Re: The Squeak Oversight Board 2026

Thank you Dave for inviting me to a SOB meeting.

I have had several tasks and issues I wanted to discuss with the board for a few years now. Before that time Jecel brought my questions to the board since 2008.
The main point I want to discuss with the SOB is preserving everything Squeak and Smalltalk in general. As we saw with the Xerox garbage dump and the Self language, some files and data are vital for the future if we want to revive software like Dan did for Smalltalk-72 and all the others. Squeak itself was born from Apple’s Smalltalk-80 files, and so on. 

Archival details.
I do not have backups of several SqueakSources and the Swiki and mailing lists since the left mailman. I missed several Pharo fork sources too. I collected a lot but I still lack a lot. For example the Squeak images that probably live on Dan and Alan’s mac’s that have objects not in images elsewhere. Material on Vanessa’s and Andreas’ and other estates. Images on all Squeakers disks. Photo’s of events and conferences. 
I started collecting everything (mainly digital) since the Byte magazine article in 1981 and have accumulated everything 40 Terabyte since. Archived but nor organized.... Besides raw files I particularly focused on keeping working software alive in original and virtual machine emulated forms. Mostly centered around PARC, Apple, Disney, VPRI, Harc/YC, CGLabs, Oopsla, Esug and many more sources like Google Scholar and focused on everyone around Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls , etc etc. I started one of the very first ISPs in Europe in 1987 and have used my influence as a pioneer to keep backups. Stuff has been disappearing on the internet, do we want to republish it on the Squeak website or leave it to Github and Youtube, among many others?

- Merik Voswinkel


> On May 24, 2026, at 01:31, [email protected] wrote:
> 
> Many thanks to Patrick for running the election, this is a big benefit to our community and much appreciated.
> 
> I also want to acknowledge Merik Voswinkel who has volunteered more than once to serve on the board but has not yet had a chance to do so. Merik, last year the board members had good intentions to invite you to join one of the board meetings to hear and discuss your perspectives. I'm afraid that we (the current members) are not as well organized as one might wish, and by the time we sorted out our various schedules we never did get around to bringing you in to one of the meetings. This year I hope to do better :-) Thanks for your continuing commitment and for offering to serve.
> 
> Dave
>

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