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 VAA06739 for caml-red; Sun, 4 Feb 2001 21:15:57 +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 RAA16294 for ; Sat, 3 Feb 2001 17:33:52 +0100 (MET) Received: from sanson.reyes.somos.net (freyes.static.inch.com [216.223.199.224]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f13GXmr14249; Sat, 3 Feb 2001 17:33:49 +0100 (MET) Received: from miguel ([10.0.0.20]) by sanson.reyes.somos.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id LAA63508; Sat, 3 Feb 2001 11:30:51 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from fran@reyes.somos.net) Message-Id: <200102031630.LAA63508@sanson.reyes.somos.net> From: "Francisco Reyes" To: "Joshua D. Guttman" , "Michel.Mauny@inria.fr" Cc: "caml-list@inria.fr" Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 11:33:19 -0500 Reply-To: "Francisco Reyes" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: PMMail 2000 Professional (2.10.2010) For Windows 2000 (5.0.2195;1) In-Reply-To: <20010201184433.A26243@quincy.inria.fr> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: Consortium Caml Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr On Thu, 1 Feb 2001 18:44:33 -0500, Michel Mauny wrote: >Joshua D. Guttman wrote/=E9crivait (Jan 31 2001, 03:34PM -0500): >The overall idea is to have a strong group of motivated users, willing >and working to facilitate the development of applications written in >Caml, and to extend the Caml user base. I have been looking at Caml from the sidelines for some time. In my humble opinion a possible approach may be to use something like 60% of the funds to the needs of the large contributors and the rest for documentation and general enhancements. To me documentation is extremely important. For instance the easier it is for someone to learn the more people that will be envolved in things such as programming, more documentation, etc.. It is a spiral. >In some time from now, the group of Caml users could be large enough The more resources placed into growing the user base the faster many of the other things will be possible. It takes money to fund development... unless you have enough volunteers, but "quality" volunteers may be not so easily come-by. >> I'd also ask whether the cost may be a trap. Is 2,000 euros per >> member enough to make a big difference to INRIA? > >The big difference is when we can hire someone (an engineer, not a >researcher) to do Caml development most of his/her time. In addition to membership you should have a way for people simply to contribute money. For example if you look at freebsd.org they have a way for anyone to simply give them some money. Whether it is 10 euros or a 1000 euros, these are donations which simply are a way for people to support the project without a direct influence into what happens. Another model, which I particularly like, is to have a list of planned projects. Individuals' funding can help decide the order. For instance if something is low on the list and someone gives you 2000 euros to bring that up on the list and nobody else has given anything even close, then that feature should me significantly moved up on the list. This in combination with the funding from the consortium members may be a good way to start some cash flow. >Well, we had to choose an amount for the first option, and I don't >know wether it's easier to have 100 members giving each 500 Euros or >to have 25 giving each 2 KEuros (or even less giving even more :-). Two levels of membership is probably best. Those who pay 2 Keuros can come to the bi-yearly meeting and have direct say so. Those who pay 500 Euros will have access to a forum/email/newsgroup which is for members only so their voice has some weight, just that they won't be able to come to the meetings (unless of course they pay up some more to join the meeting). >I hope my arguments can be convincing. Everyone is welcome to improve >them in such a way that we can soon have, in this list, a thread >entitled "convincing management to switch to Ocaml", with positive >answers. I have 2 projects at work on convincing management on using "alternative" technology (FreeBSD and PostgreSQL). My boss is extremely flexible, yet he has a series of concerns which need to be addressed: Who else on the company knows the technology, how easy would it be to find others who know the technology, how easy would it be for someont to learn the technology. The same applies to Caml. I found a good book, but I still find that lots of more examples are needed. It is very discouraging to newcomers to have to ask for every single thing on the list. francisco Moderator of the Corporate BSD list http://www.egroups.com/group/BSD_Corporate