Syngenio Part of Green Software Foundation

As you know, parallel to the Green Software Design (GSD) initiative of Syngenio AG, the globally oriented Green Software Foundation (GSF) was founded last year. We were the first European IT company to become a member of the GSF. The interview with Jürgen Funke and the interview with me, Elmar Borgmeier, on the GSF website explain why and what for.

We were able to cause a surprise not only during the interviews, because we had already dealt intensively with Green Software beforehand. The entry into the working groups was similarly positive. In contrast, many other participants, including committed and important ones, have only been dealing with the topic in depth since their membership in the GSF. We were able to bring in things that had been clarified in the scientific literature years ago. For example, that software does not produce direct emissions, and that one must therefore distinguish precisely between software and software systems (i.e. including hardware) in formulations. And of course, we were able to bring in the thinking behind our Expertyzer.

A small digression: I am always surprised, even in other contexts, how much of a head start we have over other organizations. It’s not like we’ve been thinking about this forever. Apparently, a larger team has been looking at it in our organization, and we’ve found a stringent way to combine concepts and practice. We’re also limiting ourselves to the type of software we’re comfortable with. This focus helps, of course.

In the meantime, we have become familiar with the way GSF works. At least as far as that is possible, because there is still a lot in flux. As a small example: Of the four working groups, two have already changed their names. Trademark” (or something like that) became “Policy”, “Innovation” became “Opensource”. The GSF is a sub-organization of the Linux-Foundation, which has influenced the way of working from the beginning. But as you can see from the renamings, the spirit of the Linux Foundation still has to prevail on some levels. (After all, the founding members of GSF did not come from the open source scene, to say the least). One major advantage is that by participating in the working groups, we get to see what projects are being started, and how things are going in the projects. Compressed results and more unvarnished than they are formulated in the later publications on the website. This is information that we in turn can bring to the Green Software Design Community. Thus, their members also benefit from our membership in the Green Software Foundation. If you personally have specific questions or are just curious, feel free to post in the forum.