Project consortium decisions

Encl: 1. Decision about OROCOS project consortium
      2. EU: `General guidelines for open source projects (update)'
      3. EU: Answer from [email protected] to my mail

Dear partners,

This email contains my decisions about the OROCOS project proposal. I
apologize for the couple of days of delay, but every day some new
information comes in :-)

I based my decisions on two very recent documents from the EU, the
first being a general clarification for the Call for Proposals (see
enclosed document at the end of this message), the second being a
personal communication from the responsible EU officer, Philippe
Aigrain, answering my questions (see other enclosed document).

The organisational structure of the OROCOS project will be as follows:
 1. Consortium
 2. Partners (one of them being the `Coordinator')
 3. Members
 4. Contributors

The Consortium is nothing else but the sum of the `Partners', the
`Members' and the `Contributors'. The `Partners' receive funding from
the project, at the amount of 1 man year in total; the `Members'
receive travel grants, for a total of 4 meetings; the `Contributors'
don't receive any financial support, but have access to all results of
the project. (Since OROCOS is an open source project, the
`Contributors' are all those interested parties that contribute to the
software and documentation base of OROCOS; the distinction between
`Contributors' and the other members of the OROCOS project exists only
within the framework of the IST Project, and not in the day-to-day
working of the project. Hence, this naming will not show up on the
OROCOS website <www.orocos.org>, except for the `IST proposal' page.)

The `Partners' receive funding, and hence have more responsibilities
than the `Members': `Partners' make sure _all_ Work Packages get
appropriate attention (that is, the parts for which insufficient input
is received from the whole consortium must be filled in by the
partners). The three partners are responsible _together_ to reach the
deliverables; it's the responsibility of the Coordinator to assign and
motivate responsible people from the `Partners' for each of the
project's Deliverables.

My concrete implementation from this general structure is that:
- the number of `Partners' will be limited to 3, each getting
  0.5 man year/year, for a duration of two years.
- I'll ask for a travel budget for 15 `Members', for two meetings per
  year.

From the above, it is clear that the largest, most experienced groups
should become the `Partners', in order to increase the chances for
acceptance (in the sense that only large groups can be expected to be
able to do decent contract work with only incomplete funding). I'll
also stress the fact that there are 15 `founding partners', that have
contributed in defining the OROCOS project, and to which travel
budgets will be allocated, in order to improve the collaboration (this
is in line with the spirit of a Network proposal, which OROCOS should
be after all, see general EU guidelines below). Hence:

Partners:
 - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (Coordinator)
 - Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systemes, France
 - Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan, Sweden
Members:
 - Technische Universitaet Wien, Austria
 - Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France
 - Universita' di Verona, Italy
 - Universita' di Bologna, Italy
 - Forschungsinstitut fuer anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung
   Ulm, Germany
 - German National Research Center for Information Technolog, Germany
 - Profactor Produktionsforschungs GmbH, Austria
 - Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
 - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
 - Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, France
 - Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
 - Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt, Germany


So, at this moment I have to thank you all for your interest,
suggestions and enthousiasm. I do feel very sorry to have to make a
choice, but anyway, the funding is minor :-) At the same time, I am
very optimistic about the OROCOS project: I am convinced we will be
able to realise something, in a collaborative open spirit, and with
(no doubt about that) a quickly growing number of other interested
groups.

The OROCOS mailing list
  <http://mail.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/mailman/listinfo/orocos>
will remain the major communication channel for OROCOS, but will from
now on be focussing on the real technical work. Hence, I will come
back very shortly with concrete brainstorming material, because I
don't think it is a good idea to wait for the project to be approved
and started before getting our brains together (at least through the
Internet) :-) Of course, you don't have to wait for me at all: all
good ideas are welcome all the time!

Best regards,

Herman



-----------General guidelines for open source projects (update) ----------
It is foreseen that most of the projects will be implemented through
thematic networks - networks of excellence. Proposals are expected to
follow the normal structure for thematic networks [...]

The choice of thematic networks for the proposal form is justified by
the fact that free / open source software has a strong element of
networking of competences, and the fact that the participant status of
"member" is well adapted to the inclusion of the very diverse players
that can contribute to a project in its initiation phase.

Our attention has been drawn to the fact, that "in principle",
personnel costs in thematic network contracts cover only
administrative work.  This would of course not be adapted to the
objective of the action line: though some proposals may simply put in
place a network providing services to other developers, most proposals
will actually conduct development until initial release. After
consultation of our legal services, it has been approved that, when
needed, the contract that will be used for successful proposals will
be a take-up type of contract, in which:
- It is possible to include participants with the member status
- Personnel costs can be charged for technical work

Please note that this does not change anything to the proposal
presentation: proposals should follow the prescriptions of the guide
of proposers and its appendix 6, but they can include personnel costs
for technical work when needed to achieve the objectives of the
action.

In accordance with the objectives of the action, these technical
development work and costs should be kept to the minimum allowing to
reach the first threshold of usefulness, at which first release can
occur, and from which the community-based development process can
proceed.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------Answer from [email protected] to my mail--------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 12:32:02 +0100
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: IST proposal: number of partners...

Dear Herman,

Some disclaiming first:
- I am trying to answer your questions as best as possible, but I hope
  you fully understand that my comments can not commit in any way the
  independent evaluators on how they will assess your proposal.
- I have not mentioned 10 person-years as an order of magnitude. If I
  am correct, I mentioned 3-5 person-years as the indication that was
  given to us by the experts in the European Working Group on Libre
  Software on the range of funding which would be most useful. And I
  have indicated that these figures are not strict limits, but must be
  interpreted in the frame of what is needed to bring a particular
  development project to the "first threshold of usefulness".

On number of partners, the choice is really yours, taking in account
needed expertise (including for dissemination), complexity of
management and overheads, etc. The most important thing is to explain
clearly your choices in the proposal.

On travel budget, the figures you are mentioning do not raise
particular questions in comparison to our usual experience.

Best regards,

Philippe Aigrain
Head of Sector "Software Technologies"
European Commission DG INFSO/E2 Office N105 3/54
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

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