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 OAA04888 for caml-red; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 14:03:26 +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 JAA28214 for ; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:36:30 +0100 (MET) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f1C8aT907235 for ; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:36:29 +0100 (MET) Received: (from xleroy@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id JAA22507 for caml-list@inria.fr; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:36:29 +0100 (MET) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:36:29 +0100 From: Xavier Leroy To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: R: Consortium Caml Message-ID: <20010212093629.A31460@pauillac.inria.fr> 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> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <20010210205617.G16265@verdot.inria.fr>; from daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr on Sat, Feb 10, 2001 at 08:56:17PM +0100 Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr There has been lots of discussions about the Caml consortium on this list, and some of the comments make me think that the goals of the consortium are perhaps not clear enough. So, here is my personal view on it. First, the consortium is (at least initially) targeted towards large corporations. This explains the choice of a relatively high membership fee. One of the first questions that potential industrial users of Caml ask is: "who else is using it?". What they really mean, though, is: "what other big companies use it? Does my competitors use it?". That is, they don't really care about "small" users -- even if these are numerous and talented and contribute a lot to the OCaml development. They want to hear about big, respectable companies that they already know. And if one of their competitors is already on the list, this gives even more incentive for them to join :-) Second, the membership fee is not just a donation. In particular, it can be a way to share the cost of specific developments with other consortium members. Consider the following situation. Company X wants to use Caml, and needs some tools, libraries, documentation or support that INRIA currently doesn't provide, or can't provide at all, or doesn't provide well. For instance: a CORBA binding. Without the consortium, the choices of company X are: - Do the development in-house. In general, X doesn't have the manpower or the competences to do this. And managers tend to dislike such in-house developments ("not our core business!"). - Contract with a software house to do the development. (This has happened before in the case of the CORBA binding.) But software houses charge a lot, and generally do not have the Caml competences required. - Give up on Caml. Happens quite often, I'm afraid :-) With the consortium, there is one more possibility: - Pay the membership fee and use their voice in the consortium to demand that the consortium does the development. Of course, if company X is the only consortium member asking for this development, its demand will not be considered unless company X gives enough money to allow the consortium to hire someone to do the development. Still, this can be cheaper and more effective than contracting with a software house: INRIA effectively charges for labor (through the membership fees), but donates the office space, administrative staff support, and most importantly the training of the developer thus hired. Things become a lot more interesting if several consortium members ask for the same feature. Then, the costs are not only reduced as described above, but also divided by the number of interested members. Continuing the CORBA example, I know of about three companies that would need a CORBA binding. If they team up in the consortium, and pay 10K euro each, they can get what they need. So, it's a win-win situation (please pardon my PHB speak): members get what they need at a reduced cost, and the Caml community benefits from a new development that is publically released and usable by all (which is generally not the case of in-house or contracted developments). You may ask: what guarantee does company X have that its money (the membership fee) will be used to answer its needs? How can it be sure that the money will not be spent instead on, say, buying me the Jaguar coupé that I so richly deserve? One answer is that INRIA's spendings are severely restricted by the French public service laws, which exclude among other things buying cars for researchers. (Guess I'll have to keep my 12-year old Renault, then.) The real answer is that the consortium wants its members to come back the year after. An important goal of the yearly meetings with members is to account for how their money is spent. A member that is not happy with the utilization of its money will simply "vote with its feet" and not pay the year after. Since the consortium wants to stay, and keep the developer(s) it hired as long as possible (so as to minimize training effort and improve the quality of developments), it is its interest to satisfy the needs of the members as much as possible. I really believe this can work well. The only thing is that in order to start, we need enough initial members that contribute enough membership fees to cover the cost of hiring one good developer. Let's hope that this "critical mass" will be achieved. - Xavier Leroy