R: Consortium Caml

R: Consortium Caml

[Alex Baretta]

Please excuse the inconsistent quoting scheme (MS's fault, not mine!).
I am an Ocaml enthusiast and wish to support the consortium.
Notwithstanding this, I could hardly imagine spending 2kE of my
_personal_ money on Ocaml. As I do not work for a software company
(yet) I have no sponsor which I might convince to join the consortium.
I would like to support the Consortium with a relatively small sum:
the equivalent of the price of the licence for a commercial
development environment such as MS-VisualBasic (deprecated ;-). Why
not allow individuals to join for about 50E per annum. No one says
such individuals should have as much weight as the 2kE members, but
yet they would contribute to the funding of project and to the
diffusion of the language.

Do consider this proposal.

Yours,

Alex
-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: Michel Mauny <Michel.Mauny@inria.fr>
A: Joshua D. Guttman <guttman@mitre.org>
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr <caml-list@inria.fr>
Data: venerdì 2 febbraio 2001 16.28
Oggetto: Re: Consortium Caml
...
Well, we had to choose an amount for the first option, and I don't
know wether it's easier to have 100 members giving each 500 Euros or
to have 25 giving each 2 KEuros (or even less giving even more :-). I
chose the latter, and only the experience will tell if it works this
way or not.

I hope my arguments can be convincing. Everyone is welcome to improve
them in such a way that we can soon have, in this list, a thread
entitled "convincing management to switch to Ocaml", with positive
answers.

--
Michel

Re: Consortium Caml

[Michel Mauny]

Alex Baretta wrote/écrivait (Feb 05 2001, 11:55PM +0100):

> Why not allow individuals to join for about 50E per annum. No one
> says such individuals should have as much weight as the 2kE members,
> but yet they would contribute to the funding of project and to the
> diffusion of the language.

The main problem is that membership to the Consortium generates
paperwork costing more than 50 Euros (which is approximately 50
US$). If INRIA was flexible enough in accepting donations, then it
would be pretty easy to do as you suggest. Unfortunately, for each
amount of money arriving here, there must be an invoice prepared by
INRIA (and possibly a formal contract, but I am not a specialist of
those issues).

I think that for the time being we should try to set up the Consortium
with members supporting it with amounts starting from 2 kE, as stated
in the membership agreement. We already have a few members in the
pipeline, but we clearly need more.

--
Michel

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Markus Mottl]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2001, Alex Baretta wrote:
> Why not allow individuals to join for about 50E per annum. No one
> says such individuals should have as much weight as the 2kE members,
> but yet they would contribute to the funding of project and to the
> diffusion of the language.

I also think that the minimum fee of 2kE is too high. It is clear that
there should be a minimum fee that is set reasonably high enough so that
INRIA's expenses with maintaining someone's membership are covered (+
some extra money).

Why not create a virtual stock exchange for member votes? For fun
we once tried something like this for a different purpose: students
complained about the lack of disk space at our department (is this so
much different from lack of features in the OCaml distribution?). Due
to lack of departmental funds (you know this situation, do you? ;)
we were forced to open a "disk space stock exchange":

We had an IPO (i.e. we had bought a disk from our own money), students
bought the space on the primary market and could trade it on a web page
(with limit orders).  This scheme went *surprisingly* well (Adam Smith,
look down on us! ;)

Some students immediately started speculating, which (as it is on "real"
markets) reduced the overall market risk: initial price fluctations
evened out fast. When the price was high enough again (ever increasing
numbers of OCaml-users, eh, students...), we would issue further space
on the primary market (after buying new disks).

The story eventually ended (after about three years), because
of subsequent disk crashes, which ruined the market's trust in our
competence to buy good equipment and made them invest elsewhere (well,
disappointing investors with bad management (or technical!) decisions
is always a bad idea ;)

Maybe this funny suggestion seems unreasonable to you, but one shouldn't
forget that "real" stock worth trillions of dollars is traded this
way each day and it seems to work well in general. This would be a
true incentive for the OCaml-community to liquefy some money, because
it wouldn't just be a "donation" but an "investment". It would also
be an incentive for INRIA to do what the market community considers
reasonable: the price says whether the community is content or not -
a very transparent way of voting.

Why not hand this project (creation of IT-infrastructure, working out
market mechanisms and legal aspects) to a group of CS, business/economics
and law students (as some kind of seminar work)? In our experience
students are pretty eager to participate in such weird things and usually
come up with solutions that work remarkably well (and their work is
cheap! ;)

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl

Re: Consortium Caml

[Sven]

On Wed, Feb 07, 2001 at 02:30:09PM -0500, Michel Mauny wrote:
> Alex Baretta wrote/écrivait (Feb 05 2001, 11:55PM +0100):
> 
> > Why not allow individuals to join for about 50E per annum. No one
> > says such individuals should have as much weight as the 2kE members,
> > but yet they would contribute to the funding of project and to the
> > diffusion of the language.
> 
> The main problem is that membership to the Consortium generates
> paperwork costing more than 50 Euros (which is approximately 50
> US$). If INRIA was flexible enough in accepting donations, then it
> would be pretty easy to do as you suggest. Unfortunately, for each
> amount of money arriving here, there must be an invoice prepared by
> INRIA (and possibly a formal contract, but I am not a specialist of
> those issues).
> 
> I think that for the time being we should try to set up the Consortium
> with members supporting it with amounts starting from 2 kE, as stated
> in the membership agreement. We already have a few members in the
> pipeline, but we clearly need more.

What about creating a non-profit association or something such, where indiviudal members could apply, and give smaller than 2KE donations, and then they could become 1 member of the consortium.

This would limit the paperwork on part of the consortium, achieve the needed result, but well, would need other kind of paper work to create said association.

Also i don't know anything of international associations law, as well as the possibility to do such without ever meeting in person. I think it has already been done, i read somethign about such a thing somewhere, and then naturally, there is the example of debian.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: Consortium Caml

[Sven]

On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 10:59:00AM -0500, Michel Mauny wrote:
> > What about creating a non-profit association or something such,
>   where indiviudal members could apply, and give smaller than 2KE
>   donations, and then they could become 1 member of the consortium.
> 
> To me, this is an excellent idea, but the best would probably be that
> someone external to INRIA creates such an association (or a groupment
> of such associations). Indeed, it would be a bit strange if INRIA
> created an association which would become a member of a Consortium
> leaded by INRIA itself. There could be even be several such
> associations, as long as each of them is able to gather at least 2
> kEuros. (The more members, the better :-)

Let's start with one such associtation, there can be more later one.

I am not familiar with association law, but it seems to me that there is need for various members, maybe a little fee to pay, not sure (well for french associations), and an annual meeting or somethign such.

I am not sure how well the frnech association law handle non-french members, and err, lets call it virtual meetings. 

Maybe someone is familiar with this, or i could ask around.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: Consortium Caml

[Michel Mauny]

> What about creating a non-profit association or something such,
  where indiviudal members could apply, and give smaller than 2KE
  donations, and then they could become 1 member of the consortium.

To me, this is an excellent idea, but the best would probably be that
someone external to INRIA creates such an association (or a groupment
of such associations). Indeed, it would be a bit strange if INRIA
created an association which would become a member of a Consortium
leaded by INRIA itself. There could be even be several such
associations, as long as each of them is able to gather at least 2
kEuros. (The more members, the better :-)

Cheers,

-- 
Michel

Re: Consortium Caml

[Michel Mauny]

There are quite a few general web sites about French associations. If
you look for "association loi 1901" at google.com (for non-French
speakers, this means "non-profit", roughly speaking), you'll get at
least one page of very relevant (French) pointers.

As far as I know, members of such an association may come from all
over the world, and are not necessarily individuals. (I mean that a
small company which couldn't afford 2kE to be a member oc the Caml
Consortium could be a member of an association member of the
Consortium.)

-- 
Michel

Sven wrote/écrivait (Feb 08 2001, 11:01AM +0100):

> I am not familiar with association law, but it seems to me that
  there is need for various members, maybe a little fee to pay, not
  sure (well for french associations), and an annual meeting or
  somethign such.

> I am not sure how well the frnech association law handle non-french
  members, and err, lets call it virtual meetings.

> Maybe someone is familiar with this, or i could ask around.

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Fabien Fleutot]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2001 01:45:21 +0100
Markus Mottl <mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> wrote:

> This would be a
> true incentive for the OCaml-community to liquefy some money, because
> it wouldn't just be a "donation" but an "investment".

That's false: in a consortium, one pays a fee for one year, and by the end
of that year, there's no more membership, so no more value, and no
investment. A stock exchange wouldn't work in the same way, if one 
had to re-buy its own stocks every year, would it ?

The idea of setting up facilities to create associations able to gather
the required 2K euro or wathever amount looks better and simpler: as soom
as the first one will be released, anybody else would just have to
cut-and-paste its status to create a new one. 

Another solution would
be to fix a minimal annual amount, and to give a representativeness
proportionnal to one's contribution: that way, it wouldn't be necessary to
create more than one association. Moreover, this association would just be
a way to externalise administrative tasks, from the INRIA's point of view.

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Markus Mottl]

On Fri, 09 Feb 2001, Fabien Fleutot wrote:
> That's false: in a consortium, one pays a fee for one year, and by
> the end of that year, there's no more membership, so no more value,
> and no investment. A stock exchange wouldn't work in the same way,
> if one had to re-buy its own stocks every year, would it ?

This is a legal question rather than an economic one. Still, I fear that
it will be difficult to gain many (= enough) members unless they see a
certain benefit from it without having too much risk. The problem with the
consortium is that if you are discontent, you will lose all of the donated
money *and* your rights (after at most one year). If you have some ability
to trade your "share of rights", you can get out again more easily.

I think it is a realist assumption that in the longer term nobody will
"donate" unless they have a profit from it. Considering an amount of 2kE
(per year!), even my enthusiasm for OCaml is overstretched (that's far
more than my monthly income).

Assuming that OCaml makes it successfully into mainstream technology
due to increased funding, having a large share of the votes is equal
to having more market power (you can influence mainstream technology to
your advantage): people (companies) will have interest in buying votes.

But with a consortium with membership fees there are naughty
game-theoretic aspects: if you don't donate and OCaml fails, you won't
care: you haven't lost anything. If OCaml succeeds - fine! Then you
can still participate at a later point and you'd have had a "free ride"
until then (and more purchasing power = more votes at a more significant
later date). Therefore, a "rational" potential sponsor wouldn't donate:
he can only benefit with this strategy. But if all do so, OCaml is very
likely to fail due to lack of funding!

Therefore, it is necessary to change the pay-off matrix in such a way
that it is rational to donate for OCaml - or better: to invest. I don't
see how the consortium guarantees this: why should I donate for OCaml so
that financially much more powerful but technologically short-sighted
(or more rational?) companies will benefit from it in the future by
buying me out? - I'd have had the costs and they'd take the profit (and
then they'd probably take technological decisions like "we want to have
a VisualOCaml" - argh!).

> The idea of setting up facilities to create associations able to gather
> the required 2K euro or wathever amount looks better and simpler: as soom
> as the first one will be released, anybody else would just have to
> cut-and-paste its status to create a new one. 

But even "associations" won't have a rational basis for donating.

> Another solution would be to fix a minimal annual amount, and to give
> a representativeness proportionnal to one's contribution: that way, it
> wouldn't be necessary to create more than one association. Moreover,
> this association would just be a way to externalise administrative
> tasks, from the INRIA's point of view.

I'd still favour a way in which the number of voting rights ("shares") can
be traded: this would give investors control for an indefinite amount of
time rather than just for a year and thus prevent others from free-riding.

Issuing more voting rights would allow the OCaml-project to raise more
money: the stakeholders will only allow this if it's in their interest =
if the additional funding will lead to more profitable technology and
therefore offset the diluting effect of more shares (an incentive for the
OCaml-project to work efficiently in the interest of the stakeholders).

The important bit is that during the "IPO" the voting rights are split
between as many independent invididuals as possible, preferably ones
with adequate technological background (members of this list? ;)

There may be prohibiting legal aspects beyond my understanding, because
I don't know anything about the relevant French laws...

Best regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Jan Skibinski]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Markus Mottl wrote:

> There may be prohibiting legal aspects beyond my understanding, because
> I don't know anything about the relevant French laws...

	Has anyone looked yet at the track records of NICE operations? 
	That's the Non-profit International Consortium for Eiffel.
	Who knows, maybe there are some answers there for some of your
	questions, some lessons to learn and maybe some surprises,
	such as their membership fee in the past two years (zero).
	Jan
	

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Daniel de Rauglaudre]

Hi,

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 05:22:25PM +0100, Markus Mottl wrote:

> This is a legal question rather than an economic one. Still, I fear that
> it will be difficult to gain many (= enough) members unless they see a
> certain benefit from it without having too much risk.

I don't agree with that. The idea of the Consortium is not for companies
to get their money back: they pay for the warranty that OCaml continues.
If you decide that OCaml has to be used in your company, you may take
some advantages on paying. It is sponsoring, nothing else.

> But with a consortium with membership fees there are naughty
> game-theoretic aspects: if you don't donate and OCaml fails, you won't
> care: you haven't lost anything.

Yes you loose: you loose all the applications that you wrote in OCaml!
Of course, if your idea is not to use OCaml, may I recommend you this:
don't pay.

The Consortium is for companies: for people who make strategic decisions
like using the language. It is not for individuals: as an individual, of
course, you don't care that OCaml stops. But if you are the boss of a big
company and decide to use it, it can be terrible if it no more supported.

If you are a company, the most you decide using OCaml, the most you
have interest to finance the Consortium.

-- 
Daniel de RAUGLAUDRE
daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr
http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Markus Mottl]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2001, Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 05:22:25PM +0100, Markus Mottl wrote:
> > This is a legal question rather than an economic one. Still, I fear that
> > it will be difficult to gain many (= enough) members unless they see a
> > certain benefit from it without having too much risk.
> 
> I don't agree with that. The idea of the Consortium is not for companies
> to get their money back: they pay for the warranty that OCaml continues.
> If you decide that OCaml has to be used in your company, you may take
> some advantages on paying. It is sponsoring, nothing else.

There are several problems with this argument:

  * There is still not enough incentive for companies (or financially
    capable individuals) to donate/sponsor/invest. Most will probably
    take the position "Let's look and see how things develop". Why should
    they pay for the warranty that OCaml continues if other companies
    could do this?

  * In practice "sponsors" (be it in arts, sports, etc.) do have
    advantages in sponsoring: they get a (most likely cheap) way of
    marketing. I don't see in this concept how companies can get the
    publicity effect they might want (need). Maybe one could do something
    about this, but it is questionable whether you need the construct
    of a Consortium when companies are more interested in the marketing
    effect (needless to say that this market is boringly small anyway).

  * ... (see below)

> Yes you loose: you loose all the applications that you wrote in OCaml!
> Of course, if your idea is not to use OCaml, may I recommend you this:
> don't pay.

  * So you really think that there are already enough commercial companies
    using OCaml to such an extent that their future only marginally
    depends on it? And even if: then it would currently (without
    any further incentives) be more rational for them to invest into
    diversification rather than donating money for a technology that is
    not yet guaranteed to make it into mainstream.

  * It is realistic to assume that companies already using OCaml want to
    continue doing so - but they don't want to continue bearing the risk.
    Making them (in addition to the technological risk) take financial
    burdens is not very attractive: who has said that they *want* to
    vote in a Consortium? Maybe they are satisfied with the technological
    decisions? So what else do they get in exchange for their donation?

    You'll hardly raise enough money without investors who only want to
    take the risk - in exchange for a potential future profit.

> The Consortium is for companies: for people who make strategic decisions
> like using the language.

Guess what most strategic decisions concerning languages look like -
and no, these decisions are not really irrational...

> It is not for individuals: as an individual, of course, you don't care
> that OCaml stops.

I *do* care whether OCaml stops or not. Therefore, I'd like to see a way
which gives OCaml the financial support it needs. At least in my opinion
it seems rather doubtful that the Consortium will achieve its goals. I
just don't think that this scheme allows you to raise enough money.

> But if you are the boss of a big company and decide
> to use it, it can be terrible if it no more supported.

Right! Therefore bosses do not decide to use OCaml. Does reality teach
you otherwise?

It is not uncommon among technically oriented people to think that
managers are incompetent, because managers don't see the potential of
new technologies. But maybe it's just that managers also consider the
risk when evaluating this potential...

> If you are a company, the most you decide using OCaml, the most you
> have interest to finance the Consortium.

No, this is an all too common mistake! Investment decisions in the
economic sense of actually buying (using) equipment or technologies are
decoupled from "financial" investment decisions!

If you use OCaml for some project, your opportunity costs are that you
cannot use Java (or else) as substitute at the same time. Most people
here will probably agree that OCaml is generally the technically better
choice (your opportunity costs are lower). Thus, it can be a rational
decision to use OCaml (not necessarily from a long term point of view
if OCaml does not have a future!).

But *at the same time* it can be a perfectly rational decision to buy
shares from Sun rather than donate to OCaml if you think that Java will
offer Sun an advantage over competitors and that this is not yet fully
reflected in the price. There is (currently) no financial advantage in
becoming a member of the OCaml-consortium!

If you want to make OCaml successful, you need to also make it a
potentially profitable investment from a financial point of view. Money
always goes the way where it has the best chance of high return, which
does not mean that you (or I) like this way - so we better build one:
to OCaml...

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Daniel de Rauglaudre]

Hi,

On Sun, Feb 11, 2001 at 01:05:54PM +0100, Markus Mottl wrote:

>   * There is still not enough incentive for companies (or financially
>     capable individuals) to donate/sponsor/invest. Most will probably
>     take the position "Let's look and see how things develop". Why should
>     they pay for the warranty that OCaml continues if other companies
>     could do this?

Consortium is for companies which *already* believe in OCaml, not for
a hypothetic investment! If there are no such companies, ok, the
Consortium will fail, that's all. It is not a problem for us. The
Consortium is not a start up!

>   * In practice "sponsors" (be it in arts, sports, etc.) do have
>     advantages in sponsoring: they get a (most likely cheap) way of
>     marketing.

Ok. Perhaps we could not call that "sponsoring", ok ok.

>   * So you really think that there are already enough commercial companies
>     using OCaml to such an extent that their future only marginally
>     depends on it?

In this case, if there exist no companies able to spend 2KE by year in the
world and loving OCaml, the Consortium fails. What is the problem?

>   * It is realistic to assume that companies already using OCaml want to
>     continue doing so - but they don't want to continue bearing the risk.

Which risk? You mean 2KE or you mean OCaml? I am sure that there are a
lot of companies for which 2KE/year is peanuts.

>     Making them (in addition to the technological risk) take financial
>     burdens is not very attractive: who has said that they *want* to
>     vote in a Consortium? Maybe they are satisfied with the technological
>     decisions? So what else do they get in exchange for their donation?

Ok. Let's continue like that, no problem. If you think that OCaml does
not deserve some investment to add libraries, programs, to discuss
together for the choices in the language, then the Consortium
fails. There is no problem. The Consortium is not a start up. It is a
proposition. If people think that this proposition is not the good
one, then it fails.

>     You'll hardly raise enough money without investors who only want to
>     take the risk - in exchange for a potential future profit.

When you buy a car, do you consider that your money is a "risk" and
you want some "profit" back? I would understand if the fee was 2ME,
but 2KE, are you laughing?

> > But if you are the boss of a big company and decide
> > to use it, it can be terrible if it no more supported.
> 
> Right! Therefore bosses do not decide to use OCaml. Does reality teach
> you otherwise?

I am not sure of that. You consider that bosses are just interested on
investment, get money, money, money? Ok, money is important, but
it is not all. You may consider that you have technical decisions to
take, and the result may be OCaml. If you consider that your programmers
loose too much time debugging languages with pointers raising Memory
Fault.

In this case, as a boss, you may think that you loose too much money
using bad programming languages.

> It is not uncommon among technically oriented people to think that
> managers are incompetent, because managers don't see the potential of
> new technologies.

Yes, I see that it is what you are thinking! I don't.

> If you use OCaml for some project, your opportunity costs are that you
> cannot use Java (or else) as substitute at the same time. Most people
> here will probably agree that OCaml is generally the technically better
> choice (your opportunity costs are lower). Thus, it can be a rational
> decision to use OCaml (not necessarily from a long term point of view
> if OCaml does not have a future!).

The idea of the Consortium is not to convice companies to use OCaml.
Ad is important, but it is not the point of the Consortium. It is for
companies which already use it, to help them to have more confidence
about OCaml.

The Consortium is not advertising for OCaml.

> But *at the same time* it can be a perfectly rational decision to buy
> shares from Sun rather than donate to OCaml if you think that Java will
> offer Sun an advantage over competitors and that this is not yet fully
> reflected in the price. There is (currently) no financial advantage in
> becoming a member of the OCaml-consortium!

Yes, if you consider that OCaml has no advantage relative to Java. In
this case: don't pay. What is the problem?

> If you want to make OCaml successful, you need to also make it a
> potentially profitable investment from a financial point of view. Money
> always goes the way where it has the best chance of high return, which
> does not mean that you (or I) like this way - so we better build one:
> to OCaml...

How on earth could you consider that we can get money from a programming
language? Explain me that! You can't. I prefer that OCaml remains a good
product rather than a well known product. There is no problem than the
Consortium fails. It is just a proposition. You seem to consider that
it must fail. Ok, it's your opinion. You may be right. Let's see.

-- 
Daniel de RAUGLAUDRE
daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr
http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[John Max Skaller]

Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote:

> The Consortium is for companies: for people who make strategic decisions
> like using the language. It is not for individuals: as an individual, of
> course, you don't care that OCaml stops. But if you are the boss of a big
> company and decide to use it, it can be terrible if it no more supported.

	As an individual I _do_ care if Ocaml stops,
since I have invested considerable amounts of _my_ time and effort
into it, whereas companies have the resources to amortise risk,
and the 'big boss' didn't invest his money, and will still get
paid his salary.

	I only have one short life, and I have a vested interest
in Ocaml succeeding commercially that is far more important
to me than a small change in profits of some company.
This interest is not merely to obtain money from work,
but also to contribute to better practice, so I can feel
my life is worthwhile.

	Therefore, it would be useful if I could register that
interest, even if my financial contribution is small compared
to a large company: ultimately, Ocaml programs have to be written
by people.

	A Consortium may benefit from having both corporate members
and individuals, for example companies may be able to get more code
more cheaply from a pool of individuals who would be grateful for
_some_ funding for work they might well have done anyhow.

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller@maxtal.com.au
10/1 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia voice: 61-2-9660-0850
checkout Vyper http://Vyper.sourceforge.net
download Interscript http://Interscript.sourceforge.net

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Markus Mottl]

Hi,

On Sun, 11 Feb 2001, Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote:
> Consortium is for companies which *already* believe in OCaml, not for
> a hypothetic investment! If there are no such companies, ok, the
> Consortium will fail, that's all. It is not a problem for us. The
> Consortium is not a start up!
[and]
> Yes, if you consider that OCaml has no advantage relative to Java. In
> this case: don't pay. What is the problem?

What I had tried to explain is that one does not have to be schizophrenic
to believe in OCaml but invest in Java at the same time: this can be a
rational decision!

The problem is the following: you don't want to get peanuts from the
members in the Consortium but a significant, sustainable income that
allows you to invest into further development.

I don't doubt that some companies (better: some responsible persons)
are willing to pay a "moral" contribution. But do you really think that a
"moral" contribution will make a big enough difference?

Just listen to other people's (and my) comments in other mails here:
they say that "2kE is too much". Yes: too much as a donation but not too
much as an investment! If I could sell my right to vote at an arbitrary
point of time and if there were a market where I can do so, I'd very
likely invest more than 2kE into "project OCaml". But as a membership fee
(a "moral" contribution) per year this exceeds my capabilities (or my
"moral" - in whichever way you want to see it).

> In this case, if there exist no companies able to spend 2KE by year in
> the world and loving OCaml, the Consortium fails. What is the problem?

This world would surely be a more peaceful place to live in if companies
donated for the love of it... - but unfortunately also a poorer world.

> >   * It is realistic to assume that companies already using OCaml want to
> >     continue doing so - but they don't want to continue bearing the risk.
> 
> Which risk? You mean 2KE or you mean OCaml? I am sure that there are a
> lot of companies for which 2KE/year is peanuts.

Given it's current size OCaml is still a risk! Go out to some average
commercial company and ask them about using OCaml. They will tell you:

  * Nobody uses it (= customers want e.g. Java)

  * We can't get programmers: in Austria there are only two
    OCaml-programmers that I know personnally, me being one of them,
    the other having been "converted" by me... ;)

  * We can't get support (France is far).

Betting on Java is safe from a commercial point of view even if the
language is crap if you compare it on a technical level.

> Let's continue like that, no problem. If you think that OCaml does
> not deserve some investment to add libraries, programs, to discuss
> together for the choices in the language, then the Consortium fails.

And if it is only me who invests, OCaml will fail anyway, and I'll have
lost my donation. That's the infamous Prisoner's Dilemma...

I *do* think that OCaml very badly needs additional resources to give it
the final touch to "conquer the world", but from a business point of view,
I am in doubt that the scheme as proposed stands a high chance of success.

> There is no problem. The Consortium is not a start up. It is a
> proposition. If people think that this proposition is not the good
> one, then it fails.

Or we first discuss other alternatives? Right now? ;-)

> >     You'll hardly raise enough money without investors who only want to
> >     take the risk - in exchange for a potential future profit.
> 
> When you buy a car, do you consider that your money is a "risk" and
> you want some "profit" back? I would understand if the fee was 2ME,
> but 2KE, are you laughing?

Giving a donation has a direct impact on the profit/loss balance,
buying a car is just swapping things on the activa side (not considering
depreciation): you don't get "poorer" when you buy a car, only less
"liquid". You can always sell your car to get your money back (or at
least most of it). But I don't think that INRIA will give me back my
donation if I am not satisfied: I'll be poorer *and* less liquid...

> I am not sure of that. You consider that bosses are just interested
> on investment, get money, money, money?

In the long run, yes, they have to, otherwise competition will drive
them out of the market. This may sound harsh, but is a guarantee that
companies will not continuously waste resources (there are many, many
alternative organisations that one might consider as a donator!). You
should not forget that the present scheme of the Consortium allows free
riding: your competitors that do not invest will have an advantage from
your donations, too!

It is *not* the fault of markets or companies if we don't manage to
find a scheme that allows to express the (in our opinion high) value of
OCaml in a price on some market! If we succeed to find a suitable model,
I have no doubts that money will pour in.

> Ok, money is important, but
> it is not all. You may consider that you have technical decisions to
> take, and the result may be OCaml. If you consider that your programmers
> loose too much time debugging languages with pointers raising Memory
> Fault.

> In this case, as a boss, you may think that you loose too much money
> using bad programming languages.

True, but your competitors also use the same inferior technology. Unless
a significant number of others settle on a new (better) technology,
there is no incentive to move on from an economic point of view (may
still be too risky if there are competing technologies - so better
stay with the mainstream: again a Prisoner's dilemma). It's known since
Schumpeter that competitive markets can have problems with supporting
innovative processes: companies are too busy fighting competitors to
have significant resources for innovation...

But things change if you manage to map your innovative process to a price
(a most challenging task!): then you benefit from speculators who take
the risk in exchange for a potential future profit. You could probably get
the Nobel prize in economics if you find a general way of doing this...

What is very important to see here: companies that use OCaml are most
likely not speculators! - It is rather the other way round: they want
to hedge away the OCaml-related risk so as to concentrate on their
intrinsic business (which is not investment/speculation). In case there
is a perfect price for OCaml on a market, a company that uses OCaml can
even reduce its overall risk by going short on this market (i.e. speculate
on falling prices)!

> How on earth could you consider that we can get money from a programming
> language?

I have not said that I have ever managed to do so or that I even knew how
to do it. But unless we manage to do so, unless one "can earn money" with
a programming language, there will be no investors. I am at least quite
sure that the proposed scheme has inherent shortcomings from an economic
point of view. There must be better ways to go about doing things.

> I prefer that OCaml remains a good product rather than a well known
> product.

Who says that "becoming well-known" implies "becoming worse"?? Take a
look at the mainstream languages: they are all ill-designed from the
ground up! I have no fears whatsoever that OCaml will descend down to
the level of Visual Basic...

If the licencing issues and the rights associated with voting (you
decide this!) are well-chosen (a potentially tricky legal question),
there is no danger of companies doing perverse things with the language
out of ignorance (they will definitely not do this on purpose for their
own disadvantage).

> There is no problem than the
> Consortium fails. It is just a proposition. You seem to consider that
> it must fail. Ok, it's your opinion. You may be right. Let's see.

You have to change things so that people who came to the same conclusions
as I did think otherwise. Look at this arbitrary payout matrix
(assumption: others also invest = consortium succeeds):

                          OCaml fails  |  OCaml succeeds
  My profit on donation:      -2kE     |        8kE
  My profit on free riding:    0kE     |       10kE

Here a rational agent will choose strategy "free riding" whatever the
outcome is! Nobody will rationally donate for OCaml unless his "morally
feeling good" is worth than more 2kE to him! (I am not this moral...)

Here a possible matrix where my voting rights are permanent:

                            OCaml fails  |  OCaml succeeds
  My profit on investment:      -2kE     |      18kE
  My profit on not investing:    0kE     |       0kE

If there is only a small probability of success, I'll surely invest here
in OCaml, especially because I can have significantly more profit if my
not-investing competitors do not have voting rights when OCaml becomes
a success -> I can influence OCaml to my favour, they can't...

Best regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Daniel de Rauglaudre]

Hi,

On Sun, Feb 11, 2001 at 07:36:49PM +0100, Markus Mottl wrote:

> I *do* think that OCaml very badly needs additional resources to give it
> the final touch to "conquer the world", but from a business point of view,
> I am in doubt that the scheme as proposed stands a high chance of success.

Ok. I see your long long message. You seem to know very well how the
market work. (this is not ironic, just a constatation.)

What do you propose? A bigger fee? Other thing than a Consortium?
Think more about it before deciding something else?

-- 
Daniel de RAUGLAUDRE
daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr
http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Markus Mottl]

Hi,

On Sun, 11 Feb 2001, Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote:
> Ok. I see your long long message. You seem to know very well how the
> market work. (this is not ironic, just a constatation.)

My opinion may be biased by my (futile) studies of economics... ;)

> What do you propose? A bigger fee? Other thing than a Consortium?

Certainly not a bigger (fixed!) fee, but, of course, the costs of
maintaining the organisation must come in again (which should be
fairly neglectable). "Planned" prices (fees) almost always have a
devastating effect as historical experiments from several centuries
show. Additionally, people always behave more reasonably if their own
money is at stake, e.g. bad decisions have *immediate* consequences on the
price and therefore their wealth. If you have already paid the fee (sunk
costs), you will probably not think so thoroughly before giving your vote.

One thing I was a bit surprised about is that there was obviously no
previous public effort on the side of INRIA to conduct a survey in this
matter. Why don't you just present various business models on a web
page and ask people on the list (or elsewhere) to answer questions like
"How much would you donate/invest if the model looks like this..." or
"How much do you think will *others* invest (in average) if ...".

If I am not mistaken, some of you teach at universities: walking around
the corner to some colleague teaching economics or law might also help.
Even if they cannot tell you an immediate solution, they might give you
valuable hints on what questions would be important to ask in a survey.

Maybe they are even so friendly and "donate" a student seminar group
that does this survey for you... ;)

> Think more about it before deciding something else?

Yes! "Thinking" is probably the most important thing right now! It seems
to me that the current proposal was chosen too quickly. I'd really suggest
doing some "market research" before becoming too focused on a specific
model. Maybe I am all wrong and your model works out much better than
mine or what other people have proposed so far. But we should better
check in advance...

If you want to know my personal willingness to aid with funding: I
would surely not "donate" more than 500 Euro (rather less on a long term
unless I get a better paid job) but "invest" maybe around 2000 Euro or
a bit more depending on the price ("invest" meaning that I can trade my
share). In case I unexpectedly get rich enough to bear a higher risk,
I might want to invest more than this ;)

You could even persuade other investors who have no direct interest in
OCaml (other than "getting rich fast"... ;)! - Think of it: the amount
of money you could raise with a single offer on the "primary market"
could be the equivalent of several (say, 5?) years of membership fees
(if others have similar donate/invest ratios)! You should certainly also
consider the "interest" you gain from this investment (having a lot of
money now is always better than receiving it over a longer (unpredictable)
period of time).

Here is a potential model (if you think it is nonsense, forget it...):

  * You create e.g. 1,000,000 (virtual) shares of voting rights and
    declare the percentage that INRIA will keep for itself (be careful
    to set a reasonable percentage, otherwise you won't get much money!).

  * People can sign up on a web page (authenticity must be checked
    somehow, of course!) and start bidding "virtually" for the shares
    for some fixed amount of time (say, two weeks) during the IPO. The
    automatic trading system always displays the current price at which
    the highest transaction volume (that's your money!) would be reached.
    The efficiency of markets should automagically let the price converge
    towards the optimum initial price! (Well, kind of: unless people's
    money is really at stake, you cannot expect that this price is what
    you will get).

    You might want to impose further restrictions like e.g. that
    independent bidders can only buy some maximum number of shares, etc.

  * When the IPO-time is over, the initial price is fixed and you ask
    people to accept their last offer (this is probably legally less
    tricky than forcing them to accept it right from the start, which
    would otherwise lead to more efficient initial bidding). Maybe
    you could demand an initial deposit (100 Euro?) to ward off stupid
    gamblers who participate only for the fun of it.

  * People buy your shares with real money. Hopefully all of them accept
    their own last offer...

  * Shares from offers that are not accepted become property of
    INRIA. This last requirement has the funny consequence that people
    who are really interested in buying shares will consider this last
    risk of losing votes to the already powerful INRIA:
    
    They will bid at slightly lower prices depending on their estimation
    on how many people might drop out in the "real money" round.
    This again makes it more likely that other people really accept their
    last offer, because it is cheaper (lower price), which should again
    lead to an optimum tradeoff. (Markets can do such fancy things!)

    There is hardly any possibility for INRIA to influence this process
    to their advantage: manipulating the price up or down will most
    likely lead to less income for them...

  * Now the tricky bit: it must be possible for people to continuously
    trade using *real* money! You might need the service of some competent
    E-commerce company ("liquidmarkets" sounds good ;)

    This won't imply continuous costs for you, because it is naturally
    the trading partners who pay transaction costs.

  * If it seems profitable to you (and the other stakeholders), you
    might want to issue further shares at a later point of time, i.e. you
    get more "real money" for investment (= for improving OCaml).

I have not the slightest idea about possible legal obstacles in this
process (INRIA is a public organisation). But since it is not INRIA that
is traded but voting rights that concern a specific service, it does not
seem less legal to me than your Consortium-proposal, which also gives
some influence to non-public entities.

Any comments?

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Brian Rogoff]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2001, Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 05:22:25PM +0100, Markus Mottl wrote:
> 
> > This is a legal question rather than an economic one. Still, I fear that
> > it will be difficult to gain many (= enough) members unless they see a
> > certain benefit from it without having too much risk.
> 
> I don't agree with that. The idea of the Consortium is not for companies
> to get their money back: they pay for the warranty that OCaml continues.
> If you decide that OCaml has to be used in your company, you may take
> some advantages on paying. It is sponsoring, nothing else.

I agree, if the OCaml developers at INRIA disband and no one else picks
up development, commercial software developers who took a chance on this 
research language will be screwed. So we commercial users have a lot of 
incentive to pay. 

> The Consortium is for companies: for people who make strategic decisions
> like using the language. It is not for individuals: as an individual, of
> course, you don't care that OCaml stops. 

As an individual OCaml programmer, I have a lot of incentive to see OCaml 
succeed. Companies are made up of individuals, some of whom have been a 
continuous nuisance to their managers to join the Consortium ;-).

> But if you are the boss of a big
> company and decide to use it, it can be terrible if it no more supported.

Being "orphaned" is my biggest fear wrt Ocaml. So far the open source
moves and the formation of the Consortium have gone a good way towards 
allaying that fear.

-- Brian

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Xavier Leroy]

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

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Jean-Marc Alliot]

Markus Mottl wrote:

> Considering an amount of 2kE
> (per year!), even my enthusiasm for OCaml is overstretched (that's far
> more than my monthly income).

I  think that the consortium is intended for organizations not individuals.
And for many organizations, 2 kE are only a drop in an ocean...

Thus, participating in the OCAML consortium is mainly a matter of supporting
the language and keeping an eye on its development. And yes, I plan to put my
organization in the OCAML consortium, if administrative problems don't
discourage me...


JMA
http://www.recherche.enac.fr/~alliot

Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Frank Atanassow]

Xavier Leroy wrote (on 12-02-01 09:36 +0100):
> 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.

I don't want to offend, but perhaps you could create a separate list for
consortium topics? By Xavier's own admission, most of the individuals reading
the list will not be targeted as potential members of the consortium, and it
is anyways an important enough topic to deserve its own forum. (Besides, I
assume that at some point consortium members will get their own list in any
case.) Also, it has been generating a considerable amount of traffic of late
which has little to do with Caml programming per se, which I at least regard
as the primary topic for this list...

Of course, this is not to say that I wouldn't still like to see announcements
and updates on any major consortium developments on this list, but I would
like to see the administrative wranglings and bureaucratic details disappear.

Regards,

-- 
Frank Atanassow, Information & Computing Sciences, Utrecht University
Padualaan 14, PO Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, Netherlands
Tel +31 (030) 253-3261 Fax +31 (030) 251-379