Re: [Caml-list] Whither the Caml Consortium?

[Michel Mauny <Michel.Mauny@inria.fr>]

Markus,

Markus Mottl wrote/écrivait (Oct 20 2001, 05:29PM +0200):

> While three small companies have stepped in

I wouldn't say that Dassault-Aviation is such a small company (~ 9000
employees, as far as I know).

> So the realistic assumption is that the current three members
> haven't joined the Consortium out of altruism and love for OCaml,
> but merely out of very specific selfish reasons, which may not
> necessarily be for the benefit of the whole OCaml-community. I am
> not accusing anybody here, it's just one possible, rational
> explanation...

I don't see the point in speculating on why current members joined the
Consortium. Instead, let them explain why they joined, in case they
want to do so. And it's no problem if they don't want to explain.

Furthermore, I'm not sure that such assumptions about the current
members and their "very specific selfish reasons which may not
necessarily be for the benefit of the whole OCaml-community" in this
mailing list, are of great help for attracting new members.

I really believe that we can have a useful and successful consortium
even with a small number of companies at the beginning. Of course, 3
are not enough, but I think we can attract a few more, and start
something that will be useful for the whole community. Not only the
developments and promotion of OCaml are of general interest for the
community, but the existence of the group itself could be a rather
strong argument when a decision of ``choosing OCaml or not'' has to be
made. Especially when the manager is the only one remaining to be
convinced.

I should probably at that point remind the list with the URL of the
membership request :-)

  http://caml.inria.fr/consortium/documents/form.shtml

and invite all of you to convince their management to join the
Consortium. We'd like to plan a first formal meeting for either
mid-december or january.

For non-European users, I understand that the membership process
(payment, in particular) can be a bit painful (contract signed by both
INRIA and the Member, then invoice sent by INRIA, and then payment by
the Member). I can try to do my best to alleviate it, but I'm afraid
the French rules applying to state-funded institutes such as ours are
rather unflexible, unfortunately.

Best regards,

-- 
Michel
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