Re: [Caml-list] The state of ML: multi-threaded, saved state and support platforms

[Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:44:08PM +0100, Lucas Dixon wrote:
> I was wondering who pays for the documentation to be kept up to date,
> bug fixes, and implements new features.I saw that there is an OCaml 
> Consortium: http://caml.inria.fr/consortium/index.en.html
> Is this INRIA or something else? Is this the source of funding that 
> supports OCaml? or is there INRIA backing also? Does anyone know how 
> many people are employed? I'm interested in how to support functional 
> programming environments. What level of financial support is needed?
[..]
> Are there organisations that offer OCaml support over the phone? Or
> would that be consultancy rates for academics who specialise in OCaml?
> The OCaml Consortium offers: 3000 Euros for a minimal support to Caml, 
> 10000 Euros or higher for more. But doesn't give much details - has 
> anyone ever purchased this?

Xavier Leroy gave a talk about this in the OCaml Users Meeting back in
Feb.  I don't recall the exact numbers, but yes there are resources
donated by INRIA towards updating the compiler and documentation, and
yes there are companies in the Consortium, and the number of companies
has grown year on year.

No one I know offers support over the phone, and who'd want to when
you can get better support on a mailing list?

> I meant things at the level of linking compiled code/modules. F# website 
> says it has "a cross-compiling core shared with the popular OCaml 
> language", so I presume that modules written in one can be used in the 
> other.

Only to a very limited extent.  I think that camlpdf is the only major
piece of code that is supposed to compile on both OCaml and F# - see:
http://coherentpdf.com/blog/?p=25

Anyway, you want to link everything together from multiple languages?
With OCaml the way to go would probably be either to make shared
libraries (Red Hat are, I think, supposed to be sponsoring a GSoC
project to make this easier), or to go with something like ocamljava
and use the JVM.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat