Goals?

[Jon Sticklen <STICKLEN@RUTGERS.ARPA>]

i  feel a bit uneasy about some of the messages in this forum. 
what ARE the purposes here? if the purposes are to define a
"kernel" as per moon's suggestion (which on the surface seems
reasonable to me) then the participation in this discussion can be
drastically limited to people like danny bobrow and mark stefik (on
the LOOPS side), danny weinreb and david moon (on the FLAVORS side)
and of course others. the point is that if a core is to be constructed
that will allow the various object oriented languages to be built on
top of it, then the right people to carry on the discussion are the
IMPLEMENTORS of the various extant systems. IF on the other hand the
goal is to set out what is desired in a uniform object oriented
language for CommonLisp, then there is still a place for USERS (like
me).

so it would seem to me that the FIRST order of business is decide what
this discussion is to be about.

one recent message seemed to be suggesting that because some folks
have a lot invested in FLAVORS based software, that therefore the
resultant standard should look a lot like FLAVORS. 

if you take the time to look around a bit, you'll discover that others
have a lot invested in LOOPS based software.

but the real issue is that these concern over who has how much
invested in what should  @b<@u(NOT)> be the driving concern for
setting this standard, at least i don't think so.

if, as someone suggested, noone knows the right way to do object
oriented systems yet, then moon's suggestion takes on even greater
weight. 

	---jon---
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