Hi!
To make things clearer:
License Problem: There is a community project with many former
contributors. They all gave away their code for a idea of a free to use
smalltalk.
This now is renamed to Pharo by one of those contributors. Now some of
those contributors offer support for that platform.
If i were one of the former contributors. Who should i accuse for
license infringement? Stef as one of the renamers? No. All other
contributors? No.
I have no idea, what person i could accuse. Who ever will be accused -
Every judge will confirm, that nobody is responsable. Neither for
renaming the project, nor for having contributed code.
This is the problem for many companies, who own software patents. Free
Software ... there is nobody, they can claim for patent infringement.
Linux - who could be accused? Linus? No. Redhat? No. Novell. No. IBM?
No. In what country? What court is in charge, in what country, what
town? Anybody knows.
So the free software community gives a shit on software patents, rights
infringement. IBM is laughing at all hostile lawyers. They can prove in
front of court, that all ideas in Linux have already been there in one
of their former operating systems. Nothing new. And Linux becomes more
and more popular.
BSD, GNU, License...who really cares? Richard, yes. But not in case of
Pharo. All open source. So, theoretically seen, question of license is
important, practically not.
You want to offer commercial software pakets with NDA? Closed Source?
With RUNTIME-Licenses? Oh, yes. Very successful business models of the
past. Not for the future.
But - i can tell you, who will be suffering. Cincom. They are will be
under pressure by Pharo. You will have to scramble the image, like many
commercial Smalltalks do, to prevent disassembly.
One of the great advantages of Squeak is, you can find code for
everything in there. Even for sending SMS over Nokia mobiles. Ok, far
from being perfect. But it worked once upon a time. That code you
removed ... bad idea!
>From Pharo I expect:
- Well defined compatibility to other smalltalks. Porting seaside,
databases,... networking code from other smalltalk dialects should be
comfortable.
- A well defined and documented GUI, Tutorials, showing, why
Morphic is far superior to MVC, MVP.
- Well defined interfaces in Pharo. Ok, what's a interface in a
neural network of sending objects?
- Internationalisation. Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish,
Portuguese, French ... Where are the 'language files' for hobbyists to
begin with translation?
- Block closures, Traits.
- Who cares about a Jitter, wenn it does not run on all platforms.
Use LLVM! Times have changed! Think of china, asia as market. They have
godson processors. (MIPS), no Intel, never!!!!
- Working database interfaces for mysql, postgresql, db4o, oracle,
db2, goods, magma ... Tutorials, like that from HPI on seaside. Video
tutorials, like Dolphin has.
- Stability. (no hanging GUI when i click on the right upper button
to change window colour).
- Renaming back to Squeak or Squeak II. The name 'Squeak' is better
known, already introduced in the world. For Pharo you would have to
spend money and much efforts for advertising. Wrong idea. Why? Go on
reading.
- ONE Etoys with a nice look. Look at OLPC Etoys. Looks horrible.
Reunification with Scratch.
- Tutorials for GUI Programming for Smalltalk beginners on Squeak II
- Bringing printing of Morphic canvas, fonts, text to work.
- Bringing that mass of lost packages back again into Squeak. Build
up a system of "maintainers", like Debian has.
- Well organized 'request for help' database. Precise job
offerings. Percentage metering.
- I want to know exactly, what i could contribute. Wheres is the
roadmap,
the plan i could understand as 'newby'? Programming, hacking around in
smalltalk is not the problem, i need the idea of the ongoing
restructuring
process, the defined interfaces, e.t.c.
- Involve HPI, MIT, HP, IBM, APPLE, GOOGLE, NASA ... former
contributors, make them invest into Squeak, into the future of our
children. Squeak was and is an very important international educational
project. You can collect millions of $ for international educational
purposes for our children worldwide, but no money for a additional
commercial smalltalk.
- Bring those OLPC people to mention the name Squeak in the sense
of a great educational community project in their project.
- Learn fundraising. Collect money, much money to drive that
development process. Ever heard of a PAYPAL Button on homepages?
Affiliate sytems, Link exchange? Official Sponsorship. Patronage.
Sponsors want to know, where their money is going to, into what
projects within Squeak II.
And a BIG BANG.
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