|| On Fri Jun 9 12:56:59 2006 || pr0f3ss0r1492 at yahoo.com (Ottavio Caruso) wrote:
oc> Maybe. But some companies or individuals (I, for example) would oc> want to be "certified" (cum grano salis) against the GBN oc> guidelines. Branding is important in business, be it Microsoft oc> certified or Cisco certified or GNU certified.
Yes, and indeed this always was one intended benefit for Free Software professionals and individuals in the GNU Business Network.
If you ask why this does not yet exist, there is a very simple answer:
FSFE did not have the resources to do it right, which is the only way we want it done. Please do not underestimate this project: There is a lot of work involved in starting up something like the GBN, and keeping it running solidly.
Unless we forseeably have the resources needed, we will not proceed.
So we worked to find funds for this at the European Commission in the scope of our GNUCAN proposal, but that was unfortunately not rated highly enough that the Commission would have given it priority over other projects that were funded.
We also talked to several individual companies, many of who would have been interested to help this project, but the overall sum we were talking about was still too low to start it up.
Also, the GPLv3 process [1] is taking a toll on FSFE's time resources, and keeping us quite busy, including organising the GPLv3 conference in Barcelona [2] -- I hope many of you will attend.
Also, the legal issues around Free Software are definitely in urgent need of some more attention in Europe -- and we have been planning to establish a "Freedom Task Force" of FSFE, which will be working very closely with people like Harald Welte.
FSFE was able to find some resources for this activity, which also is less resource intensive than the GNU Business Network, so we decided to give the Freedom Task Force priority for the moment -- even though we also would very much like to work on the GBN.
If you want to help us on any of these tasks, that would be great.
Regards, Georg
[1] http://gplv3.fsf.org [2] http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/europe-gplv3-conference