[OpenID board] Informations about the European Foundation

[seb20]

Hi guys,

I reply to the mail I've seen regarding the European Foundation from  
Martin. I am the "someone" who contacted him few days ago and I think  
I can give a good vision of what's going on on the other side of the  
Pool.

First, few words about me and how I landed in this discussion: My  
name is Sebastien Sacard, I work for Yahoo! in the London offices as  
product development manager of Yahoo! Travel (http://www.linkedin.com/ 
in/sebastiensacard). I've been blogging since few months on OpenID in  
french on http://www.egomedium.net, and posted few questions on the  
OpenID mailinglist: I don't consider myself as an expert of OpenID,  
but as I first mentioned the possibility to have a foundation in  
Europe for OpenID to David Recordon (few weeks ago), people naturally  
came to me to discuss the topic.

I have no relation with the people setting up this Foundation in  
Europe, expect that I had a good chat with them over the phone the  
past few days. These people have been involved in different digital  
identity related projects, such as ENUM, and they are thrilled about  
OpenID and want to promote it in Europe. They seem to have a lot of  
energy, but apart from that I cannot really speak on their behalf.  
I'm not a member of this foundation, and have no personal interests:   
I am just acting as a facilitator between you and them.

I proposed them to get in touch with you guys, and see how a European  
foundation could work with the US one. They naturally agreed, but as  
they are not fluent in English, I proposed them to translate their  
executive summary draft, which you can find attached.

This is a 4 pages document, that summarize the goal behind this  
foundation. If you want my comments, I think they do want to do good,  
but with a different approach than yours: acting like real Europeans,  
they write papers first, and action next :-) Even if this can look  
like too bureaucratic, this is the way European work and it can have  
some interesting effects, specially if you can bring the american  
touch (do it, then make it official).

Personally I see 2 advantages of having this foundation:

  - it will facilitate adoption: if you want OpenID to be popular in  
Europe (27 countries, 23 languages, 500 millions inhabitants), it  
will have to be locally promoted, documentation translated, people  
connected.
  - having a legal entity entity valid for Europe is key,

Now, I think this foundation should not be top-bottom organized like  
this document makes think, and should be more opened and  
decentralized. As this is just a draft, the discussion is opened.

I let you guys read the presentation, feel free to contact them  
directly or myself if you have any questions.

Sebastien


  
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