[Haskell-cafe] Re: Dr Dobbs: Time to get good at functionalprogramming

[Claus Reinke]

>  For this purpose, the only thing better is if we could somehow
>  get them to mention Microsoft everywhere they mention Haskell.
>  Any actual explaining would just get in the way :)

Doesn't quite work without explaining, because one would have
to be very careful not to mis-represent financial support by some
as endorsement by the whole; but if one were to ask those who
have contributed financially to Haskell development in some form
or other for their permissions, one could make quite an interesting 
little list (not to mention the vastly larger list of people who have
contributed their time, efforts, and ideas).

There have been occasional discussions of language-specific or
FP-in-general industry consortiums. Perhaps the simpler form
of "Haskell sponsorship" with mutual bragging rights for haskell.org
and sponsor could be a seed corn for such organisations. These
days, being associated with FP is no longer something that needs
explaining, let alone defending, so sponsors could get something
out of their contribution, such as cute little logos, tea-cups and 
t-shirts (apart from the prime motive of better Haskell;-). 

Imagine all the students that universities could attract by being a 
"Haskell campus", not just turning out "Haskell engineers", but 
"supporting Haskell development" by contributing staff time. 
Imagine all the competent developers and major customers 
companies could attract by being a "Haskell sponsor", being 
actively involved in "Haskell frontline development&research".
Imagine all those pretty Haskell logos on all those webpages.

oops, wrong universe again;-)
Claus

PS. Of course, if you do go down that route, your next Haskell
    job in industry might be representing your company on a 
    committee to decide the internationalization of an XML-based 
    interchange format for unicode lambda characters, with the
    usual sub-committees for upper-, lower-, and othercase
    variants, each with at least two spin-off standards representing
    minority preferences or implementors' we-just-did-it decisions. 
    So be careful what you wish for.