[okfn-coord] Chat with Tom Loosemoore of 4IP

Wed Nov 25 18:35:59 UTC 2009

Today I had quite a long chat with Tom Loosemore of 4IP. Focused on two items:

1. (Rather brief) Our WDMMG proposal to 4IP. Definitely interested
(have a general theme at the moment of "keeping an eye on power") but
nothing concrete from Tom as Dan Heaf is dealing with this. Dan Heaf
will be in contact end of this week or early next to follow up.

2. OKF as a potential home for some 4IP projects (!). This was main
focus of call and rather a surprise to me. Also definitely
confidential.

One of the problems 4IP encounters is finding a long-term sustainable
home for some of their more "public-interest" projects. Issue is that
channel 4/4IP may not be best home but at same time project creators
may not have a suitable stable and long-term organizational home.

Having looked at the OKF website for first time properly yesterday Tom
had been struck how our setup seemed to be well-suited to doing this.
We discussed this at some length and he was very interested by the
possibility of using our decentralized project setup to act as a home
for some 4IP projects after funding has completed. We agreed main
conditions for a project to become an OKF project were:

1. Project be open
2. Necessary resources available to support the project (or for those
resources to be contributed by the project when it joined -- Tom
seemed to think some funding would be available here)
3. There be people actively involved with the project when it became
an OKF project (we don't want dead projects)

This seems a very promising avenue and Tom agreed to come up to
Cambridge on 11th December to chat further (Becky: I suggested you
might want to come to the meeting too ...).

Rufus