receiving money), but only a very few actually made up a clear, concise and promising proposal. Not that they were not included in the discussion and the regular meetings. The persons who did not receive the money "were too busy to write the proposal". Well... at the end they complained saying that it is not fair. Cheers, Alexandre -- _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.

Hi ESUG members, On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Michael Haupt <mhaupt@gmail.com> wrote:

how many people on the ESUG board can be considered representatives of communities of Smalltalk dialects other than Pharo?

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 The rest of this email is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the one of the board. Even though I'm unsure about your definition of "representatives of communities", I don't see myself as being one, whatever the community you pick. When I decided I wanted to join the board this was not to represent Smalltalk or Squeak, this was because I loved both and wanted to spend some time helping. I got elected by participants of the conference during the last talk, three years ago. I believe this is the same for most other members, i.e., we don't represent a particular Smalltalk, we just want to help and do some work for everyone. Now, if a representative of a community wants to work with us, we would love to receive his application. For 3 years now that I'm in this board, we received *a lot of* requests for sponsoring (being projects, participation to the conferences, books, articles, ...). If we didn't accept all requests, I think we are very very close. Most of the times, requests arrive in already a good shape, we see a great potential for the community or a real need, and we accept them. Sometimes, we ask people to work some more on the proposal and most of the time we will eventually accept them as well. I invite any interested Smalltalker out there to send founding proposals, we are always happy to help when we can. Now, let's face it: 2 of the most active participants of the ESUG board (Marcus and Stéphane) are leaders on the Pharo project. But we, as a community, must not forget that both where among the most active participants of Squeak before (I'm talking about code, organization, presentations, books, ...). These two are very active for the Smalltalk community and have been for quite some time now. If they decide to quit the ESUG board (and we already talked about that among members of the board), who will step up and do their job? I think each of them spends roughly 1h per day (probably more than that) on ESUG tasks: preparing the conference, taking care of legal issues, administrating the web servers, taking care of requests for sponsoring... Not so funny jobs. They both prefer coding, believe me. I don't see anyone else in the current board who could do their job and we didn't receive any application to join the board for at least 3 years. Finally, the board decided to raise this issue with you today for 1 reason: we are aware of the conflict of interest! We want your opinion about founding a particular dialect that shares some active participants with the board itself. But while giving your opinion please remember one thing: ESUG did help other communities in the past and we will continue to do it. My even more personal opinion: would it be fair not to help Pharo create a consortium simply because some members are so prolific that they can be very useful for two organizations at the same time? I don't believe so and I vote for becoming a member of the Pharo consortium just as much as I would vote for becoming a member of any other Smalltalk consortium/association/organization/group/whatever. Best regards, -- Damien Cassou http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st "Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them." James Iry

Dear Michael How are you doing these days?

...

In contrast to my earlier e-mail on process transparency, I have noticed that while the election itself is transparent, the path to being eligible in the first place is not. Is there actually such a thing as a call for applications when board members' terms end? Is there a nomination phase? A Q&A period to help people make up their minds?

People can propose themselves. Now they should show that they are not applying to show themselves. So the board will value their accomplishment for the community. For example, we appreciated so much the work of alain and jordi for the organization of esug at Brest and Barcelona that we ask them if they had some energy left for ESUG. Now it should be clear that we do not want a bad fruit in the basket because this would break ESUG board gentle and respectful atmosphere. We are doing that on our free time and it takes a lot lot lot and lot of energy and time. So the atmosphere of the board should be friendly, respectful. We experienced some problems in the past with the organization of some satellites events and we learned the hard way. ESUG is about positive energy around Smalltalk.

In short, how does this work?

...

Now, let's face it: 2 of the most active participants of the ESUG board (Marcus and Stéphane) are leaders on the Pharo project. But we, as a community, must not forget that both where among the most active participants of Squeak before (I'm talking about code, organization, presentations, books, ...). These two are very active for the Smalltalk community and have been for quite some time now. If they decide to quit the ESUG board (and we already talked about that among members of the board), who will step up and do their job?

Good question; see above.

...

My even more personal opinion: would it be fair not to help Pharo create a consortium simply because some members are so prolific that they can be very useful for two organizations at the same time? I don't believe so and I vote for becoming a member of the Pharo consortium just as much as I would vote for becoming a member of any other Smalltalk consortium/association/organization/group/whatever.

What amount is being considered? What percentage of the ESUG budget is that?

It should be either 2000 Euros or 4000 Euros or around that level. Notice that nobody ever complained when ESUG supported the work of John McIntosh to clean a bit the Squeak Virtual machine and it was more if I recall correctly. Now was it not in the global interest to have a stronger open-source community? May be not. ESUG decided to give a chance. May be people prefer that we do all our research and teaching in python, Javascript or Ruby? Who knows. I'm not in the mind of people and I'm happy about it :). Have a nice day.

Regards,

Michael

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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 :-). -- Damien Cassou http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st "Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them." James Iry

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@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@lists.esug.org http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Michael Haupt <mhaupt@gmail.com> wrote:

feel free to use as much of the text below as you like.

thank you very much Michael, I appreciate a lot. We will discuss your text on the board mailing list and I will update the website. Thank you again. -- Damien Cassou http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st "Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them." James Iry

Geert, On 5 July 2012 09:14, Geert Claes <geert.wl.claes@gmail.com> wrote:

Just curious, do you ask because you contribute funds or are you just stirring the pot?

I'm interested, that's all. Really. Best, Michael

Gert, Geert Claes <geert.wl.claes@gmail.com> hat am 5. Juli 2012 um 09:43 geschrieben:

No worries, it's just that drama threads like this are destructive and don't serve any purpose :)

Not sure about that. It's some of the answers in the thread that made it that way. The question was clear: The board wanted to know what people think about this. And I guess this question was asked because they've already knew there would be a COI problem.So it was intended to serve a purpose. This is good and I am glad they ask.

The most vocal people often tend to be those who are> not even active contributors or community members.

That's what a community must handle: filter useful input from noise.

...

I reckon the ESUG board should just have used the authority they were given when elected and gone ahead with what they thought was a sound decision (which is why there is a board).

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.

Who currently is on that board and how> they were elected is a completely separate issue.

Correct. As is the question if the Pharo efforts are good or bad. Joachim

Il 04/07/2012 23:32, Damien Cassou ha scritto:

My even more personal opinion: would it be fair not to help Pharo create a consortium simply because some members are so prolific that they can be very useful for two organizations at the same time?

No, but it is still a conflict of interest. I would expect that Stephane and Marcus do not vote on the issue, and possibly that they do not participate in board discussions on the matter. In general I would say that money should flow the other way round (Pharo->ESUG). However, as long as the above basic principle is held, I have no objection to sponsoring the consortium. Paolo

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

On 5 July 2012 10:35, Steven Kelly <stevek@metacase.com> 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

Just one little note: AFAIK, none of the above people real job directly related to Pharo. Nobody pays them for contributing to pharo not a penny. I am hired for work on Pharo, so strictly speaking i would be the only with conflict here, but i am not a member of board, and obviously not the one who stays behind this.. I was not aware of that, and actually was quite surprised to see such decision. As from the mission of ESUG - promote smalltalk, supporting Pharo is consistent with that.. or i miss something? If there's a conflict, can someone tell me, what will be direct personal benefit(s) for ESUG board members if they will decide to sponsor Pharo? They will get what? Another countless not paid hours in their life, which they would rather spend with their family? As a tangent, a first question what we should ask, IMO is: is there other project/activities, which to our thinking will help better promoting smalltalk than sponsoring pharo? If there's one and it is clearly have higher priority according to ESUG mission, then board's decision should and must be argued. But if there's none, do you think it would be better to just hold money on bank account? Because then ESUG would fail with its mission.. I am of course unaware by what the board decision was directed to such decision.. but in my opinion it cannot be directed by anything else than: promoting smalltalk.

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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-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

Hi everyone. Way back in the 1990s there were two publications floating around: Doug Shaker used to run 'The Smalltalk Store' and produced some nice hard copy magazines called 'The Smalltalk Gazette' I have three of these - Vol 2 Issue 1 and Volume 3 Issue 1 & 2. - May 1995, March 1996 and 'Summer' 1996 I have 8 copies of 'The Smalltalk Report' - as follows: Feb. 1992 Vol.1 No.5 Sep. 1994 Vol. 4 No. 1 March - April 1995 Vol.4 No. 4 (Photocopy) Feb. 1995 Vol. 4 No.5 May 1995 Vol 4 No. 7 July/August 1995 Vol.4 No. 9 Feb. 1996 Vol. 5 No. 6 March - April 1996 Vol. 5 No. 6 (i know this is a duplication in date but it is a different magazine). These have articles by the likes of Kent Beck, Alan Knight and Jay Almarode. These are available to the first one to request them: ***** However, together they weight 1.2 kilos so postage will be quite expensive and I must ask the taker to pay that. UK £6.00, Europe, £9.00 and Rest of the world £17.00 (these are actual Royal Mail small packet charges). I would need paying by Paypal but if you don't have a Paypal account, you can still use their service to pay by credit card on a one off basis. I would send you an invoice which makes it easier. Private e-mail to david@totallyobjects will secure. DavidESUG Mailing list <esug-list@lists.esug.org> David Pennington Totally Objects The Smalltalk Specialists

On 5 July 2012 11:42, Steven Kelly <stevek@metacase.com> wrote:

I think there's a misunderstanding about what "conflict of interest" means. It doesn't mean that person is bad. It doesn't mean they are abusing their power. It doesn't mean they would get money through it. All it means is that they have an interest in the matter at hand, in addition to their role on the board.

In academic circles, often you can't review a paper if you have been a co-author with one of its authors in the last N years. That's a similar kind of thing - nobody's saying that because of that, you'd accept the paper, or would be incapable of being objective, or the paper's authors would pay you(!). It's just agreed that it's better if you don't review it.

You miss an important detail: an academic circles is a competitive environment, and that's why it is completely reasonable to have such rules and watch for potential conflict(s) , because most of those rules were developed by taking competition in mind. ESUG, in contrast, does not operates in competitive environment, and based solely on the good will and enthusiasm of the people. So i actually wondering why we blindly applying the principles from competitive environment to something which is not?

One of the reasons why people with "conflicts of interest" don't get to vote or take part in the discussion, is that people with an extra interest are likely to get annoyed with the discussion. That's bad for the community - those people may be demotivated, and the rest may feel less trust in their board.

Every decision made will divide people on those who fine with it and those who not.. You cannot make everyone happy. This is fact of reality :) The only way how to not make new enemies is to not do anything..

In any case, as far as I understand it, the ESUG board makes decisions about sponsorship - not the ESUG membership. They've heard our opinions, both for and against, and they can go ahead and make their decision. I for one will support them, whatever they decide. Not because as individuals they've done so much for Smalltalk, for so little reward, but because they're smart people who we've trusted to make ESUG decisions on our behalf.

All the best, Steve

...

-----Original Message----- From: Igor Stasenko [mailto:siguctua@gmail.com] Sent: 5. heinäkuuta 2012 12:22 To: Steven Kelly; ESUG Mailing list Subject: Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

On 5 July 2012 10:35, Steven Kelly <stevek@metacase.com> 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

Just one little note: AFAIK, none of the above people real job directly related to Pharo. Nobody pays them for contributing to pharo not a penny. I am hired for work on Pharo, so strictly speaking i would be the only with conflict here, but i am not a member of board, and obviously not the one who stays behind this.. I was not aware of that, and actually was quite surprised to see such decision.

As from the mission of ESUG - promote smalltalk, supporting Pharo is consistent with that.. or i miss something?

If there's a conflict, can someone tell me, what will be direct personal benefit(s) for ESUG board members if they will decide to sponsor Pharo? They will get what? Another countless not paid hours in their life, which they would rather spend with their family?

As a tangent, a first question what we should ask, IMO is: is there other project/activities, which to our thinking will help better promoting smalltalk than sponsoring pharo? If there's one and it is clearly have higher priority according to ESUG mission, then board's decision should and must be argued. But if there's none, do you think it would be better to just hold money on bank account? Because then ESUG would fail with its mission..

I am of course unaware by what the board decision was directed to such decision.. but in my opinion it cannot be directed by anything else than: promoting smalltalk.

...

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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-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

On 05. 07. 2012 11:22, Igor Stasenko wrote:

On 5 July 2012 10:35, Steven Kelly <stevek@metacase.com> wrote:

If there's a conflict, can someone tell me, what will be direct personal benefit(s) for ESUG board members if they will decide to sponsor Pharo?

Because we are quite "opiniated" community it is clear what is a personal benefit in that case :) Money is not the only thing someone can benefit from... What counts is how evenly ESUG is spreading its sponsorship around Smalltalk projects. Because if ESUG sponsor Pharo, it can and it is already sponsoring others too. So, is there one who asked for ESUG sponsorship and was denied? Let me ask directly (I'm a direct man, as those who know me, know very well :) Is Squeak community asked for ESUG sponsorship recently? Best regards Janko -- Janko Mivšek Aida/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si

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

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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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Dear Reza, Reza Razavi wrote:

At 10:28 06/07/2012, Maarten MOSTERT wrote:

...

Critisizing is easy

Maarten,

The valuable contributions of Steve and others to the issue raised by Damien on behalf of the ESUG board are not intended to criticize anybody; this is at least least my understanding, and I don't think I'm mistaken. They (simply) try to explain the rules that govern such situations.

I agree that the contributions by Steve Kelly have been courteous, well-phrased, and a very legitimate offer of his opinion on the question sensibly raised by Damien. Steve himself has stressed that the ESUG board, not the membership, make decisions. The board, having asked for input, can consider what has been offered, and in due course decide whether they agree or disagree with any particular point. If disagreement has to be expressed, SteveK's style offers an example of how to express contrary ideas with courtesy.

For example, *to "talk to the INRIA lawyers about this" appears really essential, specifically given the role of this institution in both Pharo Consortium and also as the employer of several Pharo contributors, who also play major roles in ESUG*.

On this particular point, my instinct is not to involve lawyers more than needed, lest mares' nests be created. Stephane knows INRIA, ESUG and what legal discussions have already taken place. If he feels no more is needed, my instinct would agree. (I don't _know_ anything of course - the opinion is offered FWIW.) Yours faithfully Niall Ross

This looks like technical and complex enough situation to refer to experts in that area (i.e. lawyers); isn't it?

Best, Reza (Smalltalker and ESUG member since 1992) http://linkedin.com/in/razavi http://aas-platform.com <http://aas-platform.com/> http://rezarazavi.com <http://rezarazavi.com/> ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com ______________________________________________________________________

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That has been addressed long time ago (and is no matter of ESUG, but Pharo). Pharo is MIT. All the code we push into Pharo has to be MIT. The fact that INRIA pays my salary doesn't change that at all. Esteban On Jul 6, 2012, at 5:58 PM, Reza Razavi wrote:

At 15:39 06/07/2012, Niall Ross wrote:

...

what legal discussions have already taken place.

Dear Niall,

Thanks for your insightful comments!

Issues related to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are in general complex. They are raised when institutions invest in developing a piece of software, and depend on their business model. They typically determine who is legally authorized to make decisions, e.g. about licensing policy, and exploit the product(s), etc. In these specific case, it would also involve deciding whether or not to accept such donations.

If these questions have been discussed and the Community is aware of the underlying policies (I personally didn't followed these topics in details), that's fine. Otherwise, IMHO, it would make sense to address them as soon as possible in a systematic way.

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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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Personally, I'd like to thank the ESUG board in general, and Stef in particular, for all of the work they put into promoting Smalltalk. I have a pretty good idea as to how thankless a job that often is, and I for one appreciate all of their efforts! On Jul 5, 2012, at 2:31 PM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:

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

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James Robertson http://www.jarober.com jarober@gmail.com

On 2012-Jul-6, at 10:48 , Thorsten Seitz wrote:

Am 06.07.2012 um 16:36 schrieb James Robertson:

...

Personally, I'd like to thank the ESUG board in general, and Stef in particular, for all of the work they put into promoting Smalltalk. I have a pretty good idea as to how thankless a job that often is, and I for one appreciate all of their efforts!

Well said and I wholeheartedly agree!

Me too! ../Dave

Dear Dave, Thorsten, James et al, Dave Mason wrote:

On 2012-Jul-6, at 10:48 , Thorsten Seitz wrote:

...

Am 06.07.2012 um 16:36 schrieb James Robertson:

...

Personally, I'd like to thank the ESUG board in general, and Stef in particular, for all of the work they put into promoting Smalltalk. I have a pretty good idea as to how thankless a job that often is, and I for one appreciate all of their efforts!

Well said and I wholeheartedly agree!

Me too!

../Dave

and me. Indeed, in my earlier email, where I wrote

Especially at this time of year, there is both hope and some stress for those who run ESUG.

I trust everyone appreciated that the word 'some' was an example of English understatement. :-) As James said, it is a job that, if not literally 'thankless' - this subthread offers some thanks - is certainly little thanked relative to the work involved. Several people said nice things to me about last year's conference, but Stef and the others get this every year; I only had to do it once. Yours faithfully Niall Ross ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com ______________________________________________________________________

Hi, the smalltalk community is very small, so there is always going to be a kind of "conflict of interest". ESUG has sponsored many projects in different flavors of smalltalk and for sure, in many of them, there was one or more members of the ESUG board and other boards or groups or companies and nobody cared... I don't think that this idea has a "hidden agenda", I mean, the money it is not going to go to any ESUG board member's pocket but to somebody that will help to have a better smalltalk. Also, for me the election process of the ESUG board was always clear, open and I could saw it with my own eyes, so I have no doubts there either. ESUG has helped a lot of people and organizations related with smalltalk, it would be a pitty not to do it with pharo. I see this action as a positive one, so I think it is a good idea. In any case, companies that give money to esug that could see this as a "threat" should be the one to complain but I have not seen any doing it so far. The Smalltalk comminiy is small (ironically), let's help each other! Let's be positive! Hernan Ps: thank you for being open and ask something you are not obligated to, that shows transparency, and please do not confuse clear proceses with lack of transparency, when you DO there is always somerhing you are going to DO wrong, but at least you did! On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Steven Kelly <stevek@metacase.com> wrote:

Thanks for asking us. Personally I think it would be better for ESUG not

to contribute financially to Pharo. In general, user groups don't contribute financially to the organizations which make the products in question - indeed, often it works the other way around, with the product organizations sponsoring user groups or their activities.

I'm sure everyone would agree that any board members with a clear

connection to Pharo should declare a conflict of interest on this issue, and refrain from discussion or voting. That's standard practice, and for good reason. Even when a board is completely open, honest, and declares even potentially perceived conflicts of interest, those outside the board will always be outsiders, and liable to feel not everything is being revealed - that's just human nature.

It's great that the board is asking for our opinions, and I'm sure

they'll make the best decision for ESUG. And whatever happens, I'm sure Pharo and other Smalltalks know ESUG is very much on their side.

All the best, Steve PS useful advice on conflicts of interest for non-profits: http://www.boardsource.org/Knowledge.asp?ID=3.389 -- Steven Kelly, CTO, MetaCase

...

-----Original Message----- From: esug-list-bounces@lists.esug.org [mailto:esug-list- bounces@lists.esug.org] On Behalf Of Damien Cassou Sent: 4. heinäkuuta 2012 18:02 To: ESUG Mailing list Subject: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

The ESUG board currently considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium (see http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2012- June/066881.html). We believe that Pharo is important for the Smalltalk ecosystem.

Note that ESUG is promoting Smalltalk in general and this action is in the same vein as previous actions such as sponsoring local Smalltalk groups (FAST, Catalan, Russian, ...), Smalltalk dialects (SqueakFoundation, etoy), development projects (Mars, DBXTalk, DrGeo II, SqueakVirtual Machine cleaning), and books (Seaside and GNU book).

Before deciding, the board would like to gather feedback from the community. We want to be clear that there is a strict distinction between ESUG and Pharo (both consortium and association) even if some people are involved in both.

What do you think?

-- Damien Cassou http://damiencassou.seasidehosting.st

"Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them." James Iry

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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

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BTW since people are reading this nice thread I would like to take the advantage to get the following message: ESUG would like to get some lectures done in Afrika. If you happened to know good university that would be interested we would like to sponsor a lecture. Stef