-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 11:29:53 +0200
Von: Alexandre Bergel <abergel@dcc.uchile.cl>
An: Maarten Mostert <maarten.mostert@wanadoo.fr>
CC: esug-list@lists.esug.org, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr>
Betreff: Re: [Esug-list] ESUG considers sponsoring the Pharo Consortium

> Being accused of conflicting interest is not very nice to hear, so please those of you concerned stay above that and with us.

Well, this is something that should be avoided. But again, the community is so small, that is hard to avoid. We almost have permanent interest conflict in the research track of esug.

> I never used Pharo, But If the ESUG board decided to sponsor it, than I just respect their choice.


I hardly see how supporting Pharo can be seen as unfair. Improving Pharo will help the whole Smalltalk community. It looks like clear to me.

Here is how it is unfair: If I understand the basic process of selecting and supporting projects by ESUG, then the distribution of projects supported by ESUG is roughly equivalent to the popularity of the various communities. This seems entirely fair and reasonable to me, and ESUG is doing a good job with the various projects it supports.

However, once ESUG starts giving chunks of money to particular dialects directly, then first of all that money is no longer spent across the various dialects. So for an approx. 3000 EUR Pharo membership the board could sponsor 20 students with 150 EUR each. And while it may be that 15 of those are indeed Pharo related, there is still sponsorshop done for the remaining 5 which would fall under the table if the money went directly to Pharo. That's seems obviously unfair.

Secondly, the membership in Pharo is perpetual; if some other project raises in popularity there will *still* 100% of the money be going to Pharo. For eternity. That's just as unfair.

There is nothing wrong with sponsoring Pharo projects by ESUG. What's wrong is giving the money, which would otherwise be spent in some relation to the popularity of each dialect, to one dialect only.

Cheers,
  - Andreas