Re: R: Consortium Caml

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@best.com>]

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