TDF/BoD Meetings/2022
Minutes 2022-12-19
The Document Foundation
Formal Board of Directors Meeting 2022-12-19
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-12-19
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Gábor Kelemen, Cor Nouws, Paolo Vecchi, Thorsten Behrens, Emiliano Vavassori (joined 17:15 UTC) Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei Membership Committee Members - Uwe Altmann Membership Committee Substitute Members - Community - "Kiria" (joined 17:22 UTC) Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Ilmari Lauhakangas, Stéphane Guillou, Sophie Gautier, Hossein Nourikhah, Guilhem Moulin
Representation: Gabriel Masei for Ayhan Yalçınsoy
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations?
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
- Lázsló affiliation changed (dropping NISZ, now his own company)
Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any of the listed agenda items?
- 1. (none)
- 2. (none)
- 3. (none)
- 4. (none)
The public meeting commences at 17:10 UTC / 18:10 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
Public Part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 minutes)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
- what about Ayhan? (Stephan)
* missing most time
- actual schedule issues (Thorsten)
* did explain why he couldn't make it
- Discourse tested? (Sophie)
* what is the board's position/decision?
- ask Guilhem (Thorsten)
- happy to have it asap (Thorsten)
* everyone needs an account, but not a blocker * go first with discuss list
- at the long run we will end up with Discourse (Uwe)
* bind to SSO? * misunderstanding; one have to manually login first
Bugzilla topic
- opportunity to work on it (Ilmari)
* budget needed * sum nearly around sum for Jitsi * manageable sum * no SQL feature * nice to have this decided * prolly not that huge amount of work left * any thoughts?
- some OSS funding (Thorsten)
* small question mark in general * spend donation money here? * has to be balanced out * prospective out others
- work together with Bugzilla people (Guilhem)
* win-win situation
- rely on OSS tool (Thorsten)
* possible board won't find a spin * previous funding?
- don't remember (Florian)
- important have that maintained (Thorsten)
- minimum (Ilmari)
* now more modest * first push * KDE, Linux Foundation
- might good to share w/ Advisory Board, get some ideas (Thorsten)
* if not plausible altenative to that * timeline?
- happy about the proposal doc (Ilmari)
* no prob if delayed
- will earmark (Throrsten)
* discuss how to structure * get Bugzilla 6.0 released
- review in January (Florian)
* budget carry over available * enables our people * kick off next year
- thx to Ilmari (Thorsten)
* two options * carry away or support project
The public meeting ends at 17:31 UTC / 18:31 Berlin time.
Private Part
2. Discussion: Status update strategic goals (all, 20 minutes)
Rationale: Discussion and follow-up from the items discussed in Berlin and Milano
3. Discussion: Plans and initial budget ideas for 2023 (all, 20 minutes)
Rationale: The primary agenda item for this formal meeting is the discussion of the first draft of our 2023 budget, that we will finalize and approve early next year.
4. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all 10 minutes)
The private meeting ends at 18:27 UTC / 19:27 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-12-12
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-12-12
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-12-12
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Cor Nouws, László Németh, Gábor Kelemen, Emiliano Vavassori
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei
Membership Committee Members - Uwe Altmann, Marina Latini
Membership Committee Substitute Members -
Community -
Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier, Olivier Hallot,
Representation: Gabriel Masei for Ayhan Yalçınsoy
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations?
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
- Lázsló affiliation changed (dropping NISZ, now his own company)
Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any of the listed agenda items?
- 1.
- 2. Cor, Thorsten, Gabor
- 3.
- 4. Thorsten, Gabor
- 5.
- 6. Cor, Thorsten, Paolo, Gabor
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
AGENDA
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask
questions to the board and about TDF
- no question raised
2. Status Report: Hiring TDF developers (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
* next steps & progress
- a bit unclear (Florian)
* publish this year * perhaps get input during/after FOSDEM
- go quickly (Thorsten)
* get the word out
- still issues with interests in the vote (Paolo)
- shelve (Thorsten)
- discuss how to fix on Wednesday (Marina)
- perhaps argue abstentions (Thorsten)
* but not the whole vote
- have a look at the process (Cor)
- shelving for a little while (Thorsten)
* no immediate hurry
- get to the bottom of CoI in general (Paolo)
- annoying discussion (Thorsten)
* like to move on
- solution on the table (Marina)
- shared interest that we want devs (Thorsten)
3. Status Report: Strategy 2022 Items - Status (Thorsten Behrens, Cor
Nouws, Gabriel Masei, Gabor Kelemen, 5 mins)
Regular reporting about status of the Strategic items in
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/1129829
- very little to say (Cor)
* urgent thing to fix * work to do for us
- need to make progress (Thorsten)
* improve at next, next meeting
4. Status Report: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian
Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* upgrade cycles - no easy way to get recurring purchases/donations
* for the moment, don't cut users off of updates?
- numbers shared in the last meeting (Florian)
* some forth and back * seems work fine * discussion w MS, but not a blocker * issue not solved yet * didn't hear back from MS yet
- going to escalate (Thorsten)
- internal ping pong (Florian)
- Italo might have a contact there (Thorsten)
* perhaps Simon * want not to solve by itself
- will try a contact (Marina)
- other option to make some noise (Thorsten)
* but try other options first * can not sit and wait * see next week * issue with updates * no immediate need * get donation page in face of the people
- any experience you can share as you have been working with the Microsoft store? (Paolo)
* perhaps ways, political ways
- some fraction would purchase again (Thorsten)
* spend mor time now? * perhaps re-visit in 3 months * in app purchase need engineering * how long valid? * first need in app fuctionality * disable features? * sth to look at the options * implementing and maintaining over the time * generate donation/income from providing the sw * stores getting more important (esp. for Apple users) than direct dl * re-visit in 3 months
5. Discuss: Board Quiet Time - XMas/New Year's Eve (Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
Proposing a well deserved break for the board, as well as ED and Stephan.
So a vacation and overall quiet time from say Dec 19 to Jan 5?
Of course with an exception: if some TDF-crucial-stuff pops up
(decided by ED+chair/deputy), that can get attention during the
vacation.
- x-mas break, switch off emails (Thorsten)
* available via matrix * pls respect quiet time
- important things to discuss in private (Paolo)
- decide about ~2 topics before x-mas (Cor)
- have two more calls (Thorsten)
* prepare via email * sometimes better to go slow
- important call on wednesday (Marina)
* focus on that
- wednesday two slots, pls join both if possible (Florian)
- maybe not available for both (Thorsten)
- unanimous: silent week cw52
6. Status Report, Discuss: Atticization of Online (tdf-board, 20 mins)
* ESC provided evaluation
* discussed briefly on the dev list:
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-October/089485.html
* conclusion seems to be: not enough activity to keep out of the
attic for the moment
* in any case, make clear from https://git.libreoffice.org/online and
https://github.com/LibreOffice/online that this is not maintained
anymore
- shelve for today (Thorsten)
* since Milan now news * to reactivate required needs must be fulfilled
- consider first CoI (Paolo)
- will stop us from to do the right thing (Thorsten)
* best way to heal the bad experience is to put it to rest
- keep in mind what happend during the last two years (Paolo)
- tension around (Thorsten)
* no one reall happy w situation
- disclaimer needed (Emiliano)
* about status of the project * not the time now * focus on more important things
- use boilerplate from attic proposal (Thorsten)
* figure out w Guilhem how to proceed w repo * remove files
- Thorsten, Cor, Gabor having an interest (Paolo)
* working for eg. vendor
- quorum requirements (Thorsten)
* interest per se no problem, CoI is * expect all can vote * eg. one +1 others to abstain
- removing of files is not problematic (Emiliano)
* is free sw
- declare interest and take you out (Paolo)
- shelve discussion to some later stage (Thorsten)
- leave decision as is (Paolo)
- carve out not controversial (Thorsten)
- should delay all of it a bit (Marina)
- hesitate to overburden wednesday meeting (Thorsten)
* shelving is not the right way
- looking forward to discussion of interest, PI, CoI (Cor)
* not possible within 3 remaining minutes
- agree on that (Paolo)
* propably no quorum here
- not of the opinion to take it (Emiliano)
* let's give us the time to evaluate
- see next board meetings (Thorsten)
* will come up again and again * need clear decision
- at least let's promote the project (Paolo)
* hasn't be done till now
- definitely need to discuss further
The public meeting ends at 17:59 UTC / 18:59 Berlin time.
Private Part
7. Status Report: HR item (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
8. Discuss: Legal working group setup (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
9. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after
sending the agenda
The private meeting ends at 18:27 UTC / 19:27 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-11-28
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-11-28
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-11-28
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, László Németh, Paolo Vecchi, Gábor Kelemen, Cor Nouws,
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei
Membership Committee Members - Marina Latini, Uwe Altmann, Gabriele Ponzo
Membership Committee Substitute Members -
Community - "Jeremy", "Jelüde"
Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Guilhem Moulin, Ilmari Lauhakangas, Olivier Hallot, Christian Lohmaier,
Representation: Gabriel Masei for Emiliano Vavassori
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations?
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
- Lázsló affiliation changed (dropping NISZ, now his own company)
Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any of the listed agenda items?
- 2. Thorsten, Gabor, Cor
- 4. Paolo, Thorsten, Gabor, Cor, Laszlo
- 6. Thorsten, Gabor, Laszlo
The public meeting commences at 17:06 UTC / 18:06 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask
questions to the board and about TDF
- none
2. Status Report, Discuss: Hiring TDF developers (tdf-board, 5 mins)
* are there new ideas how to reach compromise?
* are there new proposals in the works?
* what else do people suggest to move this forward?
- vote that didn't pass (Thorsten)
* sth coming up * lively debates * any more proposal? no further proposals apparently
- had a look on Cor's proposal (Marina)
* explicitly especially on LO core * what about other (sub-)modules? * eg. translations, dictionaries, etc.
- sure it is not meant to forget that (Cor)
* maybe add it to the proposal, if not too much wording
* or in a pre-vote text to clarify
* it is maybe relevant for a11y, CTL too
- ok for basic things eg. dictionary (Laszlo)
* maybe it's also core
- was not meant exclusive (Thorsten)
* e.g. if lode, or dev-tools need a commit, that's certainly fine?
- to Cor: who is behind the 'new' proposal (Marina)
- I did write a short proposal (Cor)
* built on an idea from months ago * picked that up some weeks ago * but obviously including all input from all people working on the old proposal * then over the weeks all BoD members apart from Paolo and Kendy have been contacted
- why excluding Paolo? (Marina)
* Kendy not in the loop
- as explained in a recent mail, it is very hard in the board to be effective with our time
* so doing some work in a small group can help
* which is quite common, to prepare/contact various people etc.
* and the proposal is the same: TDF can hire devs, so let's do it
- again why Paolo excluded? (Marina)
- No one is excluded, this is a draft and people can comment (Thorsten)
- can only postpone other questions (Marina)
- lets try pls discussing the actual proposal (Thorsten)
- impress is excluded? (Marina)
- only underloved applications there (Thorsten)
* Draw is sharing a lot of code with Impress too (Cor)
- Paolo not informed about the proposal (Gabriele)
* read a lot of emails about behavior * fame is damaged by this kind of behavior * want to know about
- obvious a need to be discussed (Thorsten)
* perhaps in private call * no need to finish today
- interesting to understand why I am excluded (Paolo)
* stating falses * new proposal is total bullshit * Cor and other BoD members never had a look at legal advice
- here not the place to discuss this (Throsten)
- MC to investigate this (Paolo)
- you are lying (Thorsten)
* lied about my agreement with the old proposal as well
- legal advise say don't do that (Paolo)
* I did of course read legal advice on the old proposal (Cor)
* that was on different content and different wording..
- constructive proposal (Thorsten)
- Gabor: in which way were you involved? (Stephan)
* got proposal from Cor; had a call where I gave my opinion (Gabor)
3. Vote, Discuss: Move board-discuss & tdf-members to Discourse (Florian Effenberger, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
* discuss remaining question
* decide on moving ahead or not
Materials:
* test instance https://communitytest.documentfoundation.org/c/board-discuss/194
* import options and shortcomings, see
https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3567#note-15 to #note-19.
* timeline for possible migration?
- what is the timeline here? (Thorsten)
- can move archives on short notice (Guilhem)
* import subscriptions * two things here * board-discuss * memberlist a bit more effort need * mc tooling not productive yet
- what about members who have not got their accounts? (Uwe)
- call for a vote (Thorsten)
* motion: move board-discuss to discourse * unanimous consent
4. Status Report, Discuss: Atticization of Online (tdf-board, 5 mins)
* ESC provided evaluation
* discussed briefly on the dev list:
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-October/089485.html
* conclusion seems to be: not enough activity to keep out of the
attic for the moment
Paolo leaves 17:42 UTC/18:42 Berlin
- hotness of the item (Thorsten)
* shelve it? * skipped
5. Status Report: Strategy 2022 Items - Status (Thorsten Behrens, Cor Nouws, Gabriel Masei, Gabor Kelemen, 5 mins)
Regular reporting about status of the Strategic items in
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/1129829
- shared with Gabor last week (Cor)
- still not presentable, will work on it soon (Gabor)
- how to structure that? (Thorsten)
* where to reach many members?
- learning by doing internal a good place (Cor)
* people breaching internal
- board should make public the 10% of budget (Uwe)
* but internal discussion * not a lot of money * collect ideas * don't think there will be a lot of proposals
- private or public? (Thorsten)
- vote is not binding, board is responsible for all (Uwe)
6. Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* upgrade cycles - how many updates will users get?
- shared numbers last week (Florian)
- MS store: ~110 purchase now (cloph)
* a lot back and forth w MS
- it's a desaster (Thorsten)
* at least we are live
- running again in the same error (cloph)
* Apple in comparison without major probs * some headache w Ventura * reduced Apple staff actually
- regarding updates (Thorsten)
* year of upgrade not doable
- reduce pricing as time passes (cloph)
- need to purchase a new one after a while (Thorsten)
- stores don't like having diff. versions at the same time (cloph)
* best solution from my POV reduce price with the time * problem of review writing
- stick with one version (Thorsten)
- provide updates until *we* decide to make a cut (cloph)
* have to check what user have paid for
- finally get mandatory updates (Thorsten)
* users stay not stucked w old versions * try sth outside of mainstream * board to deliberate
- app bundle reference / story: https://blog.kaleidoscope.app/2022/03/11/app-bundles/
The public meeting ends at 18:01 UTC / 19:01 Berlin time.
Private Part
7. Vote, Status Report: HR item #1 (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
8. Status Report: HR item #2 (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
Cor leaves at 18:08 UTC / 19:08 Berlin time Florian leaves at 18:15 UTC / 19:15 Berlin time Stephan leaves at 18:16 UTC / 19:16 Berlin time
9. Discuss: Legal working group setup (tdf-board, 20 mins)
Continue discussion from last board call
- skipped
10. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after
sending the agenda
The private meeting ends at 18:16 UTC / 19:16 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-11-14
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-11-14
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-11-14
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Cor Nouws, Lazslo Nemeth, Gabor Kelemen, Emiliano Vavassori Board Deputy Members - Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Community - T.K. Team - Ilmari Lauhakangas, Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Guilhem Moulin, Hossein Nourikhah
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 6 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations?
* no changes, current affiliations see election page: https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html * Lázsló changes affiliation to his own company, dropping NISZ
Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any of the listed agenda items?
* topic #5: Thorsten, Cor, Gabor
The public meeting commences at 17:05 UTC / 18:05 Berlin time.
AGENDA
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
* any q.? (Thorsten)
* none
2. Status Report, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, kendy, Paolo Vecchi, 5 mins)
* update on merged proposal * further discussions, if needed * otherwise, re-evaluate our approach.
* some updates
* proposal completed (Paolo)
* there was only one last sentence left to deal with
* but is covered by the agreed text in page one
* so I believe the proposal should be voted
* I'm still missing information (Cor)
* asked comments from Mike
* what he wrote on relations between TDF and companies
* looks very limited in the light of TDF
* and I had expected a negative advice on the text on page 1
* properly created agreement on such limitations nightmare
* from legal aspects and organizational wise
* very different from contract on properly tendered project
* not ready for vote (Thorsten)
* Kendy resigned because no compromise was reached
* stop here and restart, from a clean slate
* if quick action is required instead, tender out as contracted work?
* What you are saying doesn't make sense (Paolo)
* we agreed on various compromises
* Kendy resigned because of the last small sentence?
* clear push from companies in the document to be removed
* refer to page 1 of the draft solving the issue
* seems number of people disagree (Thorsten)
* also a misquote on what exactly Kendy (and others) where not happy about
* is quite wrong (Paolo)
* not good to come out with this statement
* looking at the whole discussion with Paolo (Cor)
* astonishing efforts made
* but it is clear that the real problem at different level
Emiliano joins at 18:19
* really looks as if Paolo's behavior shows a lack of understanding
* fundamental principle of TDF being a community
* also the balance of cooperating companies
* shared interests, statutes restricting influence
* Paolo's comments show no understanding
* one of the board's major responsibilities to maintain a modus operandi that best serves TDF's goals
* respecting, understanding and supporting synergy vital
* Paolo’s personal and business situation ignored so far
* failed to establish a business relation with Collabora and CIB
* interested in other ways to get online solutions?
* a one sided, negative, attitude towards ecosystem companies?
* now telling TDF/Directors what they should do?
* all this has lead to a bad proposal?
* the board should look into this issue first
* What has this rant got to do with the proposal? (Paolo)
* TDF is legal entity and should do things in a legal way
* think why we are at a point where we need to fix a lot of things
* as directors we must follow our fiduciary duties
* Kendy did not resign because of a single sentence (Laszlo)
* much more
* ecosystem is part of the community
* see history we come from, staroffice
* company offering a software
* we need to be careful
3. Status Report: Strategy planning (Cor Nouws, 5 mins)
* Gábor and Cor doing some initial work, not yet that much
* waiting for more and for others to join
* would have loved to follow up (Emiliano)
* alas could not at the moment
4. Vote, Discuss: Move board-discuss to Discourse (Florian Effenberger, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
* discuss remaining question
* decide on moving ahead or not
* materials:
* test instance https://communitytest.documentfoundation.org/c/board-discuss/194
* import options and shortcomings, see https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3567#note-15 to #note-19.
Motion: ask infra team to setup test instance for both tdf-internal and board-discuss
- invite members to give feedback - after 3 weeks, evalulate, and make final decision on the moving/migrating
* are we quorate? (Emiliano) * not sure if decisions can take with Ayhan not beeing a full member (Florian) * email vote? (Thorsten) * procedures have to be checked
5. Status Report, Discuss: Atticization of Online (tdf-board, 10 mins)
* ESC provided evaluation * discussed briefly on the dev list: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-October/089485.html * conclusion seems to be: not enough activity to keep out of the attic for the moment * continue discussion from last board call
* skipped
6. Status Report: Status of CoI investigation against Paolo (tdf-board, 5 mins)
* update on progress & next steps
* no much update, still in progress (Thorsten) * hopefully we have somewhat this week (Cor) * what about the timing? CoI retroactive? (Paolo) * you put that question in your mail (Cor) * we will answer this in the reply * changed agreement (Paolo) * why such procedure takes so much time? (Stephan) * constructive work needs time (Cor) * and members (both new and older) distracted too often * especially with the many mails from Paolo * want to rest it here (Cor) * when board started investigation? (Paolo) * all I want is to get answered questions * that question will be answered (Cor) * and a policy is not needed for an interest to exist
The public meeting ends at 17:49 UTC / 18:49 Berlin time.
Private Part
7. Vote, Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
8. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
9. Discuss: Legal working group setup (tdf-board, 30 mins)
10. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda
The private meeting ends at 18:10 UTC / 19:10 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-11-08 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-11-08
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-10-31
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-10-31
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-10-31
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Cor Nouws, Gábor Kelemen, Emiliano Vavassori, Jan Holešovský
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei
Membership Committee Members -
Membership Committee Substitute Members -
Community - Simon Phipps, "bearon", "j."
Team - Stephan Ficht, Sophie Gautier, Guilhem Moulin, Italo Vignoli
Representation: Gabriel Masei for László Németh
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Interests logged: - Jan Holešovský: online - Cor Nouws: app store - Thorsten Behrens: online, and appstore - Gábor Kelemen: appstore and online - Paolo Vecchi: no personal interests! neither in Online, nor any other online office
-- Incomplete minutes, edited manually & locally after technical issues on Nextcloud! --
AGENDA:
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
2. Status Report: board strategy planning work (Cor Nouws, 5 mins)
* status update and next steps
* based on the Milano strategy workshop
* materials: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/1129829
3. Status Report, Discuss: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian
Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
* Cloph to work out a proposal, which update regime with roughly one year of updates (regardless of purchasing time) could work
* one year of updates seems reasonable
* vouchers do not scale, creating internal, staggered releases on the stores might do (to group users together, so timings for EOL can be ~independent from purchasing dates)
5. Discuss: OSI initiative on FLOSS in app stores (Thorsten, Simon, 10 mins)
* OSI is currently asking for input & experience from FLOSS projects
* agree on who does what til when
Simon:
- identify people from windows, apple, playstore and other app store
- demonstrate the burden they put on floss devs
- prefers the full story, how ttdf managed to publish
- tdf did not do the work - a great deal was already done (in particular mac), and see off the non-complient
- prefers an end-to-end story, how to create the libreoffice apps in the store
- rather than the last few months
- more: how the story is told, what burden is placed - to take the pain away
- tdf is affiliate with osi - perfers the board to provide the a full case story - so they can use it as part
paolo:
- want to tell the story from the tdf side
simon: corrects paolo, no - we want the full story
- collabora/cib doing a great deal of work
- tdf pikced it up, while it was open source
6. Vote, Discuss: Get some activity started in Brussels
(Thorsten, Italo, 5 mins)
* Italo made a proposal to the board
* motion: approve this year's travel expenses from the (still plentiful) marketing budget
* Result of vote: Unanimous approval.
<private>
Italo:
- start basic activity, informing stakeholerss in brussels
- parliament, commission, digit, ofe
- those structures in brussels, by particiupating at OFE meetings, online
- two are physical - in brussels, and barcelona
- workshops from digit - one in early december - around 8-10 travels
- start following them, and attending, reporting to the board what is discussed
- then decide if actions, or investments make sense
- murena, expressed interest
- one of the options, be part of group of organisaitons
- sponsoring, paying in brussels
- simple, basic activity, before taking an action
Simon:
- osba and fairphone - osi also engaging actively
- sending member of staff, to educate MP
- FSFE also hired one
- there's a group of floss orgs - tdf exceptionally welcome
- how to best apply ourselves - our enimies well funded & resourced
- having italo in the room, is great, coordinated messaging
- arrange education opportunities, to educate legistlater
- leverage AB, to
Paolo:
- also connected with OFE, and the commission
- doing education
- digital market act
- for himself - from his position, working there
</private>
7. Status Report, Discuss: Atticization of Online (tdf-board, 10 mins)
* ESC provided evaluation * discussed briefly on the dev list: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-October/089485.html * conclusion seems to be: not enough activity to keep out of the attic for the moment * auto-atticize according to https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00744.html ?
paolo: no influence on the matter, since being under investigation
thorsten: lets not overdo it
paolo: lets remove any influence at all
Cor: proposal is about sane repos, not about blocking development people complaining promised development but didn't deliver
emiliano: leaves, not sharing the ideas listed before
paolo: never properly discussed and agreed
thorsten: lets find devs. this is our task
paolo: this is a policital issue - certain items coming up
- the history is not black and white
- policial issue - when pushing for it, people would get annoyed
- recommends to do something useful
- fixing the personal interest
- takes months to deal with accusations for him for months
- drop talking about online - review with conflict of interest
- so we avoid all the mistakes
guilhelm:
- we've repos on gerrit, read-only
- not obvious, that repo is deprecated
- does not know, if the atticisation is the right / easiest way
- if the argument is: not maintained
- don't want it in write mode
thorsten:
- only thing I care - it is clear its not maintained
paolo:
- put a readme where libo is now - review atticisation policy now
stephan:
- a lot of energy wasted to put it to atticisation
- why put that much energy to put it into the attic?
cor:
- not against looking at Guilhems idea
- but - no reason to change anything in the atticization process
paolo: waiting for dev proposal, can vote then
kendy: not ready
Private Part
8. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
9. Status Report: Hiring QA analyst (Florian Effenberger, Gabor Kelemen, 5 mins)
Status QA Analyst hiring process.
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
10. Status Report: Reporting from the oversight groups (Thorsten Behrens, tdf-board, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
* Second quarter for the new board is up, so let's hear reports
from the various oversight groups.
11. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after
sending the agenda
finished: 19:08
Note: The minutes were unfortunately lost for technical reasons, so there are no official minutes, here above are some transcripts from participants.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-10-17
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-10-17
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-10-17
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Cor Nouws, Paolo Vecchi, Laszlo Nemeth, Gabor Kelemen, Jan Holesovsky (from 16:06 UTC/18:06 Berlin on), Emiliano Vavassori (from 16:09 UTC/18:09 Berlin on) Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei Membership Committee Members - Uwe Altmann Membership Committee Substitute Members - Community - Simon Phipps, "Harold", "Pk", "Member", "Fellow Jitster" Team - Florian Effenberger, Ilmari Lauhakangas, Sophie Gautier, Guilhem Moulin, Olivier Hallot
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations?
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any of the listed agenda items?
- Thorsten/Gabor: item 3, Windows Store (as former vendor of LibreOffice Vanilla there)
- Cor/Kendy: item 3, Apple Store (depending or where discussion goes)
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
* None from the community * Received CoI statement 10 mins before call, no legal items mentioned, asks to have in public (Paolo) * item has 5 mins, might have other business today, packed agenda - discuss today? (Thorsten) * suggest to have it another public or private meeting, deserves more than 5 mins (Cor)
2. Discuss: Progress Strategy - using LibOCon discussion result and combining with Survey results (Cor Nouws, 15 mins)
Folder: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/1129829 File: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/1129830
* status report & next steps
* important to talk about how to organize this in a smart way
* discussed in Berlin, had ~20 items (Cor)
* Milan workshop showed community voice for priorities, report shared by Uwe, now sent to tdf-internal, quick summary:
* several categories
* important and urgent, board's agenda:
* double # of devs;
* significant increase of non-EU contributors and entities;
* two more companies into ecosystem
* important, but not urgent - have mentor
* various items
* not urgent, but urgent - delegation
* various items
* proposal to setup working group for the four important items and move forward (Thorsten)
* anyone raises hands directly?
* raising for #5, #6 (Thorsten)
* volunteer for #1 and #3 (Cor)
* interested in raising number of devs (Gabor)
* should not be board-only, but as many people as possible (Thorsten)
* holding the pen here (Cor), nagging people :)
* make sure around all items either
* teams start to work (board+members)
* mentoring/delegation is taken care for.
( Note: the three sections and items they hold)
* Important and urgent (the BoD agenda)
* double number of developers
* significantly increase contributions from non-EU communities & entities
* in 2 years, get two additional companies into the ecosystem
* (be the largest FLOSS community in the world, without major conflicts anymore – (ranked close to this segment)
(For each of these: a card, names, a plan...)
* Important, but not urgent (mentor needed)
* have 10% of project budget decided/voted on by members
* substantially increase diversity in the project
* (have teaching LibreOffice programming & coding details be university / computer science subject – (ranked close to this segment)
(For each of these: (if not already done): a card, a mentor, ...)
* Not that Important, but urgent (to delegate immediately)
* direct democracy implemented via decidim
* catch up with the industry (to be good and be seen)
* move away from desktop-only
* be fully interoperable
* be the largest FLOSS community in the world, without major conflicts anymore
(For each of these: (if not already done): a card, an ‘external’ owner, ...)
3. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* live in Apple app store since early September
* Windows App Store 64 bit approved, 32 bit pending - plan is to go live this week
* revenues from last month
* Impressions: 227,900
* Page Views: 18,230
* Conversion Rate: 1.53%
* Units Sold: 1,970
* Estimated Proceeds: € 9.500
* Proceeds per Paying User: € 5,59
* upgrade cycles - how many updates will users get?
* messaging: paying for convenience/"donation" (Thorsten, Paolo)
* no lifetime updates, what's a reasonable time for updates?
* avoid shipping .0 - we should start with .3 or .4 for the shop, template should be process we use for updater across versions (Thorsten)
* should ask Cloph about workload, ai cloph to work out a proposal, which update regime with roughly one year of updates (regardless of purchasing time) could work
* one year of updates seems reasonable
* vouchers do not scale, creating internal, staggered releases on the stores might do (to group users together, so timings for EOL can be ~independent from purchasing dates)
* Apple has severe limits on # of vouchers (Florian)
4. Vote, Discuss: Move board-discuss to Discourse (Florian Effenberger, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
* discuss remaining question * decide on moving ahead or not? * ai tdf-board please ask participants on board-discuss, how they feel about it? * ai thorsten share link to demo setup again * quick show of hand had 4 in favour, remaining board undecided -> let's not rush it
CoI not discussed today, after unanimous agreement. * I will simply reply to the various errors and misleading answers contained in the reply to my defence and then let the board do what they want with it. (Paolo)
The public meeting ends at 16:52 UTC / 18:52 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-09-27 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-09-27
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-09-26 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-09-26
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-09-19
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-09-19
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-09-19
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Cor Nouws, Gábor Kelemen, Jan Holešovský (Kendy), Paolo Vecchi, László Németh, Emiliano Vavassori Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei Membership Committee Members - Marina Latini Membership Committee Substitute Members - Community - Simon Phipps Team - Christian Lohmaier, Ilmari Lauhakangas, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier, Hossein Nourikhah, Olivier Hallot, Stephan Ficht
Representation: None
AI everyone: revisit representation statement, now that Gabor is full member
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
* any questions? (Thorsten) * none
2. Status Report, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan Holesovsky, Paolo Vecchi, 5 mins)
* should the merged proposal be ready * have a last round of discussion * if conclusive - vote & budget for it otherwise, reevaluate our approach.
References: * Shared folder with the versions: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/apps/files/?dir=/Shared/Developers&fileid=960049
* thanks to Paolo for providing 2.8 (Jan)
* fine with written legal review to ensure we keep HR rules
* one thing not negotiable for me is that the 1/3 rule in the ESC wouldn't apply to TDF
* so far applied to every organization in ESC (including TDF)
* not possible TDF to take over ESC, it needs balance between volunteers, corporate, TDF - ie. balance between all contributors
* 1/3 rule applies to TDF itself (Paolo)
* is related to statutes and CoI policy
* is not political but technical committee (Jan)
* ESC tries consensus
* and decides from technical point of view
* not ok for me to remove this rule
* ESC as committee has no rules nor CoI policy (Paolo)
* ESC is quite balanced, and of course the 1/3rd rule applies (Thorsten)
* seems we are coming to a final proposal (Paolo)
* have issue with long term outsourcing contracts
* and tenders included in proposal
Emiliano joins 18:16
* order mentoring hours (Jan)
* IIRC was even proposed by TDF staff member
* will produce further version
* board fine and ready to vote? (Thorsten)
* let's spend time next week in Milan
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
3. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* app published at app store
* upgrade cycles - how many updates will users get?
* unsolved upgrade cycles (Florian)
* discuss in Milan
* back and forth w Microsoft
* possible to try other channels w MS? (Thorsten)
* perhaps join the action OSI is proposing https://blog.opensource.org/how-to-make-app-stores-friendly-to-open-source/ <https://blog.opensource.org/how-to-make-app-stores-friendly-to-open-source/>? (Simon)
* sounds a good idea, can Florian investigate? (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
4. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
* planning status conference * venue & local setups * sponsors & keynotes * board and staff and MC meetings
* meeting rooms for Monday and Tuesday confirmed
* venue is ok, signage to arrive on Monday
* program finished and published, keynotes scheduled
* catering is in place
* community dinner:
* location confirmed, drinks done, recipes are finalized
* ingredients and tools to be bought this weekend
* location will be shared during opening session
* list of affordable restaurants in the works, will be shared with participants
* also, guide for reaching hotel and venue will be sent soon
* t-shirt in the works
* 4 sponsors, all invoiced
* main sponsor interviews will be published tomorrow
* template sent to all speakers
* what about remote situation? (Thorsten / Marina)
* Italo travelling, will give update (Florian)
* Corona situation? (Gabor)
* actually no restriction in Italy or to cross italian borders (Florian)
* pretty relaxed actually (Emiliano)
* check with your transportation company bringing you in
* good to have masks and self-tests with you in case of
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
5. Discuss: Updating CoC policy (Cor Nouws, 5 mins)
Apparently we have a proposal for a new CoC policy
* maybe prematured to discuss now (Thorsten)
* ok to have this discussion next week (Cor)
* do with existing CoC committee (Thorsten)
* discuss during LibOCon (Marina)
* first idea to keep less people in the loop
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
6. Discuss, Q&A: Move board-discuss to Discourse (Florian Effenberger, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
Intro & quick heads-up
* wrt to possible moderation idea to move a few MLs to Discourse (thorsten) * questions was individuals to be moderated (Florian) * provide modern approach/tooling * Sophie/Guilhem to give more detailed information * generally in favour (Thorsten) * some stick w emails * Discourse widely configurable (Emiliano) * needs some flexibility from the user's side * define moderators and rules for moderation (Marina) * moderation now pretty clear (Thorsten) * actually board can do * possible to edit your own posts * not yet on the stage to decide * interested in technical details * doc team uses discourse (Jan) * continue discussion in Milan (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
7. Discuss: Hearing wrt LOOL/COOL CoI for Paolo (Paolo Vecchi, 15 mins)
* Paolo asked internally whether to discuss CoI topic in public (Thorsten)
* back and forth, will leave it to the board
* matter is public, nothing to hide, let's continue in public (Paolo)
* fear unsolved accusation that stands in public
* will be brief
* documents just shared shortly before the call (Thorsten)
* agenda says it's private
* Paolo wrote he will send material before (Cor)
* hands raised: discuss in public
* discussion about LibreOffice and Collabora Online (Thorsten)
* concerns and suspicions of CoI raised left and right
* board majority indicated private interest for Paolo and companies in LOOL and COOL
* Paolo has a right to be heard
* wrote document, shared not long ago (Paolo)
* don't expect conclusion tonight
* big surprise to be accused of CoI wrt. LOOL
* don't stay away from scrutiny
* good to test processes, procedures and board understand CoI from statutes and policy
* asked several questions
* Cor was the only one to reply
* missed background information, e.g. was it a vote or not, who participated
* Emiliano confirmed official board vote, confirms doubts
* fiduciary duties
* Laszlo, did you read evidence? (Paolo)
* Yes, I checked it (Laszlo)
* was a vote, answered some more about it
* even if was past, origin from a lot of things
* pointed out it's better to be polite on board-discuss
* Gabor, did you read the evidence? (Paolo)
* Two kind of information in link shared by Thorsten, differs to your company's website, seems to contain previous information e.g. hosting groupware (Gabor)
* Did you check UK company house? (Paolo)
* I think I have checked (Gabor)
* company nontrading since 2020, dissolved since 2021 (Paolo)
* website not updated since 2018, stopped trading with Omnis Systems since 2018/2019
* board members vote on something without validating information (Paolo)
* fiduciary duties, legal responsibilities
* should have talked to me before excluding me as per CoI policy
* dissolved company's website live for so long not a good look (Thorsten)
* board found websites, companies mentioned in profiles on TDF board which seems recent (Cor)
* no, is from previous elections (Paolo)
* asking Mike Saunders to update bio
* CoI dates back to two years (Thorsten)
* CoI policy retroactive? (Paolo)
* have to work together in a board or team (Cor)
* no need to check every detail, that would be impossible
* information provided is wrong (Paolo)
* should have been double checked
* tons of details five minutes to the call (Thorsten)
* just fighting procedures and details (Cor)
* want to look at facts as presented - rest is just distracting
* indications of personal interest (Thorsten)
* hearing is to have you in a position to explain
* not as it should be, should have written me (Paolo)
* board makes up its mind by voting (Thorsten)
* need to look into fiduciary duties big time (Paolo)
* cannot vote on something ignoring the evidence
* hiding a dissolved company and did not take website down (Thorsten)
* company house shows company as dissolved since 2021 (Paolo)
* glad Paolo found time for reply (Cor)
* speechless how this public hearing is going on, not acceptible - board can't act like this (Marina)
* fighting and harming each other, this is embarrasing
* not a good idea to have discussion in public (Thorsten)
* disagree (Marina)
* suggest custom meeting with everyone in the loop
* should have happened board-only (Thorsten)
* everyone read material Paolo was sharing
* possibly to conclude at LibOCon, personally have no time before
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
Public call ends at 17:06 UTC / 19:06 Berlin time
Private Part
11. Status Report: Hiring QA analyst (Florian Effenberger, Gabor Kelemen, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
The private meeting ends at 17:21 UTC / 19:21 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-09-15 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-09-15
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-09-05
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-09-05
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-09-05
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten, Laszlo, Kendy, Gabor, Paolo, Cor (joins 18:07), Emiliano (joins 18:11) Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Community - Team - Christian Lohmaier, Ilmari, Florian, Sophie, Hossein, Olivier
Representation: Gabriel representing Emiliano, Emiliano joins 18:11 -> None
AI everyone: revisit representation statement, now that Gabor is full member
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
- no questions
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
2. Status Report, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan Holesovsky, Paolo Vecchi, 10 mins)
* should the merged proposal be ready * have a last round of discussion * if conclusive - vote & budget for it
Otherwise, re-evaluate our approach.
References: * Shared folder with the versions: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/apps/files/?dir=/Developers
- Anything closer to be voted on? (Thorsten)
* another round of editing document (Kendy) * closer to be voted on * it's in shared folder * another round of edits on his documents * Paolo made last edits on Friday, will look into it soon * glad to hear, re-added some comments to latest version (Paolo) * no massive rush right now, been in the making for a while (Thorsten) AI: add to agenda of next board call
Folder with developers proposal (under Shared/Developers) Latest version 2.6 - Comments in version 2.5-With-Comments https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/960049
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
3. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions * current status & timeline
* ready with Apple (Cloph)
* would then be visible within 1-2 days
* vouchers can be created - can be done on demand pretty quickly
* voucher users cannot rate the app, nor write reviews
* for Microsoft, waiting for approval for sharedFonts permissions
* to install fonts system-wide
* still waiting for processing by MS engineers, whether we are granted that permission or not
* expected reply today, still didn't get it - waiting
* any workaround possible? (Thorsten)
* would require modifying the installer (Cloph)
* manual override could be possible, have to double-check, can possibly do by tomorrow (Thorsten)
* let's see if they get back to us by tomorrow
- all other bits and pieces are done (Cloph)
* font installing permission is the blocker now
- could go live with Apple App Store at any time
* tempting, more in favour of it the longer this takes (Thorsten) * Apple likely much more popular * on the fence - has pros and cons, can live with both outcomes (Florian) * I see risks for potential issues with paid-for apps that way without previous testing with free. I made my opinion known in the past. (Paolo)
- shall we try 7.4 directly? (Cloph)
* 7.3.5 is prepared, 7.3.6 is about to be published next week * can do 7.3.6 or 7.4.1 * asking money for .0 or .1 might backfire (Thorsten)
- round of feedback
* 7.4 on a Mac causes problems with copy & paste, wouldn't publish it (Uwe) * but would publish something now, let's not do everything at the same time, also opportunity on to PRs * 7.3.6 is fine if users then get 7.4.x for free (Paolo) * in favor of publishing 7.3 at Apple (Gabriel) * in favor of publishing 7.3 at Apple (Kendy) * agree with Uwe, push stable version and go separately (Gabor) * happy with 7.3.6 and Apple to start with (Paolo) * publish Apple first (Emiliano)
=> go live with Apple (and 7.3.6)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
4. Vote, Discuss: Offer one internship via Outreachy's Fall 2022 season (Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
Outreachy provides FLOSS orgs with a way to offer code internships, and has been very successful with increasing diversity in projects.
Ilmari has one potential mentor and project lined up.
- Need to find a proper intern.
Motion: * TDF to apply at Outreachy as a mentoring organisation * to offer one internship for LibreOffice in the Fall 2022 season * and budget 8k USD for the admin & intern compensation, via Outreachy
Details: https://www.outreachy.org/docs/community/#funding-requirements
=> Unanimous approval AI: Ilmari to handle and poke Florian if/when needed
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
5. Discuss: Progress Strategy and combining with Survey results (Cor Nouws, 10 mins)
* needs preparation how to organize this in a smart way * ideally before the conference workshop
- make a start with organizing the outcomes - can do that (Cor)
- so topics/suggestions can be matched with Strategy choices - making it easy for all directors to jump in. - should be doable to do that by next meeting
- Have something for the in person meeting at the LibOCon (too) (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
6. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian Effenberger, 2 mins)
- all going well, t-shirts ordered, Android app in the works (Sophie, Florian)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
7. Discuss: LibreOffice meetings - agenda planning (Cor Nouws, 10 mins)
For the LibOCon board / joint meetings: * look at the major items / topics we want to have. * initially allocate time slots to those * e.g. where and how do we fit in the discussion on roots/vision/future? * and other major items we expect to prepare for discussing with MC?
- Monday, September 26, 10-18 board-only
- Tuesday, September 27, 10-13 board-only
- Tuesday, September 27, 13-17 board + MC + team
- calendar invites have been sent
- strategy workshop (Cor)
* who's invited? * have all members join? or rather certain group, e.g. board + MC, looking into questions? * not what I had in mind (Uwe) * 15-20 minutes Florian&Mike to explain what reason behind TDF is * then Uwe to work with strategy items raised in Berlin * planned in for 2 hours in total * Wednesday 28 at 5 PM room Loyola (Sophie) * assign urgency & importance to each item by everyone in the room, maybe about 40 people? * ~40 dots in ypsilon-graph etc. * this is not the strategy discussion (Uwe) - not the faintest idea how this could be made up at the conference * 40 people in the room gives nice variety of voices (Cor)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
The public meeting ends at 16:54 UTC / 18:54 Berlin time.
Private Part
8. Discuss: legal topic (Cor Nouws, 15 mins)
Reasons for privacy: legal topics
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
9. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
10. Status Report: Reporting from the oversight groups (Thorsten Behrens, tdf-board, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
Second quarter for the new board is up, so let's hear reports from the various oversight groups.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
11. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
The private meeting ends at 17:29 UTC / 19:29 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-08-22
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-08-22
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-08-22
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Jan Holešovský, Gábor Kelemen, Emiliano Vavassori, László Németh, Cor Nouws Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Shinji Enoki Community - Simon Phipps, Michael Weghorn,
Team - Sophie Gautier, Guilhem Moulin, Stephan Ficht
Representation: none
AI everyone: revisit representation statement, now that Gabor is full member
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ any questions (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
2. Status Report, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan Holesovsky, 8 mins)
* should the merged proposal be ready * have a last round of discussion * if conclusive - vote & budget for it
Otherwise, re-evaluate our approach
+ nothing from my side due to vacation (Jan) + waiting for feedback from Jan (Paolo) + so, waiting for a more few days (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
3. Vote, Discuss: Vote on LibreOffice scholarship (Stephan Ficht, 2 mins)
Confirm discussion outcome from BoD meeting 2022-07-11 by vote, to renew existing program by one year.
Vote: one more year, starting 1st of October, extend the scholarship for one more year - 1800 EUR, with TU Munich (matched by 1800 EUR from german goverment)
===
* summary: unanimous approved
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s): AI inform TUM, do paperwork related
4. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
5. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
6. Status Report: Onboarding non-profit workshop (Florian Effenberger, 2 mins)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
7. Status Report: MC elections (Florian Effenberger, 4 mins)
+ several nominations (Thorsten) + end of nominations Aug 24 + perhaps townhall meeting with candidates + supported, discussed already earlier (Cor) + see four nominations (Cor) + a bit worrying about the low number (Guilhem) + perhaps late nominations (Cor) + any volunteers for assisting townhall? (Thorsten)
AI organize townhall meeting, Sophie, others
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
8. Discuss: Revert changes in LOOL wiki page (Paolo Vecchi, 8 mins)
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online might be in need of an update
+ page got transformed in kind of advertising (Paolo) + is it really advertising? (Cor) + a bit too much for my taste (Paolo) + goes beyond normal + lot of links pointing to Collabora + good to keep an eye on it (Thorsten) + who did the edits? (Paolo) + sure to support ecosystem members (Paolo) + but respect limits + hand over to review by marketing team (Thorsten) + ask Italo, Mike what they think an come up with it (Cor) + 'Mars', the author of the changes, seems to be an active contributor (Jan) + suggest 'adjusting' instead of 'reverting'; reverting would be rude + perhaps some kind of moderation necessary (Paolo) + I'm against because it's a wiki (Thorsten) + found some information (Laszlo) + LOOL is work of Collabora + my partner NISZ started work + no advertising but impartial information which if necessary lists various providers (Collabora, OSSII, Andreas) + if disagreement bring it back here (Thorsten) + balance advertising vs information (Paolo) + go ahead with doing adjustments to the page (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
The public meeting ends at 16:36 UTC / 18:36 Berlin time.
Private Part
9. Status Report, Discuss: Handle CoC complaint (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Status update & further steps
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
10. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 2 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary: work in progress
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
11. Discuss: composition temporary legal group (Cor Nouws, 15 mins)
Reasons for privacy: legal topics
Stephan left at 16:55/18:55
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
12. Status Report: Hiring web developer (Florian Effenberger, 2 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary: postponed
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
13. Vote, Discuss: AB membership (Florian Effenberger, 2 mins)
Reason for privacy: contract negotiation.
===
* summary: postponed
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
14. Status Report: Reporting from the oversight groups (Thorsten Behrens, tdf-board, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
Second quarter for the new board is up, so let's hear reports from the various oversight groups.
===
* summary: postponed
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
15. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 2 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda
-none-
The private meeting ends at 17:32 UTC / 19:32 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-08-08
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-08-08
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-08-08
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Gábor Kelemen, Cor Nouws, Paolo Vecchi, Emiliano Vavassori Board Deputy Members - Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Altmann Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier Community -
Representation: none
AI everyone: revisit representation statement, now that Gabor is full member
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 5 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 3.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:04 UTC / 18:04 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
1. Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ 25 items on the BoD to do list (Uwe)
+ are they published?
+ work in progress (Cor)
+ collected during Berlin offsite (Thorsten)
+ still on progress wrt ranking (Thorsten)
+ do the ranking at LibOCon? (Uwe)
+ ask community
+ what is community, or subset of community? (Cor)
+ what most important item to do wrt to workshop? (Uwe)
+ MC survey from last September (Cor)
+ also use the outcome of that survey when working on our ranking
+ can't use to much time here (Thorsten)
+ AI, Thorsten provide list of ranked items by next board call
+ workshop about what TDF is, 'free' vs. 'not free' (Paolo)
+ resume about the starting point (Uwe)
+ review what was meant initially, statutes, etc.
+ ask Florian who's been involved from the beginning, ask Mike Schinagl too (Uwe)
+ happy to (Florian)
+ good to have all in one meeting (Thorsten)
+ focusing mostly on what we want in the future
2. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores
(Florian Effenberger, 5 mins) Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* preparations (for 7.3.5) done
* need EUR price for Apple (have ~9 USD, not sure we can use that with our account)
* Microsoft: 4,59 € (e-mail Thorsten August 4)
* Apple: 8,99 € (late April/early May screenshot)
* PR in discussion, Italo to finalize
* vouchers in generation, but Apple limited to 100
* discussion on upgrade cycle below
* can use our trademarks in both stores now, tax forms handled as well
* happy to get further localization
* have Cloph on the phone tomorrow to discuss progress, also joint meeting board/team tomorrow to discuss missing details
* upgrade cycles - how many updates will users get?
+ preparations done (Florian)
+ same for pricing + PR ready + vouchers + define upgrade cycle + clarify last bits tomorrow
+ timeline? (Thorsten) + ready to push the button (Florian) + need ~24h to be available in the app store (Thorsten) + tell people what they get (Paolo)
+ need to decide beforehand (Thorsten) + clarify precisely (Paolo)
+ wouldn't push to much (Thorsten) + tell that we plan updates (Cor)
+ you buy as is + TDF reassuring + anything else will delay + so we don't kow what we are selling? (Paolo) + just tell 'we will make efforts to provide regular updates' (Cor)
+ agreement to delay publishing to clarify upfront? (Thorsten)
+ selling proposal could change from one day to another
+ would not delay publishing
+ we should clearly state (Paolo)
+ Paolo objects publishing? (Cor)
+ clearly no (Paolo)
+ first start we can learn from experience as said before (Cor)
+ let's leave as is (Thorsten) + ready within ~2 days (Florian)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): mostly
* next step(s):
3. Vote, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan
Holesovsky, 10 mins) * should the merged proposal be ready * have a last round of discussion * if conclusive - vote & budget for it
+ ready to vote on Paolos version (Paolo) + seems to have no version supported by both (Thorsten) + some items that have been copied over have explanation on why they shouldn't be there (Paolo)
+ will read that (again?) (Cor)
+ wait for another two weeks to finalize (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): poor
* next step(s):
4. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian
Effenberger, 5 mins)
- all going well
- hotel reservations done by Italo, invoices for this (and community dinner) paid today
- wrt. talks, Sophie should have numbers
- same for conference invites, Sophie has status
- working on sponsorships, currently have two or three
- team has a quick sync call tomorrow afternoon 1530
- Android app in progress (like for last year's event)
+ 37 proposals of talks (Sophie) + invites under control + sponsorship on their way + some remote talks + if need is contact BoD
===
* summary: all in good progress
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
The public meeting ends at 16:35 UTC / 18:35 Berlin time.
2. Private Part
5. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
6. Status Report: Hiring web developer (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary: in progress
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
7. Vote, Discuss: Elect new deputy chairperson (Thorsten Behrens, 25 mins)
Reason for privacy: legal topics.
After Caolan's step-down, the board needs to elect a new deputy chair. On request, might be board-only, thus at the end of the call.
===
* summary: deputy chair elected is Emiliano Vavassori accepting his role
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
8. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 0 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda
+ pandemic situation wrt meetings (Florian)
===
* summary: ongoing discussion
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): mostly
* next step(s):
The public meeting ends at 17:12 UTC / 19:12 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-07-25
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-07-25
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-07-25
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Cor Nouws, László Németh, Jan Holešovský Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Shinji Enoki Team - Stephan Ficht Community - Michael Weghorn, Michael Meeks
Representation: Gabor for Emiliano, Gabriel for Paolo
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 6 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 3. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:02 UTC / 18:02 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
1. Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ Caolán McNamara resigned from the board (Thorsten)
+ check how to process + elect new chair deputy
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
2. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores
(Florian Effenberger, Paolo Vecchi, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins) Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* Apple ready to publish
* MS Store some paperwork missing
* dropped the voucher idea, reassess?
* upgrade cycles - how many updates will users get?
* proposal: 12 or 18 months for paid versions
* might be technically challenging to implement
+ some paperwork missing (Thorsten)
+ voucher idea was discussed + upgrade cycle + needs more thinking about
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): mostly
* next step(s): go live very soon
3. Vote, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan Holesovsky, 10 mins)
* should the merged proposal be ready * have a last round of discussion * if conclusive - vote & budget for it
+ work is ongoing (Kendy)
+ version 2.4 sent by Paolo on Friday + Kendy didn't manage to get through that deeply yet + nothing concrete to discuss / vote on today
+ still need to find some middle ground + worth spending the time (Thorsten) + what topics in discussion? (Cor)
+ Paolo: TDF not be stalled by ESC + Kendy: ESC needs to be decide technical problems equally for all (TDF / ecosystem partners / volunteers)
+ happy there is a new version of the proposal (Kendy)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
4. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
* all going well, CfP extended til end of July
* people are encouraged to start travel booking & planning
+ all on track (Thorsten)
+ CfP ends end of the month + not endless accomodation available in Milan
+ who cares about hotel booking? (Gabriel)
+ should be Italo (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
5. Status Report: MC elections (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
+ perhaps planning to do some townhall meeting with candidates (Thorsten)
===
* summary: ongoing process
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
6. Status Report: Onboarding non-profit workshop (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins) + still shelved (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
The public meeting ends at 16:21 UTC / 18:21 Berlin time.
2. Private Part
6a. step down of Caolán McNamara from the board
Reason for privacy: HR and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
7. Discuss: CoC incident and how to move forward (Caolán McNamara, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
8. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary: no updates
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
9. Vote, Discuss: AB membership (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: contract negotiation.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
10. Status Report: Hiring web developer (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
11. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
Total scheduled meeting time: 60 mins
The private meeting ends at 16:48 UTC / 18:48 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-07-11
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-07-11
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-07-11
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, László Németh, Jan Holešovský, Cor Nouws, Emiliano Vavassori
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei, Gábor Kelemen
Membership Committee Members -
Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Altmann
Team - Stephan Ficht, Heiko Tietze, Hossein Nourikhah
Community - Michael Meeks, Aaron Budea
Representation: Gabor > Caolan
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
1. Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask
questions to the board and about TDF
- TDF cash? (Michael)
* what about paying tenders? Timeline? * don't know details (Laszlo) * what is blocked? (Michael) * issues to be solved (Paolo) * at least any timeline? (Thorsten) * will have answer soon, but not this/next/following week (Paolo) * new tenders seemed to be blocked (Thorsten) * doing our best to unblock situation (Paolo)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
2. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores
(Florian Effenberger, Paolo Vecchi, Thorsten Behrens, 15 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions:
* current status & timeline
* publishing 'LibreOffice' free of charge initially?
* publish 'LibreOffice Supporter' stating that users should buy that
to support TDF"?
* withdraw the free version if donation flow impacted?
* update cycle, and how to move people to new versions?
* should previous buyers (from licensed offers) get vouchers on
request?
- not published yet (Thorsten)
* look into how to structure payments going forward * how to get donation/revenue from app stores? start with paid version to have a working solution
- technical issues (Paolo)
* set up for payments delaying
* communication lacking, so collecting opinions from wider community
* did you ad background information to the mail asking opinions? (Cor)
* there is plenty of info (Paolo)
we already discussed app store back in 2020
* Did you add references to that information (Cor)
info about the extensive discussions in the board on the topic?
* You know, you have the mail so I asked the general opinion (Paolo)
* Why you did not refer to the discussion in the board, based on
all information and that it came to a conclusion? (Cor)
* Wanted to avoid discussion, opinions were given and text
remained the same without considerations on differences (Paolo)
* Wouldn't if have been natural that the board would just have voted
against if it was unhappy with the discussion (Cor)
isn't this how we are working usually?
* Yes and no, maybe sometimes people are just giving up
in discussions (Paolo)
* When a decision taken it feels a bit odd to reopen
a discussion without that information (Thorsten)
- update circle interesting question (Thorsten)
- burden to manage vouchers (Paolo)
* just need to click a button (Thorsten)
- massive complexity of the overall app store problem (Thorsten)
* lacking information (Paolo)
===
* summary: complex topic, need proper discussion
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): poor
* next step(s):
3. Status Report: MC elections (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
- timeline is out (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
4. Vote, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan Holesovsky, 5 mins)
* should the merged proposal be ready
* have a last round of discussion
* if conclusive - vote & budget for it
- should agree about role of ESC (Kendy)
* renaming 'targeted' devs to 'in-house' devs
* discuss merged text
* very helpful (Paolo)
* call to agree very quickly?
* better to do in the open (Kendy, Paolo)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
The private meeting ends at 16:38 UTC / 18:38 Berlin time.
2. Private Part
5. Vote, Discuss: scholarship; deadline end of July (tdf-board,
Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary: renew,
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): mostly
* next step(s):
6. Status Report: Reporting from the oversight groups (Thorsten
Behrens, tdf-board, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
First quarter for the new board is up, so let's hear reports from
the various oversight groups.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
7. Status Report: HR Topic (Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
8. Discuss: Improvements on voting procedures (Paolo Vecchi, Thorsten
Behrens, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): poor
* next step(s):
adjourn at 19:20 - remaining agenda items shelved til next call
The private meeting ends at 17:21 UTC / 19:21 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-06-27
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-06-27
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-06-27
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Caolán McNamara, László Németh, Jan Holešovský, Cor Nouws, Emiliano Vavassori, Paolo Vecchi, Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei, Gábor Kelemen Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Team - Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, Sophie Gautier, Guilhem Moulin Community - Michael Weghorn, Aron Budea, Michael Meeks
Representation: none
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:02 UTC / 18:02 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ no question(s)
=== * summary: * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): * next step(s):
2. Vote, Discuss: ESC proposal to atticize LOOL (tdf-board, Thorsten Behrens, 10 mins)
As documented at
<https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html>
"ESC meeting minutes: 2022-06-09", and per the policies at <https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic>, the ESC proposes to atticize LOOL (<https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/admin/repos/online,general> and whatever accompanying infrastructure).
Of the 22 ESC members, 15 were present at the 2022-06-09 virtual meeting, of which 9 voted in favor of the proposal, 6 abstained, and none voted against it.
+ discussion during last weekend (Florian)
+ when designed, thought of naturally aged parts of the project - LOOL was not naturally aged (Emiliano)
+ repo seems closed, logically to got to attic (Kendy)
+ ESC agreed to be a medium size project (3 active developers) to de-atticize), not a small or large size project.
+ good to have workflow for de-atticization (Michael)
+ wait for LibOCon to discuss
+ atticization doesn't change anything relative to status quo (which is frozen since 1.5 years) (Thorsten)
+ agree talking this through at the conference would be good (Florian)
+ motion to vote on - should we do it today? (Thorsten)
+ some movement over the weekend, but still nothing livable (Caolán)
+ Franklin's proposal, gave also proposal some time ago (Paolo)
+ proposal to open temporarily (Paolo)
+ company project in Taiwan (Paolo)
+ need time to evaluate proposals (Paolo)
+ propose not to vote today (Paolo)
+ no contributions in 2 years (Gabriel)
+ close to what Caolán said
+ the de-attizitation shows if the project is viable & enough people to resurrect it (Gabriel)
+ some mails about the process over the weekend (László)
+ MPL license, so it's possible to support by companies (László)
+ TDF task to support all live projects (László)
+ better to support existing forks like COOL (László)
+ ESC voted, but there was no warning (Paolo)
+ more time needed (Paolo)
+ good to see activity, would love to hear all out (Thorsten)
+ would give the new initiatives more time (Gábor)
+ postpone voting, talk at the conference (Gábor)
+ no big preference, talking is very important (Cor)
+ ESC proposal gives a clear process, also to de-atticize (Cor)
+ encouraging that people getting involved recently (Cor)
+ let's see how that materializes over the next period
+ not want to vote today (Emiliano)
+ not vote today + let's wait for the conference (Emiliano)
+ ESC was clear - atticize this now (Thorsten)
+ OTOH - see the point that ongoing discussion created interest
+ don't want to discourage that (Thorsten)
+ could decide today, but delay the atticization in 3 months
+ if 3 people committing does not materialize => immediate attic
(Thorsten)
+ respect the developers (Paolo)
+ but the Board should have acted earlier (Paolo)
+ don't see rush
+ was offer from other
+ will have clear idea at the conference (Paolo)
+ long-time problems with the repository (Cor)
+ looks not fair to say that the BoD was too slow etc in informing
+ situation is clear and discussion for more than a year
+ so maybe better to vote now (Cor)
+ not sure if it's going to fly - this concept of taking commits from another project (Caolán)
+ whatever is the decision, it needs to be clear to the community (Sophie)
+ that people know they can work on it
+ supporting that (Cor)
+ proposes a compromise (Thorsten)
+ leave at the current frozen state
+ and if in 3 months not active enough, as is demanded in the (de-)atticization procedures, automatic atticize the repos (Thorsten)
+ propose not to have automatism (Stephan)
+ but have the discussion, and then decide (Stephan)
+ danger of constant re-opening the discussion (Thorsten)
+ hope this is a compromise (Thorsten)
+ the ESC recommendation is clear (Thorsten)
+ support not to have an automatism (Paolo)
+ 3 months can be short (Paolo)
+ strategic point of view should be considered too (Paolo)
+ vote today ( Kendy)
+ no fundamental difference between the ways (atticize now, or auto-atticization if interest doesn't last) (Kendy)
+ agree (Thorsten)
+ more about giving it a chance (Thorsten)
+ state of propoals (Michael)
+ suggest if the un-freezing is conditional to the de-atticization rules, OK with this (Michael)
+ yes, keep the status quo (Thorsten)
+ not to label "attic" - so that we don't discourage people (Thorsten)
+ and discuss (Thorsten)
vote proposal: + board agrees to quickly finalizing text of the motion + then proceed with an email vote ASAP + the de-atticization in the vote proposal presented should be more clearly defined (Michael, Emiliano) + AI thorsten send draft proposal, then call for email vote
=== * summary: needs more discussion, do that in a short mail-round * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): poor * next step(s):
3. Vote, Discuss: LibreOffice Scholarship (tdf-board, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Options to discuss (and vote on):
- renew existing stipend (TUM, Technical University of
Munich) for one more year at 1.800 €; decide no later than mid/end
of July; payment due Sept 1st
- do it ourselves; finance, promote and supervise a student independently
- drop stipend, given that it was meant to be a one-off gesture to honor KJ
- perhaps other ideas?
+ given we're over time - shelve / divert to email? (Thorsten) + OK to shift (Stephan) + AI Stephan report on progress via email, call for a vote if ready
=== * summary: opposing points of view * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): poor * next step(s): shifted to next BoD meeting on July 11th
4. Vote, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan Holesovsky, 10 mins)
* should the merged proposal be deemed ready
<https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/960049>
* have a last round of discussion
* if conclusive - vote & budget for it
+ board has ultimate deciding power (Kendy) + seems we are pretty close to agree on the proposal (Kendy) + parts integrated which should not be there (Paolo) + keep document clean + some changes suggested by Paolo, some by Kendy (Thorsten) + text is open for editing to everyone (Thorsten) + don't agree that ESC has to show that it is not biased (Michael) + offended by the idea; it was appointed by Board (Michael) + ESC our most effective and collegial body (Michael) + CoI policy missing (Paolo) + need processes to follow (Paolo) + procedural thing, not an attack (Paolo) + would be helpful to have a diff between the proposals (Emiliano) + we all agree we should hire, right? (Caolán) + yes (Kendy, Paolo, ...) + next steps: AI Kendy and Paolo ironing out remaining differences, then vote once done / latest next board call (Thorsten)
=== * summary: * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): * next step(s):
5. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian Effenberger, 4 mins)
+ switching to Milan (Florian) + Italo to send an update ASAP + Sophie asks to reply to her email wrt the need of accomodation + board expresses gratitude to conference organizer team for managing this challenging situation well
=== * summary: go with Milan * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full * next step(s):
The public meeting ends at 17:02 UTC / 19:02 Berlin time.
Private part
6. Status Report: Reporting from the oversight groups (Thorsten Behrens, 10 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
First quarter for the new board is up, so let's hear reports from the various oversight groups.
Shelved to email reporting, due to lack of time
=== * summary: * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): * next step(s):
7. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 4 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
=== * summary: * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): * next step(s):
8. Status Report: Hiring web developer (Florian Effenberger, 4 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
=== * summary: * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): * next step(s):
9. Vote, Discuss: AB topic (Florian Effenberger, 4 mins)
Reason for privacy: contract negotiation.
Shelved, due to lack of time. Florian briefly reports...
=== * summary: * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): * next step(s):
10. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 4 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda
-none-
=== * summary: * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): * next step(s):
The private meeting ends at 17:52 UTC / 19:52 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-06-12 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-06-12
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-06-11 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-06-11
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-06-10 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-06-10
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-05-30
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-05-30
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-05-30
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Emiliano Vavassori, Cor Nouws, Caolán McNamara, Paolo Vecchi, Jan Holesovsky, Laszlo Nemeth
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei, Gabor Kelemen
Membership Committee Members -
Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Altmann
Team - Stephan Ficht, Heiko Tietze, Sophie Gautier, Florian Effenberger, Hossein Nourikah, Olivier Hallot, Guilhem Moulin
Community - Michael Meeks,
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask
questions to the board and about TDF
* any questions (Thorsten)
* possible to have a representative of BoD at LATAM-conference in
Brasilia
* great idea (Cor)
* even to have more people here should not be a problem (Thorsten)
* big community and a lot of interest for LO in this area
* any deadline? (Thorsten)
* ~ August (Olivier)
* great opportunity to present LO (Olivier)
===
* summary: one or more directors invited to attend
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s): AI Thorsten define person(s) to attend, get back to
Olivier within 2 weeks
2. Status Report: Onboarding non-profit workshop (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
* some small delay (Florian)
===
* summary: on the radar, will follow-up with board late
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): -
* next step(s): AI Florian to follow-up
3. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
* Italo & Sophie handling it (Florian)
* schedule / planning for meetings
* one day of BoD-meetings
* then joint meetings with the team/MC/community, too
* meetings: at least board, board+team - Monday 26 September, Tuesday 27 September
* invite mid-june expected
* bi-weekly team calls on LibOCon, going forward
===
* summary: planning & scheduling meetings around LibOCon
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s): AI Sophie reach out to MC for joint meeting
4. Report from Univention summit (Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
* great event (Thorsten)
* mostly ecosystem talks/meetings
* finally German federal gov putting public money into Open Source
* News from Dataport and their Phoenix project? (Paolo)
* open doors, explained to many how Open Source works (Thorsten)
* it would be nice to welcome them in TDF's AB in future then (Paolo)
* those things are sometimes slow, many people help here, positive
it'll work out (Thorsten)
===
* summary: see blog post: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2022/05/24/libreoffice-at-the-univention-summit-2022/
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s): keep the conversations going
The public meeting ends at 16:22 UTC / 18:22 Berlin time.
Private part
5. Status Report: Reporting from the oversight groups (Thorsten Behrens, tdf-board, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax or legal topics.
===
* summary: reminder to provide the reports
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s): deadline in 2 weeks, during strategy weekend
6. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax or legal topics.
* shared details w/ Stephan to give a hand (Florian)
===
* summary: status update - in progress
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): -
* next step(s): <private>
7. Vote, Discuss: Advisory boardU (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax or legal topics.
===
* summary: needs more info
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s): <private>
8. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 25 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after
sending the agenda
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
The private meeting ends at 17:23 UTC / 19:23 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-05-16
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-05-16
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-05-16
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Caolán McNamara, Cor Nouws, Jan Holešovský, Emiliano Vavassori, Laszlo Nemeth Board Deputy Members - Gabor Kelemen, Gabriel Masei, Ayhan Yalçınsoy Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Altmann Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier Community -
Representation: Ayhan for Paolo
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF * no questions * summary: -none- * status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): - * next step(s): -
2. Missing representation statements (Laszlo, Thorsten, 5 mins)
* all sorted
* summary: -none-
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): -full-
* next step(s): -none-
The public meeting ends at 16:04 UTC / 18:04 Berlin time.
Private part
3. Onboarding: nonprofit workshop (Uwe, Florian, all 40 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax or legal topics
4. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda Reason for privacy: HR, tax or legal topics
The private meeting ends at 17:30 UTC / 19:30 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-05-02
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-05-02
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-05-02
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Cor Nouws, Emiliano Vavassori, Caolán McNamara, László Németh, Jan Holešovský Board Deputy Members - Gábor Kelemen Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Altmann, Shinji Enoki Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger Community -
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ any questions? (Thorsten)
+ LibOCon location? (Uwe) + waiting for confirmation to do further planning + poking Italo for sharing dates/schedules + tendering and budget discussion - any input? (Thorsten) + send an email to make people aware that possibly they can also help (Cor) + will follow up to put everything to spreadsheet (Florian)
2. Discuss & vote: Update ESC composition (Kendy, 5 mins)
The ESC has agreed to update its current composition:
https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/engineering-steering-committee/
this way:
Lionel Elie Mamane (Individual) → Vasily Melenchuk (CIB)
Andras Timar (Collabora) → Luboš Luňák (Collabora)
Michael Meeks (Collabora) → Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora)
Olivier Hallot (TDF) → Ilmari Lauhakangas (TDF)
Sophie Gautier (TDF) → Hossein Nourikhah (TDF)
Katarína Behrens (Individual) → Andreas Heinisch (Individual)
There is one swap of an individual contributor to a corporate contributor, but it is the only CIB person on the list, so the corporate affiliation rule still stays maintained.
The ESC kindly asks the Board to approve this change.
+ recently some ESC members stepped down (Jan)
+ seeking for new people + board has to approve and vote ESC members
+ any discussion on this topic (Thorsten)
+ otherwise calling for vote + the board unanimously approves the motion
3. Status report & discuss: board strategy workshop
(Florian, Stephan, 10 mins)
Current options for in-person meeting are * Friday, June 10-Sunday, June 12 * Friday, June 24-Sunday, June 26
Let's agree on the final schedule during the call.
+ two weekends to choose between (Florian)
+ first agree on date, then location (Hamburg or Berlin) + being close to holiday season and LibOCon perhaps better at LibOCon + in the first place? (Paolo) + 10-12 June seems doable for everyone else + preference for Berlin as location + find a place to get in missing directors via e.g. Jitsi, etc. + Florian/Stephan to send invites for 10-12 June
The public meeting ends at 16:16 UTC / 18:16 Berlin time.
Private part
4. Discuss & reports: board oversight groups (Thorsten, all 20 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
5. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all 10 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
The private meeting ends at 17:01 UTC / 19:01 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-04-04
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-04-04
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-04-04
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Cor Nouws, Thorsten Behrens, Caolán McNamara, Paolo Vecchi, Jan Holesovsky, Emiliano Vavassori Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Altmann (joined 16:13 UTC) Team - Stephan, Heiko, Sophie, Florian, Guilhem Community -
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ any questions? (Thorsten)
+ mentioned during 1:1 meetings in the past, concerned wrt inflation, expenses (Heiko) + budget for salary adjustments has an item in the budget (public listing only has combined buckets), so that is on screen, we were waiting for budget to be finalized (Florian)
2. Discuss: Board process proposal feedback (Thorsten, all 10 mins) + haven't heard much details of proposal yet (Thorsten)
+ happy about any feedback!
+ like the idea to have more shared in Nextcloud (Florian)
+ e.g. minutes, avoid mailing and editing left and right, saves time and overhead + may be try out Etherpad integration, NC editor is so and so + NC Deck is given a try with Thorsten, Stephan, Florian - could be a good idea, let's try it out + calendar maybe a bit more difficult to use - let's skip for the moment
+ going back to Etherpad would be nicer (Paolo) + advantage of markdown features on NC (Thorsten)
+ workflow is email based traditionally + aim to make board life easier + from my POV easier using calendar
+ calendar URL sharing (Florian) AI Florian: share calendar URL, see if we can create a group calendar + use synergies (Thorsten) + not against, let's give a try (Emiliano)
+ not familiar with NC pad, prefer Etherpad based one
AI + Guilhem to be asked to set it up on short notice (Thorsten) + NC editor seems slow to me (Emiliano)
+ is a plus to have it integrated
+ NC Deck gives a lot of advantages/integration (Thorsten)
+ hard to do word protocol + really matters is decision making + doesn't mean to have no comments, but focus on _results_
+ quiet relevant to have more information then just decisions (Cor)
+ minutes to give a good summary/overview about things discussed + time consuming, but much more accessible
+ worth for longer topics to summarize (Thorsten) + Prefer more verbose minuting (Kendy)
+ problem with conflicts though + causing conflicts different people minuting at the same time (Kendy) + OK if default is non-verbose, but with the possibility to do verbose from time to time (Kendy)
+ minutes allows me to understand what has been discussed (Paolo) + different POVs available (Thorsten) + only relevant information (Paolo) + honestly, I rarely spend time to read draft minutes (Cor)
+ so may miss stuff that is not accurate for what I said/tried to convey
+ very hard to do word by word minutes (Thorsten)
+ minute taker have to be focused only on minuting
Decision: run with the proposal, swap in Etherpad-with-NC-integration if/when available. Some challenges with shared calendars, run with what's easily possible today (centrally-maintained public calendar with TDF-wide plus board appointments - AI Florian to sync with Mike on the calendar currently in the wiki)
3. Discuss: Plan for an in-person board meeting sometime in May (Kendy, all 10 mins)
+ good idea with covid improving in much countries (Kendy)
+ proposing May, including Florian and Stephan
+ broadly seconded (most) + happy to see behaviour change from some BoD members (Paolo)
+ certain time behaviour carry on + feel we need more trust building before meeting
+ helpful to pass by a third person to solve issue (Cor) + some efforts in the past unfortunately did not work out (Paolo) + happy to meet in persona, unless in Italy not very positive yet (Emiliano) + love to meet, especially after two years; but for personal reasons still very careful wrt. Corona and meeting many people - I try to join, thanks for the invite (Florian) + likely will see several events where individuals might not be able to join for restrictions or personal reasons in the near future, but should still plan, even if only some can attend, situation hard to predict (Florian) + good idea to meet (Gabriel)
+ helps to build the trust + fine with May/June
+ conclusion: lets work to realize an in person meeting (Thorsten) + support meeting in later May, BoD+Florian+Stephan (Kendy)
+ of course if Covid becomes worse, not doing it
+ should definitely plan it, upcoming months are likely the best, happy to organize it (Florian) + provide NC poll to get an idea of timeframe
Decision: + AI Stephan and Florian: plan meeting, start with a poll for
May and June
The public meeting ends at 16:37 UTC / 18:37 Berlin time.
Private part
4. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all 10 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda * budget decision revisit
5. Discuss & vote: HR topic (Thorsten, all 20 mins)
- discussion & agreement on process - Thorsten to call for a private email vote
The private meeting ends at 17:20 UTC / 19:20 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-03-28 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-03-28
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-03-21
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-03-21
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-03-21
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Cor Nouws, Jan Holešovský, Thorsten Behrens, Caolán McNamara, Emiliano Vavassori, Paolo Vecchi, Laszlo Nemeth Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei, Gabor Kelemen Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Team - Sophie Gautier, Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Guilhem Moulin Community - "Fellow Jitster"
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
- no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The meeting commences at 17:04 UTC / 18:04 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ any questions? (Thorsten)
+ none this time
2. Discuss: Attic Proposal (Thorsten and Emiliano, all 5 min)
Rationale: final comments & vote Text of proposal: https://listarchives.tdf.io/i/eycf9KoH7T0CgoHbbQRvoN0l
+ Sophie's name in the proposal, going to be corrected (Emiliano)
- no need for specific people's names to be listed, just the roles - Ilmari is mentioned too
+ CVS -> VCS (Thorsten) + some more small typos + open repository (Paolo)
+ wait few months, see how it goes + then apply the attic policy if needed + can see how it goes and if anything needs to be amended + see nothing else the attic policy would be applied for, asked that question
+ let's decouple from Online (Thorsten) + we discuss a general proposal (Kendy) + if no one working on it nothing will happen (Paolo) + discussion on Online is a separate decision (Thorsten) + what concrete changes are needed? (Thorsten)
+ like to call for vote, email vote + conclude for the final version with Emiliano
+ ai Thorsten / Emiliano to roll all changes & typo fixes into final
version, then call for a vote
Public meeting ends at 17:13 UTC / 18:13 Berlin time.
Private part
3. Discuss & vote: budget for 2022 (Thorsten, all 40 mins)
4. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all 5min)
Private meeting ends at 18:13 UTC / 19:13 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-03-07
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-03-07
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-03-07
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Caolán McNamara, Jan Holešovský, Paolo Vecchi, Laszlo Nemeth, Emiliano Vavassori, Cor Nouws Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei, Gabor Kelemen Membership Committee Members - Membership Committee Substitute Members - Uwe Altmann Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier, Olivier Hallot Community - Michael Weghorn, Aron Budea, Guilhem Moulin, Michael Weghorn, "Mr. T", "Fellow Jitster", Régis
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
The meeting commences at 17:02 UTC / 18:02 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF + no questions raised
2. Discuss: Areas of Oversight (Thorsten, all, 5 mins)
Rationale: Items and Discussion about these, then continued in private part
+ one of the duties of the board (Thorsten)
+ slightly shuffle, then review it
+ Employees & hiring
+ infrastructure & community
+ QA & community
+ documentation & community
+ native language projects, translation, localisation & community
+ certifications and other business development activities
+ licenses and development & releases including schedules & community
+ affiliations, e.g. advisory board, peer foundations, politics
+ marketing, events, communication & design, brands & community
+ assets, finance, taxes
+ contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks
+ any further need for discussion? is everything in?
+ no further questions
+ one topic to discuss in private, therefore shifting vote to private part
+ final result made public afterwards
3. Discuss: Attic Proposal (Thorsten and Emiliano, all, 5mins)
https://listarchives.tdf.io/i/_zcU_B2pVX7hvIcjMjbEtxvW Rationale: status update, prepare the vote + discussion on/two points of the proposal (Emiliano) + a 2.0 versions discussed, unclear for one part of the proposal whether to keep in inside or outside the proposal + publish the version 2 of this? + ok for me to publish version 2.0? + Emiliano and Thorsten still working on 2.0 + time to discuss + Thorsten proposes to publish what they have so far + Emiliano agrees + should discuss in public (Emiliano) + asked to discuss the management of attitization (Paolo) + what if is managed primarily by a commercial entity? (Paolo) + what is going to be the result of such project? to avoid situations as with LOOL? (Paolo) + Thorsten added some wording to address it (Emiliano) + Let's publish 2.0 & follow the discussion (Emiliano) + Emiliano will send it tomorrow; or even earlier (Emiliano)
4. Discuss: Strategy Workshop (Florian, all, 10 mins)
Rationale: status update, discuss, planning
+ makes sense to meet (Florian)
+ to talk about the directions to take (Florian)
+ find common grounds, where TDF to stand in two years (Florian)
+ find the questions that might be interesting to people (Florian)
+ and schedule that - when are the people available? (Florian)
+ feedback? (Thorsten)
+ should have it (Paolo)
+ and discussion with Florian and Mike S. (Paolo)
+ story of TDF
+ common view how to move forward, apparently there are different views
+ would be important part of the workshop
+ maybe that's orthogonal to what Florian planned? (Thorsten)
+ we could address this too (Florian)
+ let's see what people want to discuss
+ some pending issues from the last onboarding meetings? (Emiliano)
+ few bits and pieces indeed (Florian)
+ 1-2 hours in the next meetings maybe? (Emiliano)
+ Saturday maybe? (Emiliano)
+ some additional onboarding (Caolan)
+ makes sense (Caolan)
+ if we can avoid Saturday, would be good (Kendy)
+ but in general would be useful
+ some time in the evening is acceptable for me (Emiliano)
+ no sense to limit in advance (Cor)
+ time-wise, whatever works
+ OK to speak about strategy (Laszlo)
+ yes, support the idea (Gabor)
+ strategy workshop - good idea (Gabriel)
+ pending issues - if we can avoid weekends, would be good (Gabriel)
+ broadly yes, good idea to try to find consensus & brainstorm & have new ideas (Thorsten)
+ suggest to start with the work that is ongoing
+ not to start with strategy first
+ but after we start working together - it was way too early with the last board (Thorsten)
+ understand correctly - onboarding soon, strategy in a few months, correct? (Emiliano)
+ yes (Thorsten)
+ could be few weeks too (Thorsten)
+ if lucky, can even meet together - let's see how the traveling evolves (Thorsten)
5. Information public part: Status of budget 2022 (Florian, all, 5 mins)
Rationale: Planning for finalizing
+ skeleton done (Florian)
+ 2 pending items
+ this week as the last to add the missing pieces
+ ranking then (this week)
+ can finalize by the end of March
+ so far just 2 people ranked
+ should find deadlines & fix them (Emiliano)
+ tenders & urgent things shortly after (Emiliano)
+ should vote in 2 weeks (the next board meeting) (Thorsten)
+ quick vote is enough, some things already pre-sorted by eg. ESC
+ in everybody's interest to rank (Florian)
+ can people add explanations to the newly added items? (Caolan)
+ would be good
+ what to do with the the Weblate proposal? Don't have a ballpark yet (Kendy)
+ what are others OK with?
+ OK to add it later (Emiliano)
Public meeting ends at 17:32 UTC / 18:32 Berlin time.
Private part
6. Information & Discussion private part: RusBITech e-mail (Florian, all 5 min)
Rationale: status update, next steps
7. Discuss: Outgoing board members on directors@ (all 5min)
Rationale: share opinions and finalize decision-making
8. Discuss & vote: Areas of Oversight (Thorsten, all 10 mins)
9. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all 5min)
Rationale: if there is popping up an item after sending the agenda
Private meeting ends at 17:58 UTC / 18:58 Berlin time.
Meetings
* next regular board meeting * Monday, March 21, 1700-1800 UTC (1800-1900 Berlin time) * agenda four days in advance, i.e. before Thursday, March 17
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-02-28 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-02-28
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-02-21 / not released yet
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-02-21
Meeting Minutes
Minutes 2022-02-11
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-02-11
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-02-11
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Lothar Becker
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board - Thorsten Behrens, Emiliano Vavassori, Lothar Becker, Michael Meeks, Cor Nouws Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener, Paolo Vecchi Board Elect - Caolán McNamara, Gabriel Masei, Jan Holešovský, Gábor Kelemen, Laszlo Nemeth Membership Committee - Membership Committee Deputies - Shinji Enoki, Community - Michael Weghorn, Simon Phipps, Imran Sarvar Khan Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Olivier Hallot, Heiko Tietze, Guilhem Moulin, Sophie Gautier
Representation: Nicolas for Franklin, Paolo for Daniel
Chairman of the Board is in the meeting. One of the Chairman or Deputy Chairman is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
The meeting commences 13:01 Berlin time.
Public Part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 minutes)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ the mailing list thread is really hard to read (Heiko)
+ improve the situation by using decidim?
+ in the budget ranking a project for implementing it (Emiliano)
+ how does it help? (Michael)
+ provide proposals, and collect votes (Emiliano)
+ have to structure workflow for process
+ platform once installed - is empty
+ how do we reduce noise so we can hear everyone? (Michael)
+ right way is with moderators (Emiliano)
+ interesting topic to see how it can help (Cor)
+ needs some work to set it up for us
+ focus is to have all members in the platform
+ get them to express their needs
+ been involved with Consul and decidim (Simon)
+ very complex to setup, hire a consultant to configure it for us
+ quite a good time, and worth using, like installing CiviCRM
+ budget proposal for 2022 - is to have budget for that
+ if solution to noise is moderation - can do it on ML (Michael)
+ proposal - tool better fitted for the purpose (Emiliano)
+ discussing in bugzilla is not the best tool
+ mailing list the same - how obsolete is mailing
+ possible to have a test account? (Lothar)
+ yes, but it needs to be forwarded to Infra - let's see how to implement it with the Team (Emiliano)
+ well worth trying & playing with that (Thorsten)
+ if we can find something more productive, less stressful, more crisp way of getting feedback
+ may take a while to play & get up-to-speed
+ meantime trying stop-gap measures on board-discuss to be more productive self-moderation or whatever else - makes sense
2. Discuss: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs. (Paolo, all, 15min)
Rationale: Items and Discussion about them
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00141.html
+ couldn't follow *all* mailings (Lothar)
+ Paolo can give a short summary, please
+ Paolo's proposal of what we think we should do (Paolo)
+ enable TDF to grow in-house skills
+ start dealing with several items, bugs, a11y, RTL, Chinese/Korean things
+ so we don't have to wait for budget / tenders
+ build up internal skills for the rest of the project
+ start publishing apps in the app-stores
+ able to deal with the issues
+ check / react quickly to security issues
+ Caolan deals with fast - having someone to deal with things internally
+ a lot of support for the proposal
+ lots of additional informations
+ some that - TDF is not made for that
+ some questions regarding: can we actually do it
+ process is the same as for tenders
+ issue has already been solved
+ Michael W had some answers to Kendy
+ shaping an interesting project
+ let's define a procedure (Lothar)
+ reading most of the mails (Cor)
+ short version - certainly some areas of coding development that are poorly covered by what the community does
+ somehow hard to tender
+ do it in a way that doesn't compete with ecosystem members of TDF
+ quite some questions on how to organize it so it works complexity of code, amount of work involved, choices to make
+ current information: is it do-able / feasible to try to work on
+ imagine: give it a try inside TDF; a few people - period of two years
+ does it work out that way - need the details
+ what we need to solve before, is it possible at all
+ a sub-group working on a paper? (Lothar)
+ mentoring & developers question
+ to say right away it will fly - don't believe it
+ need to think how to test that - Q's before
+ wrote a short statement last night (Thorsten)
+ broadly not against it
+ think it's premature just hire developers
+ then laundry list of problems is solved
+ agree - universally helpful - to have internal dev expertise
+ broadening that base is helpful
+ we do have developers - they are just not called developers
+ the pretence that TDF has no devs is not so nice to what staff already do
+ not against broadening the base
+ formidable problems - needs good planning & thinking
+ once hired - keep them around - have a plan before skill-set
+ on app-stores: it's all over the code-base, need a very universal developer to fix all the problems
+ any time/place - Apple decides some API not ok
+ bottom line: lets plan for & discuss that - but not a done deal that this is the solution
+ fallacy - developer is a developer (Michael)
+ a11y developer to turn them into something else - long time
+ LibreOffice take a long time to grow
+ not against hiring people
+ wise to message as development mentors
+ so we multiply our effectivegrow a big, fun community
+ like to separate the discussion of employing devs to sell LibreOffice in app stores is a big change: should be separate
+ beyond that not against it
+ don't not do it because it's hard (Paolo)
+ having internal developers will need to be trained & educated
+ part of the mission of TDF
+ naturally - up to us & people we find, to see what skill-set they have and dedicate them to one area
+ all part of normal process of employing people & helping them to grow in the organization
+ Thorsten, Michael have companies it's normal - we do it
+ following the discussion (Olivier)
+ extremely tiring to discussion - ML not the best
+ like to try to untangle the issues
+ perhaps go in an intermediary step
+ allocate budget for an amount of person-days from the ecosystem
+ of a sr. developer - and assign tasks to them
+ an intermediary step between hiring & giving opportunity to ecosystem companies
+ without complex & hard to settle tender process
+ as Paolo says - complexity is no reason not to do it (Cor)
+ indeed not; but a reason to be clear in how we can try this
+ if it really is a solution for our problem
+ complexity is a reason to be careful & well thought
+ developers are not interchangable (Michael)
+ "just hire developers" - impossibly naive, developers are very different to each other
+ Paolo's idea to: "hire developers" -> "see what skills they have" -> "use them to do something they have skills for"
+ is really unhelpful
+ yes you can pay a lot to train people in other areas but this is very expensive
+ far better to know roughly what skills you want before you hire people - with those
+ sad about the discussion (Kendy)
+ presented as if something is agreed, a done-deal, all smooth
+ because it was not - consequently it turned into a flame-war
+ grateful for Michael W's patience
+ and turning that into something constructive - thanks for that
+ Not sure about Olivier's proposal to rent in skills (Paolo)
+ doesn't allow TDF to build skills in-house
+ normal to have a trial period for 3-6 months
+ and decide if that person is fit for TDF or not
+ if they are capable of evolving: different platform, etc.
+ have been a developer for 15 years and have experienced that
+ need to finish analyzing the process (Paolo)
+ as for mentor - say yes: TDF needs to grow in-house skills
+ to participate more in development; seems people agree on that
+ then study the process
+ things need to be adjusted when we find candidates
+ this one is good for certain areas, what we should do with these people
+ Proposal: discuss more, decide with strategy workshop? (Lothar)
+ could be interesting (Paolo)
+ a consensus from one side brilliant idea to have it
+ other side seems like its a better idea for the ecosystem to do that
+ Olivier's idea answers one question (Kendy)
+ how to get potential hires up-to-speed
+ hiring experienced sr. developers from ecosystem to train potential hires in some areas - could be a way forward
+ very regrettable (Simon)
+ to frame this as partisan - one side vs. another
+ particularly when one side is "the industry"
+ discussion with Michael W & Emiliano - look at the problem first, and devise a solution that will prolly involved in-house developers
+ rather than hiring developers and then seeing what they can solve
+ recommend breaking this down into problems and solving them in the most appropriate way
+ it would be very likely that solving some of those problems will involve hiring staff
+ thanks to Simon for summary (Cor)
3. Information public part: Status budget 2022, end of proposals, next steps (Florian, all, 5 min)
Rationale: Planing for finalizing and handing over to new board
* December ledgers factored in
* final review/double check of numbers next week
* proposals collected
* all in the ranking sheet, except change in recurring costs
* next step is to decide how to rank
* old and new board, 0-100, taking average
* split in recurring and projects, or big and smaller projects, etc.
* Florian offers strategy workshop, to discuss before finalizing budget
+ updated draft, Dec ledgers factored in (Florian)
+ proposals are collected
+ everything in the ranking sheet
+ old and new BoD members listed in ranking sheet
+ recommend since we can't do all (Michael)
+ I ranked the top chunk of these from ESC, and tweaked a few of the others around a bit
+ don't feel like you have to rank every one
+ please everyone rank, then move on (Florian)
+ suggest over-committing (Michael)
+ since we so frequently fail to tender the budget
+ using the proportion by which we under-tendered last year
+ some tenders didn't come to live freeing budget (Florian)
+ filing budget should be minimal (Florian)
+ and agree internally if something falls out take the next item
+ agreed on a process (Lothar)
+ next question: by when? (Emiliano)
+ inauguration on Feb 21st (Florian)
+ lets have a ranking by this date - time to rank & ask questions
+ happy to support hiring two developers (Michael)
+ if it is open that they can be mentors
+ saying developers - not saying must have a specific task yet (Paolo)
+ "two new members of the team" - Emiliano
Thank you and farewell to the outgoing board members (Florian)
* Daniel * Franklin * Lothar * Michael * Nicolas Thanks for your work, service, dedication and time, and hope to see you around and especially to meet you in person soon!
Announcement of future board calls (Florian)
* likely every other Monday * starting February 21 * 1700-1800 UTC during European winter, 1600-1700 UTC during European summer = 1800-1900 Berlin time all season * Thanks to Thorsten for coordinating the meeting slot! * Florian to send calendar invite to board - using Nextcloud (again), check if the invite works and the time is proper
Public meeting ends at 13:47 Berlin time.
Private Part
4. Information & Discussion private part: Follow-up on budget 2022 budget sheet and procedure of decision making (Florian, all, 10 min)
Rationale: Planing for finalizing and handing over to new board Reason why in private: Legal/contractual/financial items.
5. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all, 5min)
Rationale: if there is popping up an item after sending the agenda Reason why in private: Legal/contractual/financial items.
Private meeting ends at 14:01 Berlin time.
Lothar Becker (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-01-28
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-01-28
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-01-28
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Lothar Becker
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board - Emiliano Vavassori, Cor Nouws, Lothar Becker, Thorsten Behrens, Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener, Paolo Vecchi, Board Elect - Gabriel Masei, Jan Holesovsky, Laszlo Nemeth, Caolan McNamara, Gabor Kelemen Membership Committee - Membership Committee Deputies - Shinji Enoki Community - Michael Weghorn Team - Stephan Ficht, Sophie Gautier, Florian Effenberger, Guilhem Moulin
Representation: Nicolas for Michael, Paolo for Franklin
Chairman of the Board is in the meeting. One of the Chairman or Deputy Chairman is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
The meeting commences 13:03 Berlin time.
Public Part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 minutes)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ any issues with Corona?
+ nothing severe luckily
+ any questions from the community? (Lothar)
+ none
2. Q&A: GDPR - quick round of questions and answers (if needed) (Paolo, all 5min)
Rationale: what and why to care about and in parallel to be careful with some inquiries from (professional) users on mailing list
+ request from outside (bigger public administration)
+ asking us for information
+ how / with whom do you share information
+ going to reply this afternoon (Paolo)
+ be aware that we have no contract with them (Lothar)
+ we are not the org providing software to them, no contractual relationship
+ q. was how we process data, eg. crash reports (Paolo)
+ make proposal and hand over to executive director (Lothar)
3. Information&Plan: Wealth management, info&orga for a power of attorney to BW-Bank for general assemblies of shares we hold (Stephan, Thorsten, all 5min)
Rationale: information and organisational issue
+ Power of attorney for votes on general assemblies
+ bank doesn't offer this, as they act very dynamically in buying and selling of shares (Stephan)
+ therefore nothing to be done from our side
+ goal was to avoid negative interest, works out quite well (and much better) for now (Florian)
+ more numbers will be in the published ledgers soon
4. Information & Discussion public part: Follow-up on budget 2022 workshop, open questions, next steps (Florian, all 5 min)
Rationale: Planning for finalizing and handing over to new board
+ workshop on budget took place twice (Florian)
+ got closing ledgers for December this week, will incorporate into our spreadsheet
+ main thing is the ranking sheet (proposals.ods)
+ proposal made have to be factored in
+ any task still for the outgoing BoD members? need to do ranking still? (Lothar)
+ could be done jointly by outgoing and elected BoD members (Florian)
+ did so in the past too, with the last board handover
+ supported (Thorsten)
+ need to trust the outgoing board anyways, e.g. for closing ledgers (Florian)
+ MC requests factored in? (Lothar)
+ one request for Carbon compensation (Florian)
+ and running project MC tool, ~7-8 k spend
+ going to be productive with the tool (Uwe)
+ by now everything ok
Public meeting ends at 13:24 Berlin time.
Private Part
5. Information & Discussion private part: Follow-up on budget 2022 budget sheet and procedure of decision making (Florian, all 10 min)
Rationale: Planing for finalizing and handing over to new board Reason why in private: Legal/contractual/financial items.
6. Information & Discussion: Information and Handling about an invoice (Florian, all 5min)
Rationale: Information and sync Reason why in private: Legal/contractual/financial items.
7. Discussion about a project from the current budget (Emiliano, all 10min)
Rationale: Follow on with discussion on mailing list and further steps for it Reason why in private: Legal/contractual/financial items.
Private meeting ends at 14:01 Berlin time.
Lothar Becker (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
Minutes 2022-01-14
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-01-14
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2022-01-14
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Lothar Becker
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board - Cor Nouws, Lothar Becker, Thorsten Behrens, Michael Meeks, Emiliano Vavassori Board Deputies - Nicholas Christener, Paolo Vecchi Board Elect - Gabriel Masei, Caolan McNamara, Jan 'Kendy' Holešovský, László Németh, Gabor Kelemen Membership Committee - Membership Committee Deputies - Uwe Altmann, Shinji Enoki, Dennis Roczek Community - Aron Budea, Simon Phipps Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Heiko Tietze, Sophie Gautier, Guilhem Moulin
Representation: Paolo for Daniel, Nicholas for Franklin
Chairman of the Board is in the meeting. One of the Chairman or Deputy Chairman is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.
The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending or represented in the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
The meeting commences 13:04 Berlin time.
Public Part
1. Introduction: Welcome to the new elected board members and invitation for the next meetings and to stay with us in private parts (Florian, 5min)
Rationale: Introduction in the transition phase and onboarding information
* new board members: Jan 'Kendy' Holešovský, Caolán McNamara, László Németh, Gábor Kelemen, Ayhan Yalçınsoy, Gabriel Masei
* next meetings
* Advisory Board meeting: Wednesday, January 19, at 1600 UTC/1700 Berlin time send your picture and biography for the slides
* board meetings
* Friday, January 28, 1200 UTC/1300 Berlin time
* Friday, February 11, 1200 UTC/1300 Berlin time
+ welcome to the new elected board members (Lothar)
+ welcome (Florian)
+ onboarding in progress
+ please ask for any questions
+ January 19 at 1600 (UTC) AdvB call for one hour
+ board call scheduled every other week, so next on January 28 at 12(UTC)
+ any q. (Lothar)
+ can have separate meeting to explain (Florian)
2. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 minutes)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF + any q.? (Lothar)
3. Information&Plan: Suggestion of an "attic" procedure (input from subgroup, status of discussion) and status of LOOL repository (Thorsten, Emiliano, all 20min)
Rationale: Status/Follow on of the action items (procedure, LOOL), timeline for decision making on that
+ status of discussion, how to proceed? (Lothar)
+ got feedback (Thorsten)
+ some tangents about Online / only incidentally related
+ will be some projects that are unmaintained
+ if there are security issues - don't expect TDF volunteers to fix them
+ supply-chain / log4j etc. being discussed widely
+ if S/W is on TDF premises - clearly state what they can expect
+ like to de-couple from Online discussion
+ sent Dec 13th - lots of time for discussion
+ Online is essentialy atticized - in RO mode anyway
+ like to get feedback from all board members on the proposal
+ haven't seen feedback from everyone
+ is it something that gets broad agreement or needs further discussions
+ like to add (Emiliano)
+ have two main proposals from Lothar / Paolo
+ need to find some patches to deal with that
+ would like a general agreement, and a subsequent version from Thorsten & Emiliano
+ a deadline needed for feedback (Lothar)
+ then can work with that further
+ this deadline was a few days ago (Thorsten)
+ take this occasion - to quickly comment on it
+ or don't make progress
+ warning some days ago around the deadline
+ proposal would be more or less ok (Paolo)
+ proposed an additional article
+ because of the LOOL problem
+ have to be careful with such projects
+ specific article to the proposal, shows we learned the lesson
+ look at current & official projects more deeply
+ and have agreements where commercial entities are involved
+ think the proposal is good (Michael)
+ hate to delay to get this commercial agreement bits in
+ can iterate it later
+ proposal from Thorsten/Emiliano is balanced, am fine (Cor)
+ in favour of it as-is (Nicolas)
+ discussion around ultimate authority (Thorsten)
+ fair to discuss
+ not smart to over-ride the ESC's technical decisions
+ if the ESC says: "for technical reasons its a bad idea" to host this project: insecure, technology has no volunteers etc.
+ not smart to do that - taking volunteer time & effort to do something, and not taking the advice
+ ultimately the board is the sole body that decides for TDF
+ hesitate to put it too obviously in writing & hold it in front of noses all the time
+ contracting - decide on case-by-case basis
+ against having it in the process
+ stifling, killing the fun having contracts in triplicate for everything etc.
+ we should not bring expectations we could not hold (Lothar)
+ agree we shouldn't block people from having fun (Paolo)
+ not setting clear rules, leads to not-fun situations down the line
+ should listen to choices from technical basis from ESC
+ but in other areas pull in resources from the board to do development
+ but board may have different view on the project and could pull in other resources
+ doesn't take much space in the document, and board having the final word is important
+ read things differently (Michael)
+ cause of conflict - being ignoring development community
+ and overriding what their weighted / meritocratic input is
+ I look at Online conflict from a different perspective
+ we could legally proscribe everything up-front
+ but we are not able to predict the future
+ or we can work more constructively as we go along
+ more flexible, simpler
+ the idea of hiring developers to do things the ESC thinks
are technically bad is folly
+ a fools errand to think we can avoid conflict with contracts (Thorsten)
+ propose - a minimal policy - things we know today
+ make sure that further large projects that are proposed
+ cf. OO at Apache - some huge new project
+ want to get commitments in writing it is not dropped by corporate sponsor next week
+ instead of proscribing today
+ if something is proposed, look into it a bit more
+ shouldn't have projects more equal than others (Paolo)
+ addition to the document is very small, doesn't require effort & legalese
+ don't see a big issue
+ any project - for safety & interest of both TDF and commercial org that proposes the project
+ important for both to know the implications in the long term
+ and that naturally TDF want to make it available free to all
+ the commercial organisation must have these implications clear in advance
+ against trying to prevent conflicts by writing so-called clear rules (Cor)
+ in the end - not going to work
+ will always have discussions; the board has to find the balance between all the interests we represent
+ trying to prevent discussions - not going to work
+ at best you move them to another place
+ please don't do that
+ how do we proceed? (Lothar)
+ do another round, give another proposal / vote?
+ do it if Emiliano / Thorsten agree
+ sit down & see what we can come up with (Thorsten / Emiliano)
+ slept over it for a night, turn it around
+ hopefully have something sometime next week
* see: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2021/msg00327.html
4. Information & Discussion public part: status of 2022 budget suggestions (Florian, all 10min)
Rationale: Planing for finalizing annding over to new board
+ explaining the budget process (Florian)
+ budget started shortly befor x-mas
+ deadline end of April 2022
+ first draft to be discussed
+ at point to close this part (Lothar)
+ do ranking of budget items proposed (Florian)
+ any q. so far? (Lothar)
+ any last minutes suggestions for the budget?
Public meeting ends at 13:33 Berlin time.
Private Part
5. Information & Discussion private part: status of 2022 budget sheet and procedure of decision making (Florian, all 10min)
Rationale: Planing for finalizing and handing over to new board Reason why in private: Confidential discussions about budget
Private meeting ends at 14:04 Berlin time.
Lothar Becker (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)