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Worldwide - FOSS preferred - IT-Support project launched!

Originally posted on the site of my EURAFRI project:

https://eurafri.com/en-eurafri-non-profit-blog-worldwide-foss-preferred-it-support-project-launched/

The Idea

Lot of people loosed their jobs or contracts during Corona time and now have problems to find new customers or jobs to make a living. Karl founded CTS ( https://CTS.at ) in 1985 and co-founded EURAFRI Networking ( https://EURAFRI.com ) in 2019. He worked very successful in 15 countries, has lot of contacts and is experienced in local and global projects.

As a long time Open Source (FOSS) fan Karl also saw a lot of great people unable to fund their great FOSS projects, or make enough money for their living to be able to full time work on the project. Full-time job + FOSS project often leads to burn-outs and/or layoff of projects with a great future. Both is very bad and we should avoid that.

The idea is to create a wordwide remote and on-site IT-support platform supporting customers to successfully setup, maintain and upgrade their IT setups, especially the FOSS part of these projects. Furthermore this would give people a great chance to work together to handle bigger international projects and get trusted by customers.

Why it is interesting for customers

  • great selection of people to work with
  • easy to build teams
  • clear pricing structure
  • no risk if CTS escrow offer is used, even if international teams are built

Why it is interesting for job and contract seekers

  • great way to work with companies worldwide
  • possibility to work in international projects
  • making money as employee or working self-employed
  • clear pricing structure, no 5$ projects
  • possibility to use escrow to make customers and yourself feel comfortable

Helping FOSS projects

  • Project members should donate a percentage of their income to FOSS projects to help the maintainers to work full-time on their projects. Also EURAFRI will donate parts of the membership fee and donations to FOSS projects.

The Basics

The final idea is to build a world wide IT support and service offering directory including all self-employed offers and job seekers. Furthermore customers are able to post their projects in it. It is required that there is a serious payment for the project or job. No 5$ or other “I am cheaper” projects are allowed. Customers are willing to pay a serious price for high quality service. Pricing will be public available in the directory.

Easy handling via EURAFRI Non-Profit Organization

To be within the law Karl suggested that the Platform is built as EURAFRI project and posting to the platform is available to all EURAFRI members for free. Read access should be allowed for the public. Letting only EURAFRI members post also removes the problem with spam and anonymous service offering, which are also not welcome at serious customers. They want to know the people they work with and because we are based in the EU it is a legal requirement too.

Secure for both sides of the contracts

CTS, as 1985 founded EU company based in Austria and Germany will offer a escrow service to give everybody the chance to work with international customers. Escrow will be available as IBAN and SWIFT Bank account service. Means customers pays into the escrow and money is released after the job is done. That way customer has a long term company as escrow partner to make sure they are not scammed and members working for them are sure to receive the payment if the job is done. Escrow is optional, but will help a lot to make customers feel comfortable.

Communication

We will communicate using Riot/Matrix which has proven as great tool for end-to-end encrypted, decentralized collaboration. EURAFRI already has a Matrix server setup for its members. So it is easy to use it for all members on Linux, Mac, Windows, Android and IOS.

Furthermore the EURAFRI forum could be used for detailed offerings.

Billing and Payments

Billing and payments are done between the EURAFRI members. EURAFRI does not charge a fee for any business the EURAFRI members does. It is your business, so it is your money. EURAFRI is founded as Austria based Non-Profit organization and the operation is funded by memberships and donations only.

If the escrow service is used a fee is charged by CTS to handle banking (transfer charges, …) and legal (bookkeeping, lawyers, tax,…) costs. There will be a price list for it, after the project is setup. But escrow is optional and there is no requirement to use it.

Contact

If you are interested and want to be part of the “Worldwide - FOSS preferred - IT-Support project” feel free to contact Karl via Riot ( https://eurafri.com/info-whatsinside-riot/ ) at

karl@matrix.eurafri.com

to get invited to the projects rooms. Please remember we are in time zone UTC+2 and our opening times are MO-DO 09:00-17:00 and FR 09:00-12:00.

Next steps

As soon as we have 20 project members we will decide about the directory software and finally launch the project.

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