2009/9/20 Schwab,Wilhelm K <[email protected]>: > Sig, > > The term "bus factor" arose from legitimate concerns to be sure, but let's > not start predicting Pharo's downfall just yet. At the rate things are > progressing, it will become a formidable system. With a sound foundation, > innovation will be possible without sweeping change to the system itself. If > at some point it falls into the wrong hands, one could always branch off from > a stable release and be happy for a very long time.
I do not agree. No matter how well , sound, formiddable the system are. There are always a chance that you miss something, and someone will find something better. The risks i outlined in previous post is not related to the quality of software, these risks are lying in social plane, rather than technical. If you need a stable, countinuously progressing system, first thing you need is a stable community with clear vision what goals are. But when community grows exponentially, and if it happens that at some point you got a weak leadership, wrong things start happening. Just because the probability of it is higher than before :) > > Who is asking for backward-compatibility? Is it the Squeak community, or > Pharo users? > Ask the same question after 5-10 years :) > Bill > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Igor > Stasenko > Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 1:44 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Status of Alien FFI > > 2009/9/20 Marcus Denker <[email protected]>: >> >> On 20.09.2009, at 13:49, Stéphane Ducasse wrote: >> >>> They probably moved while we got stuck. >> >> It's like with money: there is an "inflation" of constant progression. >> Everthing gets better slowly but constantly. >> Over 10 years, this results in quite some progress. >> >> Especially as you get the effect of "compound interest": By making >> something a little bit better, the next step of making it again a >> little bit better gets a little bit easier. >> >> As with compound interest, the effect is non-linear and completely >> against human intuition. >> >>> This is all the story behind pharo: moving again. >> >> What one needs to ask is always: How great could a system be over time >> if one would just do the next trivial, tiny, small step? And that over >> 10 years? With Squeak, this was impossible. Every small improvement >> was directly criticised as beeing "not good enough" and thus not >> worthwile for Squeak. With that attitude you go nowhere. As was proven >> in 10 years with Squeak. >> >> Of course, you should not *just* do tiny improvements. But it's like >> investing: there >> might be the chance to buy some pre-ipo stock cheap in the future. >> Does that mean >> that I put the money under the bed for no interest, or do I invest it >> for some tiny percentage e.g in a money-market account the meantime? >> With Squeak, the community decided that doing nothing was the right >> thing. >> >> Marcus >> > > (wearing a devil's advocate hat) > > I fear that Pharo, at some day could repeat the fate of Squeak. > At version 2.0, 3.0 or whatever, you will lose interest (for whatever > reason) in supporting it and > step down from leading the project, as well as other current developers. > The people who will lead it next will have a bit less authority to change > anything, and there already will be a certain 'backwards compatibility' > pressure from community. > Also, much more people will not feel so confident in new leaders comparing to > you, simply because they could not know much about them, or because they are > not founders etc etc. > In this situation, if someone will raise a hand, and say - lets throw out X, > and replace it with Y, because its better, will have a high chances to be > burned out. > > (wearing off a devil's advocate hat) > > I hope that there are a good strategy behind activities in Pharo, to not let > the progress slowdown. > And if not, then it is right time to think about it. > >> >> -- >> Marcus Denker - http://marcusdenker.de PLEIAD Lab - Computer Science >> Department (DCC) - University of Chile >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Pharo-project mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project >> > > > > -- > Best regards, > Igor Stasenko AKA sig. > > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig. _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
