[Members] Re: EU tender for investigating IM interop (DMA)

I've a bit more time to elaborate now (and got word from my companies executive board on their position) ... Context: the EU DMA has a timeline set for chat interoperability for the gatekeepers (WhatsApp and fb messenger for IM right now and Tiktok, Facebook Instagram and LinkedIn for social networks). The European Commission hopes the market drafts a standard for this, but they are allowed to appoint a standard themselves. This tender is a step towards more involvement of the EC in drafting the standard: a research into what the standard should look like. Meta is pushing towards E2EE C2S or gateway API access. On the last Mondays DMA conference this was approached quite critically from 'the field' (not in the last place by Ralph and me). So the tender asks for desk research and interviews resulting in a report on how effective interop for IM and possibly social networks could look like. The estimated budget is quite royal for this, but there are also quite strict budget rules, making it more interesting for (cooperations of) individuals or foundations and less interesting for consultancy firms. For this reason, and because we want to focus more on our core expertises, my employer, Privacy Company, wont make a bid. I'm not sure if the XSF should make a bid on this tender, the goals of the XSF are focussed on XMPP, not on IM interop in general. But within the XSF there is more then supreme knowledge on this topic and there is an excellent network within the IM world. So I think it would be both be very good for IM interoperability and for the XSF if (a collective of) people from the XMPP community would make a bid. And it is also a job.... I'm available for help, guidance and expertise, but I won't participate in the bid. Note: the deadline is tight, so we have to move fast. The first step would be carefully reading the tender, second make a rough plan, third write the bid... Winfried On 26 June 2024 20:11:14 CEST, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter(a)stpeter.im> wrote: -- Normally there is some text here, bragging about the new phone and excusing for the brevity. That is insane: if this phone was really that great, I would have sent a decent mail.