Squeak Futures: A Virtual Interview with Dan Ingalls

Squeak, for those who don't know it, is the well-known open source dialect of 
Smalltalk which is part of an effort led by some of the original Xerox 
Smalltalkers, including Alan Kay. Although it's an open source effort, it's 
been coordinated by a group at Disney often referred to as "Squeak Central". 
Recently, this group left Disney and has now struck out on its own, 
incorporating as the non-profit "Viewpoints Research Institute". This raises a 
lot of interesting possibilities, but also worries people who are concerned 
about its future. To find out more about what's going on, Bijan Parsia 
conducted a "virtual interview" with Squeak Central's Dan Ingalls, sending in 
some questions by e-mail. Here's the result.

Bijan: Squeak Central started at Apple, then was at Disney for about 5 years, 
and now is starting a "long contemplated ... more independent existence". What 
prompted this change and how do you expect independence will affect the Squeak 
team?

Dan: At Disney, there was little a priori appreciation for our long term goals. 
Each change in management imposed a large burden on Alan to educate the new 
regime (we were hired as a group when Bran Ferren was head of Imagineering).

Bijan: Looking back at the Disney Era, is Squeak (and/or your Squeak based 
research) where you thought or hoped it'd be? Any missed opportunities or 
unexpected windfalls?

Dan: We wanted to be farther along in accessibility by normal users. We 
probably have spent more time than we should have on infrastructure details. 
But then, there's something to show for that, too.

The energy and contributions from the Squeak Community has been a real 
windfall. It has helped us greatly to span multiple platforms, and it has 
brought us many wonderful people and good ideas.

Bijan: What exactly is the "Viewpoints Research Institute"? Is it purely a 
research center funded by grants, or will it have a commercial wing or form 
partnerships with commercially focused organizations?

Dan: There is inevitably a dichotomy to our work: work on the vehicle (Squeak 
and higher subsystems), and work on the content (educational material, 
curriculum). It has not yet been decided how the structure of VI will reflect 
these two facets of our work.

Bijan: Squeak Central has always had strong, if informal, ties to outside 
organizations using Squeak for research (e.g., GATech and the MathMorphs 
folks). What role, if any, does this new institute intend to have in fostering, 
facilitating, or supporting such efforts?

Dan: I think you will see, if anything, an increase in our level of outside 
collaboration, especially in the academic sphere (the two examples you gave are 
academic organizations).

Bijan: Both the Squeak Foundation and the Squeak World Tour/Stable Squeak 
effort are community based attempts to provide alternative, independent 
institutions for supporting and evolving Squeak (say, in contrast with 
university or company based efforts). What would the VI like to see these 
organizations doing?

Dan: Well, distribution, documentation, and support of the base image to begin 
with. While we are a fairly responsible group, these are not real strengths of 
Squeak Central. We would love to hand over some of this important work to 
others with greater motivation and skill in these areas. Then they could take 
over the evaluation, testing and integration of fixes and enhancements from the 
community. Finally, there are a number of larger projects like the current 
modularity work that I would like to see flow out of the rich Squeak pool of 
talent and experience.

Bijan: What is Squeakland.com and how does it fit in with this vision?

Dan: SqueakLand is devoted to the educational component of our work. It is 
intended to be a web site for bringing science and mathematics to life. You can 
expect its discussions and content to be at a considerably higher level, and 
accessible to a much broader audience, than Squeak.org.

Bijan: Squeak is still recognizably a Smalltalk system, indeed, a 
Smalltalk-80/Smalltalk-80 derivative. Is there a point (particularly in the 
near future) where Squeak won't be such?

Dan: We won't start a revolution until we see a better world. But as soon as we 
do, we'll move in that direction.

Bijan: Where does VI see itself in relation to the general Smalltalk community, 
e.g., the implementation vendors, Camp Smalltalk, etc.?

Dan: It's hard to generalize, but the best generalization that occurs to me is 
collaboration. Whether due to personalities or particular projects, we continue 
to work with others outside our group on graphics, music, development support, 
and just about everything else.

Bijan: Does VI intend to research "Squeak hardware", i.e., extending the Squeak 
philosophy into hardware...open, transparent, habitable, etc.?

Dan: While most of us are reasonably savvy about hardware, it's not a real 
strength of Squeak Central. The outside vendors continue to do a great job of 
MBFC (more better faster cheaper), and we try to keep Squeak in a position to 
get full leverage from these advances. That said, I would like to think that, 
in our new more open existence, some opportunities will arise for collaboration 
with hardware wizards to do something really cool with Squeak in the space of 
computing for everyone.

Bijan: From the perspective of Smalltalk users who don't follow Squeak closely, 
what would you say are the most interesting and important features in Squeak 
today?

Dan:

    * A simple and powerful underlying language (Smalltalk)
    * End-user access to the language with simplified programming "tiles"
    * Full control over exciting media (music, animation, 3D, and the Internet)
    * Interactive and sharable content in the form of Squeak Projects
    * Rigorous cross-platform uniformity and open-source support
    * A complete Squeak system can run on a bare chip (plus a few pages of 
       BIOS) with no royalties to pay to anyone.

Bijan: From the same perspective, what do you think are the most interesting 
and important things we'll see in the next year or so.

Dan: I think in the next year or so we will see the impact of bringing all 
these capabilities together in a single system that can be completely 
maintained and specialized by one or two sharp people.

This system gives any creative group enormous control over their software 
destiny, completely independent of mainstream computing. We plan to do great 
things with it, but we want to see other people do so as well.

Bijan: We've heard about a couple of projects at Disney using Squeak. Does this 
separation mean the end of Squeak use at Disney?

Dan: Not at all. The future of Squeak at Disney will simply depend on their 
needs, and the inclination of those who implement their future projects.