Dear Davide,
I understand that you are unhappy about FSFE having to decline the supplying of funds to your activities. For obvious reasons, giving money to third parties is always a difficult decision -- especially when there is no track record of working together yet.
Part of that extreme caution on behalf of FSFE is our awareness that most of our money comes from people who donate this money to FSFE in the expectation that we will spend it directly and immediately on projects for the benefit of Free Software and software freedom.
Our constitution in fact obliges us to do so: giving funds to third parties is something that is strictly regulated and monitored by the German authorities.
So when we received your request for 2.4k EUR (later 2k EUR), it was clear that this would be a borderline case of what we could do. It would have required some very good argument why this was the best way to spend 2k EUR, in particular considering that this money translates to months of full-time work in Eastern Europe and at least several weeks in Western Europe.
Should we give those 2k EUR to another organisation without common track record only for getting its foot into the door of a national body of standardisation so it might or might not be able to swing the Italian vote in ISO on OpenXML? Or should we save that money so someone else can do work that directly benefits Free Software?
I'm sorry, but my answer would still remain the same.
But yes, it is important to do the work in the committee, which is why I offered you concrete, substantial cooperation on this. I could have seen various ways of working together, but unfortunately you did not follow up on that offer and invitation.
Regards, Georg