Advisory Board
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General information
The AB's primary function is to provide the Board of Directors with advice, guidance and proposals. The BoD is attentive to the AB's advice, guidance and proposals, but is not under any obligation to heed them. The BoD can consult the AB whenever the BoD considers it appropriate; likewise, the AB can submit guidance, opinions and proposals to the BoD whenever the AB considers it appropriate.
Regular workflow of the AB
It is recommended that the AB and the BoD hold one (1) meeting per year to discuss Projects and other matters they both consider necessary. In principle, the content and minutes of this meeting will be made public; however, some parts of the proceedings may be kept confidential (refer to Transparency, Conduct of Business, and Confidentiality). See also Meeting organization as a check list for the meeting.
The list of members of the AB must be published via a commonly-consulted public medium, and must be maintained up to date at all times. The Community must be immediately notified of any changes whatsoever to the membership, composition and functioning of the AB, through an explicit public announcement via a commonly-consulted public medium.
Advisory Board responsibilities
- Receives and actively provides input and discussion on topics sent to the Advisory Board list or discussed at Advisory Board meetings. Topics include things like financial reports, project status, and event planning.
- Promotes the software developed and provided by the Foundation such as LibreOffice. The Document Foundation and Advisory Board members often work together to this promotion, and members are expected to work with the Document Foundation to promote the products when opportunities arise. For example, by speaking about LibreOffice at industry events or at company or government meetings where people are not familiar with LibreOffice.
- Identifies/presents opportunities for collaboration and alerts The Document Foundation to significant relevant developments within other industries or working groups. This can include things like suggesting a Foundation presence at an established event or pointing out opportunities for partnership and making introductions to other companies and organizations.
- Helps The Document Foundation grow and improve as an organization. Identifying services that The Document Foundation can provide for The Document Foundation members, Advisory Board members and users. This can include things like suggesting a local event or project shortfalls (documentation, integration, support) that could be addressed by The Document Foundation resources.
- Provides mentorship and advice to community members working on projects like marketing, finance and fundraising. Mentorship can be provided directly by the Advisory Board member or by others in their company.
- Ensures that their company is involved and engaged with upstream discussion and events where relevant. For example, ensure that the appropriate people are subscribed to the right lists and involved with upstream decisions.
- Attends and supports The Document Foundation events that align with the Advisory Board member's needs.
- Offers guidance, advice and resources. This guidance can include not only opportunities for how to acquire money but other ways to solve problems. Examples include helping to solve our system administration shortage, planning representation at events, etc.
Composition of the Advisory Board
Current members of the Advisory Board are (unless otherwise stated, since June 2011)
| Members | Since |
|---|---|
| Software in the Public Interest (SPI) | |
| Collabora | from September 2013 on |
| City of Munich (Landeshauptstadt München) | from January 2015 on |
| KDE e.V. | from June 2016 on |
| GNOME | from June 2016 on |
| Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) | from August 2016 on |
| Adfinis SyGroup AG | from May 2019 on |
| allotropia software GmbH | from January 2021 on |
| IHC Invest Inc. | from February 2021 on |
| OSBA | from January 2024 on |
Advisory Board Alumnies
Former members of the Advisory Board are (unless otherwise stated, joined first in June 2011)
- UK Government Digital Services (from January 2019)
- Red Hat
- Hypra (from June 2021 on)
- CIB Software (from November 2014 on)
- SUSE
- Intel (from February 2012 on)
- Lanedo (from November 2012 on)
- King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) (from June 2013 on)
- Inter-Ministry Mutualisation for an Open Productivity Suite (MIMO) (from June 2013 on)
- AMD (from July 2013 on)
- CloudOn (from September 2013 on)
- ITOMIG (from July 2014 on)
- Studio Storti (from September 2013 on)
- Canonical (from July 2016 on)
- BPM-Conseil (from May 2018 on)
- Free Software Foundation
- LLC RusBITech-Astra (from January 2015 on)
- Kopano b.v. (from September 2017 on)
Advisory board admission guideline
Advisory Board
Admission to the Advisory Board is at the sole discretion of the board, with strong preference to sponsors going beyond the minimal annual donation and taking into account certified LibreOffice developers among the employees. Sponsorship of the LibreOffice conference might be taken into account in the year of joining the advisory board too.
The composition of the current advisory board should continue to be shown on TDF or LibreOffice webpages in two sections:
- members (this lists members that are also sponsors and members that are either NGOs or gain temporary free admission for ongoing contributions)
- advisory board alumni (this lists former sponsors, that have dropped out)
Sponsorship
The Document Foundation continues its sponsor program. Based on company size we encourage miminum annual donations:
- 20,000 USD
- 10,000 USD -- companies with more than 1000 employees
- 1,000 USD -- companies with more than 50 employees
- 500 USD -- companies with less than 50 employees
Sponsors will be listed on the TDF or LibreOffice webpage, this guideline aims to provide consistency in treatment of donors. Access to the advisory board continues to be based solely on the decision of the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, which will aim to be consistent in its admission. The composition of the current advisory board should continue to be shown on TDF or LibreOffice webpages.