From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id QAA17312 for caml-red; Fri, 2 Feb 2001 16:20:04 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA13980 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 11:33:00 +0100 (MET) Received: from quincy.inria.fr (quincy.inria.fr [128.93.8.52]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f11AWxn00652 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 11:32:59 +0100 (MET) Received: (from mauny@localhost) by quincy.inria.fr (8.10.1/8.10.1) id f11GYMd24446 for caml-list@inria.fr; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 11:34:22 -0500 Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 11:34:22 -0500 From: Michel Mauny To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: Consortium Caml Message-ID: <20010201113422.A24241@quincy.inria.fr> Reply-To: Michel.Mauny@inria.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr [ This is a slightly edited version of my reply to David McClain, that I forgot to Cc: to the list. ] David, David McClain wrote/écrivait (Jan 31 2001, 09:50AM -0700): > I have read the consortium agreement, and I fail to understand the > difference between options A and B, aside from expense. You state at several > places in the agreement that choice of support option does not imply any > specific rights or advantages. So why would anyone care to follow option B? I understand your concern, and I have to admit that this isn't simple to explain. Experience will tell us wether those two options should be merged into one (saying "at least 2 KEuros") or not. You are right in saying that there is no formal difference between options A and B. Actually, what has to be understood is that being a member of the Caml Consortium has two meanings: - being a member of a (identified) users group (with meetings, and where members may compare their needs). A kind of "first circle" around implementors, providing a minimal financial support to INRIA in order to have a sexier web site, to organize meetings, and (maybe, depending on the number of members) to have some more developments done. This corresponds to option A. If there are enough "A members", then that's fine: we should be able to have all this done. For instance, if we have 25 or 30 A-members, we could hire an engineer for doing the extra work. (Implementors will continue to implement.) - being a real sponsor of Caml (or OCaml), providing a more significant amount of money. Those members are typically those really having a long-term plan using OCaml (I know of one company in this situation). In this case, 5 or 6 such members would be enough to hire an engineer. When I started thinking and doing the paperwork about this Consortium, I didn't know wether the right idea was to ask for a minimal amount of money, hoping for many members to join, or alternatively to ask for a significant amount of money, expecting then only a few "important" members. Since I didn't want the whole thing to fail because of a poor analysis of the situation, and thinking that those two kinds of potential members did exist, I decided to set up those two options in the Consortium Agreement. Those two options should therefore be read as "these are the two kinds of support that we need", and the members should choose one of options A or B, depending on how much they need OCaml, how much they are ready to put on the table to support it. Options A and B indicate two "reasonable" levels of support. I think that after, say, one year, if the Consortium is successful, we could decide all together to go back to a simpler solution. At that time, we (the Consortium) should be able to understand how much we need each year to have good work to be done. Options A and B are therefore simple indications: if we are enough people, A's will be sufficient to start, otherwise, we need a few B's to start. After some time, we'll decide all together how much we need. Cheers, -- Michel