[IAEP] P.S. Re: etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

> Continuing with the biological analogy, the folks who want to be able to
> bootstrap a Squeak/etoys image (starting from 'scratch' without such an image)
> want literally to be able to make ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny -- not
> necessarily every time an image starts, possibly not necessarily every time
> Squeak is 'built' -- but at least with similar frequency and the ease of
> bootstrapping gcc using a different C compiler. (Like using a turtle egg to
> hatch a dinosaur ;-)

  I believe that the question is not whether a system can do it or
not.  Smalltalk-72 did it, GNU Smalltalk and Scheme 48 do it, and our
fonc project is right now taking similar approach.  So bootstrapping
is possible.  However, given the current status, the trade off between
having to change the existing system fundamental way and its value is
the question.

-- Yoshiki