From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA24034; Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:40:16 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA24014 for caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr; Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:40:16 +0200 (MET DST) 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 UAA15476 for ; Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:41:16 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from chopin.ai.univie.ac.at (chopin.ai.univie.ac.at [131.130.174.170]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f9MIfEH24671; Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:41:14 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from markus@localhost) by chopin.ai.univie.ac.at (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-21) id UAA09707; Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:41:14 +0200 Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:41:14 +0200 From: Markus Mottl To: Michel Mauny Cc: Brian Rogoff , caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Whither the Caml Consortium? Message-ID: <20011022204114.A8857@chopin.ai.univie.ac.at> References: <20011020012347.A29847@quincy.inria.fr> <20011019192854.N9735-100000@shell5.ba.best.com> <20011020172932.A5967@fichte.ai.univie.ac.at> <20011022192533.A12039@quincy.inria.fr> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20011022192533.A12039@quincy.inria.fr>; from Michel.Mauny@inria.fr on Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 19:25:33 +0200 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Michel, On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Michel Mauny wrote: > Markus Mottl wrote/=E9crivait (Oct 20 2001, 05:29PM +0200): > I wouldn't say that Dassault-Aviation is such a small company (~ 9000 > employees, as far as I know). Right, fair enough... > I don't see the point in speculating on why current members joined > the Consortium. But I do indeed, because it is important to know about the chances that more members are going to join and whether one can improve these chances. Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding: I do think that some kind of industrial (or even private) financial support is very important for the future of OCaml and that a Consortium would be a good idea. The question is only how to make the Consortium attractive to people. > 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. Most likely, because some tireless heroes managed to convince them (btw.: my congratulations for their great lobbying work!). After all, the fees are not so high that companies couldn't afford them. The problem is rather opportunity costs: why join this Consortium and not another? Big companies usually have many alternative opportunities so we better make sure that they stay with us and not go elsewhere... > 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 had expected that one might misunderstand my argument here. The word "selfish" has a negative touch in most people's eyes: to me it basically means "they think they will benefit from it". This does absolutely not mean that they see a benefit in other members not having one. In fact, they surely know that the benefit of the whole OCaml-community is to some extent correlated to theirs. The question is how strong this correlation is. There is definitely a point where interest conflicts can arise, and then a donation scheme may not be able to keep members. Nobody will join any kind of interest group without having an interest in it. If INRIA were a charity, a scheme that builds on donations would be fine, but this is not the case here. Also, I don't fear that any of my ramblings will prevent anybody who is decided from joining the Consortium (I wouldn't write this much if I didn't take this issue very serious). But some change (if it were legally possible) to the current statutes of the Consortium might attract many more members. This was my primary interest in this discussion. > 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. The Consortium is definitely better than no consortium at all - no objection against it as such! If I take a look around, consortia in this field (languages, compilers) are usually formed to define industry standards. Not being able to influence the latter to their favour can be extremely costly for companies, which is a strong incentive for joining. Unfortunately, OCaml doesn't seem to be widespread enough to justify this. (At least at the moment ;) > 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. Sure! This, however, requires that the Consortium consists of a significant number of influential members. It's great for the popularity of OCaml that Dassault-Aviation has joined, and I hope that they stay! It certainly won't hurt to give them some more arguments why continuous financial support is a good idea (=3D will benefit them, too). Moral support alone will probably not be enough to make OCaml really popular... > 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. I feared that this would be a major obstacle. The private and public sectors are usually strictly separated (same here in Austria), which makes it very difficult to combine their advantages (efficiency and sustained long term investment). But maybe such an attempt would just foster their combined disadvantages and create a myopic monster of inefficiency, who knows? ;) Anyway, sometimes I really wish that my analyses are wrong, and if not in the case that concerns the OCaml-Consortium, where else? Best regards, Markus --=20 Markus Mottl markus@oefai.at Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.oefai.at/~markus ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr