Squeak Oversight Board Election 2026

Hi All,

    I would like to stand for re-election to the Squeak Oversight Board in 2026 on a very narrow platform. If you do not agree with this platform please do not vote for me or put me last in your list. I ask that if you do support my platform you put me first on your list. My platform is as follows:

The lack of funding for our community restricts the activities of the community to those achievable by members of the community. In particular this means we are unable to fund general marketing activities that raise awareness of Squeak and its capabilities, and more generally of Smalltalk and its capabilities, in several useful contexts. For example now that we have lost Mark Guzdial’s involvement we have no marketing of Squeak as a teaching language at university or high-school level. In the long term this lack leads to the eventual extinction of our community. The kinds of marketing we could fund include blogging, video production on specific topics such as frameworks, applications, solutions of general interest to the programming universe.

The lack of organization for monetization of programming effort, for example being able to field programming teams to implement frameworks, applications, and solutions, that industrial customers would pay for, means we fail to meet those needs, fail to demonstrate that Squeak can meet those needs.I have been employed by such customers for some time so I know they exist. Selfishly I would like to continue to do so; unselfishly I would like to do so as part of a team, both to broaden the skill base and strengthen the effort we as a community can provide.

What monetization means in reality is as yet not well-defined, beyond requirements. But viewing the Squeak community as a commons gives us strong clues. Human communities have solved “the tragedy of the commons” (if you haven’t heard the term then google it) for millennia. Elinor Bostrom won the Nobel prize for economics for analyzing several such communities and deriving “Eight principles for the management of a commons” (if you haven’t heard the term then google it).

My platform is therefore to generate a productive discussion within our community leading to the design of a generally agreeable monetization framework that aims at the above stated goals and embodies Bostrom’s eight principles. If this resonates with you then I am your candidate.

If it does not resonate with you I accept your silence, but would find your articulation of why you find it repugnant, threatening, or otherwise repulsive, in an email message to this list much more helpful than angry silence.

Best, Eliot, Thursday May 7th, ‘26
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