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

[Sven <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 12:00:24PM +0200, Hendrik Tews wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Sven writes:
>    Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 17:57:07 +0200
>    Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Whither the Caml Consortium?
>    
>    i was contemplating creating a association in france to group
>    several users which would, once we are able to sum up the 2000
>    euros, become one member of the consortium.
> 
> Are you sure that your application to become a member of the
> consortium will be successful? As I understand it, INRIA decides
> on the applications.

Yes, i have contacted them already, and they approve on it, as michel surely
did say in a message below. It seems they are only administratives reasons for
why they cannot start such a thing themselves.

> My impression from the current thread (and from previous ones on
> the consortium) is that there is some confusion about the real
> purpose of the consortium (i.e., INRIAS position) and what
> members of this list think about the consortium. Some members on
> the mailing list (myself included) would like to join the
> consortium to influence the development of Ocaml. But for reasons
> that I have not been able to grasp, INRIA seems to be not really
> keen on seeing us ``small'' ocaml users in the consortium.

It seems to be for administrative reasons, the processing fee and so on. The
association is the best way to solve this problem, and when i proposed it
here some time ago, michel told me it was a good idea, nobody else reacted
though, and it will not work if people are not interrested. Like said, i will
try to send a more formal mail about it this weekend, and i need at least 7
founding members to launch the thing. Right now, i have 3 offers, myself,
michel mauny, altough he cannot take a leading role from what i understood,
and georges mariano. That is not enough.

> I would therefore suggest that we first discuss what we want to
> achieve by becomming a consortium member. Then we can see how to
> make our interests compatible with INRIAS constraints. If we
> reach some consensus here, it is probably easier to get the
> programming work done ourselfs, instead of convincing the
> consortium to pay somebody to do the job.

mmm, ok yes, this is another way of putting it, but it may not be compatible
with the consortium or association thingy.

> I, for instance, would like some improvements for ocaml for which
> it is absolutely impossible to get scientific reward, and which
> are therefore very difficult to get implemented by the ocaml
> developers. Take for instance better error diagnostics from the
> ocaml parser or Thierry Bravier's ocamlyacc patch
> (http://caml.inria.fr/archives/199712/msg00020.html). One way to
> get these things done is to join the consortium ...

Yes and no, it may be possible to get them done already if you manage to
convince the ocaml team that these stuff are needed and well proven and good
code. The same will also be true once we join the consortium, since you will
not be the only member there. Sure, you could always fork the code, but this
would not be a good thing.

> Another possibility is to write a patch (like Thierry did) and
> get it into the ocaml distribution (what Thierry not achieved).

Do you know what were the reasons for it ?

> However, it is not clear (at least to me) what requirements have
> to be met, to get such an improvement accepted by the ocaml
> developers.
> I think, what is needed is that the ocaml developers give some
> guidelines on how we ``small'' ocaml users should proceed, if we
> want to contribute something to the ocaml kernel. Then there
> would be no need for us to join the consortium.

I will let them respond themselves here, ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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