The General Formal Ontology (GFO) is a top-level ontology that has been developed by the Onto-Med Research Group since the early 2000s. Since that time several new theoretical results have been achieved as well as numerous projects have utilized the ontology, especially in complex domains such as bioinformatics and medical computer science. This leads to the need for an up-to-date overview of GFO and access to its applications.

This paper represents the first step towards introducing the GFO 2.0 framework, which aims at the integration of the work that is already present, but scattered in various publications, and its provision as a ready-to-use and reusable framework. For this purpose we summarize key features of GFO so far, outline a novel modular architecture and survey first modules for GFO 2.0, linking to applications. Finally, a rigorous and systematic development process is indicated.