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smalltalk

What's Going on With Xtreams-Grid?

August 20, 2011 19:32:34.374

I just spoke to Arden Thomas, the Product Manager for Cincom Smalltalk. here's what he told me: Xtreams continues to be open source software. The grid implementation, on the other hand, is not open source - it's "take two" on what Cincom has been calling Polycephaly.

There was apparently concern over the naming - using the Xtreams name would have developers presume that the software - like Xtreams itself - was open source.

That's the good news, as it were - the entire kerfuffle (mentioned here) is a misunderstanding. The bad news? The utter lack of communication from Cincom. Yes, Arden graciously spoke to me about this, but I'm sure that he doesn't want to make personal phone calls to every single person with a question about this sort of thing. When questions like this arise, there really ought to be some kind of statement, even if it only amounts to "we regret the confusion, we'll have more details out shortly". The vast well of silence approach leads to questions, and worse - leads to people coming up with their own answers.

Ultimately, this kind of thing is a management failure. I'm happy that Arden was willing to reach out to me on this, and he deserves kudos for that.

Update: Here's the kind of community behavior that they are creating - I saw this at the end of a VWNC mailing list post, where someone was trying to explain how to solve a problem:

I'm not sure what the rules are on posting the code, and so I'm just providing the references.

When people are thinking that way, it's not a good thing.

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posted by James Robertson

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