Free Software Foundation Europe: The strange case of Certified Open
Stefano Maffulli‘s post “managing a non-profit organization is real business” let me wonder about the importance of transparency within free software organizations here in Europe.
Shouldn’t I pose such questions? by brighterworlds
Recently I happened to ask twice Georg Greve, Free Software Foundation Europe President, about why FSFE is partnering with Open Forum, supporting “Certified Open” (tm).
The Open Forum Europe is definitely not a story of a success. The EC-funded projects, started in September 2005 ended at the beginning of this year, and we didn’t see any of the following promises realized:
The aim of The OpenForum Europe (TOF-e) project is to put certainty and commercial clarity into the whole Open Source process. It will assist SMEs, Enterprises and the Public Sector in the pragmatic adoption and support of OSS by intermediating between business users and the OSS developers, integrators and support community across Europe.
TOF-e represents the specific market validation phase of this eTEN project to rollout TOF-e across Europe and consists of 3 local portals in Denmark, Ireland and the UK.
So said, why is FSFE supporting one of TOF-e’s creatures?
Googling around I noticed that Shane McCoughan, FTF coordinator at FSFE had some remarks about Certified Open, talking of misapplications of language and concepts. Shane a couple of weeks later joined Certified Open Ltd, and actually is one of FSFE’s representatives on the Certified Open board.
The question is still open.
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