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 NAA04340 for caml-red; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 13:56:58 +0100 (MET) Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id BAA14477 for ; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 01:32:03 +0100 (MET) Received: from miss.wu-wien.ac.at (miss.wu-wien.ac.at [137.208.107.17]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f1C0W2L00140; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 01:32:02 +0100 (MET) Received: (from mottl@localhost) by miss.wu-wien.ac.at (8.9.0/8.9.0) id BAA13364; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 01:32:01 +0100 (MET) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 01:32:01 +0100 From: Markus Mottl To: Daniel de Rauglaudre Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: R: Consortium Caml Message-ID: <20010212013201.A8491@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> References: <000201c090f4$0f5013a0$18ab6ed4@alex> <20010208014519.A13836@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> <20010209154550.7ba53a91.fleutotf@esiee.fr> <20010209172223.A28842@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> <20010210205617.G16265@verdot.inria.fr> <20010211130554.A16614@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> <20010211154936.C32434@verdot.inria.fr> <20010211193649.A6572@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> <20010211202300.L5787@verdot.inria.fr> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20010211202300.L5787@verdot.inria.fr>; from daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr on Sun, Feb 11, 2001 at 20:23:00 +0100 Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr Hi, On Sun, 11 Feb 2001, Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote: > Ok. I see your long long message. You seem to know very well how the > market work. (this is not ironic, just a constatation.) My opinion may be biased by my (futile) studies of economics... ;) > What do you propose? A bigger fee? Other thing than a Consortium? Certainly not a bigger (fixed!) fee, but, of course, the costs of maintaining the organisation must come in again (which should be fairly neglectable). "Planned" prices (fees) almost always have a devastating effect as historical experiments from several centuries show. Additionally, people always behave more reasonably if their own money is at stake, e.g. bad decisions have *immediate* consequences on the price and therefore their wealth. If you have already paid the fee (sunk costs), you will probably not think so thoroughly before giving your vote. One thing I was a bit surprised about is that there was obviously no previous public effort on the side of INRIA to conduct a survey in this matter. Why don't you just present various business models on a web page and ask people on the list (or elsewhere) to answer questions like "How much would you donate/invest if the model looks like this..." or "How much do you think will *others* invest (in average) if ...". If I am not mistaken, some of you teach at universities: walking around the corner to some colleague teaching economics or law might also help. Even if they cannot tell you an immediate solution, they might give you valuable hints on what questions would be important to ask in a survey. Maybe they are even so friendly and "donate" a student seminar group that does this survey for you... ;) > Think more about it before deciding something else? Yes! "Thinking" is probably the most important thing right now! It seems to me that the current proposal was chosen too quickly. I'd really suggest doing some "market research" before becoming too focused on a specific model. Maybe I am all wrong and your model works out much better than mine or what other people have proposed so far. But we should better check in advance... If you want to know my personal willingness to aid with funding: I would surely not "donate" more than 500 Euro (rather less on a long term unless I get a better paid job) but "invest" maybe around 2000 Euro or a bit more depending on the price ("invest" meaning that I can trade my share). In case I unexpectedly get rich enough to bear a higher risk, I might want to invest more than this ;) You could even persuade other investors who have no direct interest in OCaml (other than "getting rich fast"... ;)! - Think of it: the amount of money you could raise with a single offer on the "primary market" could be the equivalent of several (say, 5?) years of membership fees (if others have similar donate/invest ratios)! You should certainly also consider the "interest" you gain from this investment (having a lot of money now is always better than receiving it over a longer (unpredictable) period of time). Here is a potential model (if you think it is nonsense, forget it...): * You create e.g. 1,000,000 (virtual) shares of voting rights and declare the percentage that INRIA will keep for itself (be careful to set a reasonable percentage, otherwise you won't get much money!). * People can sign up on a web page (authenticity must be checked somehow, of course!) and start bidding "virtually" for the shares for some fixed amount of time (say, two weeks) during the IPO. The automatic trading system always displays the current price at which the highest transaction volume (that's your money!) would be reached. The efficiency of markets should automagically let the price converge towards the optimum initial price! (Well, kind of: unless people's money is really at stake, you cannot expect that this price is what you will get). You might want to impose further restrictions like e.g. that independent bidders can only buy some maximum number of shares, etc. * When the IPO-time is over, the initial price is fixed and you ask people to accept their last offer (this is probably legally less tricky than forcing them to accept it right from the start, which would otherwise lead to more efficient initial bidding). Maybe you could demand an initial deposit (100 Euro?) to ward off stupid gamblers who participate only for the fun of it. * People buy your shares with real money. Hopefully all of them accept their own last offer... * Shares from offers that are not accepted become property of INRIA. This last requirement has the funny consequence that people who are really interested in buying shares will consider this last risk of losing votes to the already powerful INRIA: They will bid at slightly lower prices depending on their estimation on how many people might drop out in the "real money" round. This again makes it more likely that other people really accept their last offer, because it is cheaper (lower price), which should again lead to an optimum tradeoff. (Markets can do such fancy things!) There is hardly any possibility for INRIA to influence this process to their advantage: manipulating the price up or down will most likely lead to less income for them... * Now the tricky bit: it must be possible for people to continuously trade using *real* money! You might need the service of some competent E-commerce company ("liquidmarkets" sounds good ;) This won't imply continuous costs for you, because it is naturally the trading partners who pay transaction costs. * If it seems profitable to you (and the other stakeholders), you might want to issue further shares at a later point of time, i.e. you get more "real money" for investment (= for improving OCaml). I have not the slightest idea about possible legal obstacles in this process (INRIA is a public organisation). But since it is not INRIA that is traded but voting rights that concern a specific service, it does not seem less legal to me than your Consortium-proposal, which also gives some influence to non-public entities. Any comments? Regards, Markus Mottl -- Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl