A productive meeting of the Squeak Oversight Board commenced promptly on-schedule. Randal and Juan were absent due to weather.
Resuming with the boards top-priority of the last few months, the meeting opened with a discussion of final minutiae required for Squeak’s official membership in the Software Freedom Conservancy. Since the last meeting, board members had reviewed the final-draft document borne by several iterations between Jecel and Karen at the SFC. Andreas was pleased by the clarity of the language in the document and the overall consensus of the board was that this artifact is complete and ready for official execution.
On a related topic, the board discussed its interest in understanding the compatibility of the Creative Commons license used by the majority of graphic-artists for their creations. The board acknowledged that visual-appeal can have dramatic affect on new-user perceptions and, therefore, adoption. However, given the complexity of the CC license it was decided that Jecel would consult the expertise of the SFC for advice in this matter.
Mark your calendars! The annual, 2010 ESUG conference will commence in Barcelona, Spain, this September. The board decided, particularly in light of what happened last year with respect to Squeak absence, that a presence at this year’s conference is useful. Bert, being the geographically closest board member to the conference, volunteered his intention to attend and present for Squeak at the conference. Thank you Bert!
Bert also reported that Squeakland, the organization concerned with the Etoys project, at a recent board meeting decided to also try joining the SFC, instead of incorporating on their own.
Another important channel for Squeak’s interface with the world are its supporting web-sites. Chris complained during the meeting that the “download” page of squeak.org was unnecessarily “intimidating” to new users; that some of the newer automated packaging (at least, for Windows) may have rendered this language less necessary. In response, the other board members nominated Chris to fill, what was formerly Igor’s role as board contact for web-content related issues. Thank you, Chris.
On the topic of being beginner-friendly, Bert noted that he liked the ProfStef tutorial available in Pharo. We think that, or a similar tutorial might be nice to have in Squeak, too. Chris noted that Maui might be nice for that. And it would be better if it was integrated into the HelpBrowser, as Andreas remarked. Too many scattered tools make it harder to discover “the good stuff”.
For the next meeting, the board will look to Randal regarding employing recaptcha to aid in spam management, as well as a review of to-do items from 2009.
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