GNU Business Network Definition

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || 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

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                       <greve at gnu.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)
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