On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 4:47 AM, Marcus Denker <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> Yes, using the old version of Pharo that you used when
> you implemented them.
> Like MacOS 9 programs run on MacOS 9.
>
> If you want to run your MacOS 9 Program on MacOSX, there
> is for a time an emulator, and for a time some source compatibility.
> But in the end, the only option is to port.
>
> There is no magic.
>
> You can select between
>
> -> Inventing the Future
> -> Be compatible to the Past at any cost.
>
> If what you have in the Past is valuable, selecting the second option
> makes sense. (IBM, Microsoft). If not, then it's idiotic.
>
> We will improve this a bit in the future, but this is research, so no
> promises.
So, we mission-critical users should probably disregard the mission
statement on the web page misleading:
"... By providing a stable and small core system, excellent dev
tools, and maintained releases, Pharo is an attractive platform
to build and deploy mission critical Smalltalk applications."
I'm sorry that I don't have time right at the moment to address this
properly, because I do respect the efforts of the Pharo developers, I
fully appreciate the challenges of a FOSS project, and I like some of
the results I've seen (very nice developer UI features, movement
towards announcements, the collaboractive book, and so on). I am
interested, only, in offering constructive criticism, so please don't
mistake my tone.
The short version of my concern is this: As a "mission critical" user
of Pharo, I will trade backward compatibility for improvement, if, as
you say, you provide "maintained releases". Those last two words are
the most important and incur a great burden of responsibility. I
don't think the Pharo project has fully considered the responsibility
of using those two words.
The short version of my recommendation is this: Have a look at the
FreeBSD release engineering process. They break backward
compatibility all the time, but, if I have a mission critical
application running on 4.5, I will still get essential bug and
security fixes for a few years, and I can run trials with 8.0 on my
other servers. Moreover, they have an updated documented roadmap that
I can look at to determine that I should continue to run 4.5 on that
one box while testing 8.0 on the others.
Best regards,
Mike
