General comments on direction and philosophy of our group

[russ]

Before answering individual threads, it's great to see some important
themes being raised so early in the group's existence.

I live in California, so I'm 8 or 9 hours behind Europe. This means
that conversations can develop before I join them. Please don't
interpret any lack of response from me to imply lack of interest.

Bear with me while I lay out some thoughts... Comments very welcome...

While we should remain respectful and open towards XMOS and its
employees, we are a collaborative group, working in our enlightened
self-interest. Although one of our functions is to help XMOS overcome
their fears of open collaboration on code, open ticketing, and so on,
we must carefully avoid asking permission to do what makes most sense
for us.

There are already steps being proposed on this group that might be
more or less successful depending on XMOS's response. As a group, we
want XMOS engaged and contributing in a shared environment.

Why do we want XMOS to collaborate openly?

1. because we understand the undoubted skills they have in
designing around their hardware - we want to join forces, not compete,
and we want to maximise the return on our time invested in learning
and applying this technology.

2. because we understand the unique rallying point that XMOS Ltd
will represent if it opens up - we want to join forces, not compete.

3. because we understand that time is of the essence. This is an
opportunity that we all want to grasp. We cannot afford to waste time
in duplication of effort on poor quality results (xtcp?), when
collaboration would be super-additive. So again, we want to join
forces, not compete.

Let's attempt to make our early steps:

1. beneficial to members of the Foundation irrespective of XMOS's
collaboration

2. examples to XMOS of areas where collaboration is the obvious
choice, so that we can start learning together

--r