The Weekly Squeak

Category: Board

  • Squeak Oversight Board for 2025

    Squeak Oversight Board for 2025

    Congratulations to the newly elected members of the Squeak Oversight Board for 2025. We are grateful to everyone who ran and offered their time in support of the community – it truly takes everyone’s contributions to help Squeak succeed. A big thank you as well to Patrick for once again running the election and handling the process so smoothly. Whether new to the board or continuing your service, we appreciate your dedication and look forward to a productive and exciting year ahead.

    Below is Patrick’s official announcement to the Squeak Developers mailing list:

    Hi Everyone,

    I’m very pleased to announce your Squeak Oversight Board for 2025.

    They are:

    1. Marcel Taeumel
    2. Vanessa Freudenberg
    3. Eliot Miranda
    4. Tim Rowledge
    5. David T. Lewis
    6. Christoph Thiede
    7. Rachel Crowther

    I would like to thank everyone that served on the board in the term of 2024. Thank you for your contributions to Squeak!

    Thank you to everyone that ran this year and for everyone that voted. We are looking forward to a great year in the Squeak community!

    Please help me to welcome and congratulate your new board for 2025!!

    All the best,
    Patrick

    Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

  • Squeak Oversight Board 2025 – Call For Candidates

    Squeak Oversight Board 2025 – Call For Candidates

    The following announcement was made by Patrick Rein on the Squeak Developers mailing list (here). Please announce your candidacy on Squeak-dev or vote for a candidate. Now is the time to be involved!

    Hi All,

    It’s that time again to raise your voices and elect your board!
    Can you believe it’s been over a year and one day already?

    It’s a time for you to stand up, help your community and volunteer to serve!

    Squeak wants you!

    Every year we elect the SOB (Squeak Oversight Board) consisting of seven members from our community. The current board members are:

    1. Marcel Taeumel
    2. Vanessa Freudenberg
    3. Tim Rowledge
    4. David T. Lewis
    5. Craig Latta
    6. Christoph Thiede
    7. Bruce O’Neel

    For more info on the board please see:
    https://squeak.org/board/#the-mission

    Everything about the election, including schedule and more, is tracked here:
    https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6667

    Now until Friday 21st of March 2025, 18.00 UTC: Nominations of SOB members and campaigning!

    Candidates should nominate themselves and start their campaign on the squeak-dev mailing list. Or if you nominate someone else, make sure that person really wants to run. 🙂 I will not put anyone on the candidate list until that person makes it known on squeak-dev that he/she intends to run.

    During this period, the candidates should ideally present themselves on squeak-dev, unless they have already done so, and the community can ask questions.

    I encourage you to reach out to potential candidates, people that are active in the community and represent your views, and ask them to run.

    Some people will not run without encouragement. Also, I know that some people wait to the last minute to run for the board to see if others will run but please consider getting this year off to a faster start and just jump right in!

    The schedule and process are as follows:

    • Now until Friday 21st of March 2025, 18.00 UTC: Nominations of SOB members and campaigning!
    • Friday 21st of March 2025, 18.00 UTC: Candidate list is finalized.
    • Friday 21st of March 2025, ~19.00 UTC: Online election starts.
    • Friday 4th of April 2025, 19.00 UTC: Online election ends.
    • Results will be announced immediately after the election ends.

    The voting period is two weeks long and ballots are sent out via email.

    And how do you end up on the voter list? See below. 🙂

    IMPORTANT: New voters will NOT be added once the election is started.

    You MUST try to get on the voter list before the online election starts or you will NOT be able to vote. If your email address has changed please try to make sure it is changed on the list of voters before the election starts.

    If you were invited to vote last year you are already on the voter list, no worries! If you are a new Squeaker and wish to vote you should do ONE of the following:

    • Get a “known” Squeaker to vouch for you. If a known Squeaker sends an email to voters (at) squeak.org giving me a name and email for you, then I will add you.
    • Send an email to voters (at) squeak.org yourself (and CC to
      squeak-dev if you like) with information/arguments showing me that you are indeed serious about voting and that you are indeed a Squeaker.

    When the voting period starts all voters will receive an email with instructions and a link to the voting website.

    If there are any further questions, just reply in this thread and I will closely track it – or send email to voters (at) squeak.org which points to me.

    …so let’s get on with it!

    All the best,
    Patrick

    Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-check-mark-over-black-box-8850706/

  • Voting is under way for the Squeak Oversight Board

    Voting is now under way in this year’s elections for the Squeak Oversight Board.

    After some prompting from their colleagues, the following people have thrown their hats into the ring:

    If you are one of the 460 registered members of the Squeak community you should have received an email “Poll: Squeak Oversight Board Election 2011” sent by Göran Krampe, who is running the election. If you’ve not got an email and you should have, email voters@squeak.org and Göran will see what he can do.

    Find out more at the election wiki page.

    Voting closes on 10th April at 18.00 UTC.

  • Squeak Board candidates wanted

    An Election Entertainment - Hogarth

    Göran Krampe has begun the process for this year’s elections for the Squeak Oversight Board.
    The Squeak Oversight Board (SOB) consists of seven members from our community, all of whom are elected by popular vote. The members are responsible for

    • building a legal presence – currently by working with the Software Freedom Law Center as part of their Conservancy;
    • providing the network services that support the various mailing lists and repositories that in turn make a community possible;
    • helping coordinate the various interest groups and projects being pursued by Squeakers;
    • making decisions where there is no clear community consensus.

    The current board members are:

    • Jecel Assumpcao Jr
    • Ken Causey
    • Bert Freudenberg
    • Craig Latta
    • Andreas Raab
    • Randal Schwartz
    • Igor Stasenko

    (From http://www.squeak.org/Foundation/Board)

    The schedule and process of the Election is as follows:

    Nominations

    Candidates should nominate themselves by 3rd March and start their campaign on the squeak-dev mailing list. Or if you nominate someone else, make sure that person really wants to run. Göran will not put anyone on the candidate list until that person makes it known on squeak-dev that he/she does run.

    Final candidate list

    The list will be closed on 3rd March. The candidates should ideally present themselves on squeak-dev, unless they have already done so, and the community can ask questions.

    Online election starts

    The voting period starts on 10th March 6PM (18.00 UTC) and is one week long. Ballots are sent out via email.

    Online election ends

    The voting process will end on 17th March 6PM (18.00 UTC). Results will be announced immediately when the election ends.

    Registering

    If you were invited to vote last year you are already on the voter list, no worries! If you are a new Squeaker and wish vote do ONE of the following:

    • Get a “known” Squeaker to vouch for you. If a known Squeaker sends an email to voters@squeak.org giving your name and email address then Göran will add you.
    • Send an email to voters@squeak.org yourself (and CC to squeak-dev if you like) with information/arguments showing that you are indeed serious about voting and that you are indeed a Squeaker.

    When the voting period starts all voters will receive an email with instructions and a link to the voting website.

    More information

    Everything about the election, including schedule above and more, can be tracked here:

    http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6150

  • New Development Model, two months on.

    It has been two months since the Squeak Oversight Board first put forward their “New Community Development Model”. At the time the proposal caused a lot of heated debate on the squeak-dev mailing list, with concerns being expressed that similar efforts in the past had had little lasting impact, and had caused great frustration for those pushing those earlier efforts.

    The motives of the Board were to “get rid of as many hurdles as possible in the contribution process [and]  to enable the community at large to improve Squeak, the core of the system and its supporting libraries”.

    So, two months down the line, how’s it doing?

    If sheer volume is any criterion, it looks like a great success with over 500 packages uploaded as patches to 3.10.2 and over 40,000 downloads from the trunk (see bottom of the linked page for up to date statistics).

    The results of all this activity are available to use and test in the daily updated image published at http://ftp.squeak.org/trunk/ (needs a recent VM). If you want to contribute, you can add new patches at http://source.squeak.org/inbox/, or ask one of the current developers for access to the developers repository at http://source.squeak.org/trunk.

    If you just want to get an idea of what’s going on, check out the commit logs that are getting posted to the squeak-dev mailing list, and to the #squeak irc channel on freenode.

  • SOB lays an egg – what will emerge?

    phoenix

    Those of you who read the squeak-dev mailing list will know that the list is currently going through the annual frenzy of discussion about the nature and direction of Squeak, including much to-and-fro over such topics as: the original vision of the founders of Squeak; the tangled relationship between Etoys and the rest of the Squeak environment and community; the reasons behind the Pharo project and how much its goals really differ from those of Squeak; whether children should be locked in the nursery or allowed to roam freely into every room of the house; and much more. If you have time (and some light body armour), it’s well worth reading through the hundreds of emails that have been written which explore and interpret much of the history and philosophy of Squeak.

    This discussion has motivated the Squeak Oversight Board to look at one topic that caused much debate: how to manage the development of Squeak. Driven by a concern that there are many hurdles that discourage wide-spread participation in the contribution process, the Board have put forward a new community development model that they hope will “enable the community at large to improve Squeak, the core of the system and its supporting libraries”.

    Based on processes that have been shown to work in commercial settings, the Board’s model includes the use of Monticello as the primary source code management system, free access for the developers to the main repositories (trunk, tests, and inbox) and an incremental update process for both developers and users of Squeak.

    Obviously, such a change has sparked off its own debate, and important questions are being hammered out on the squeak dev mailing list. If you care about the health of the Squeak environment, its future direction, and the future support for your own favourite applications, this is a key moment for you to understand and contribute to the discussion which is continuing on the squeak-dev mailing list (see archives), on irc, and on the Board’s blog.

  • The Squeak Oversight Board is now blogging

    As a result of ongoing discussions with the Software Freedom Conservancy, the Squeak Leadership team have now adopted the formal name of the “Squeak Oversight Board”. The members of the new team have made clear and open communications one of their priorities, and to that end, have started up a new blog at board.squeak.org, where they will be publishing agendas and minutes of their monthly meetings.

    In keeping with their mission statement of “Communicating with the Squeak and greater Dynamic Languages Community”, the board will also be using the blog to encourage discussion about the direction and priorities of the Squeak community.

    And yes, the board members are fully aware of the double meaning of “oversight”.