TDF/BoD Meetings/2020

Minutes 2021-01-15
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2021-01-15 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2021-01-15 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Board - Michael Meeks, Lothar Becker, Thorsten Behrens, Daniel Rodriguez, Franklin Weng, Cor Nouws, Emiliano Vavassori Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener Membership Committee - Membership Committee Deputies - Uwe Altmann Team - Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, Heiko Tietze, Sophie Gautier, Italo Vignoli Community -

Representation: None (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending the call or are represented.

The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundation's 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 13:04 Berlin time.

Public part

Reminder pre-FOSDEM meeting on Saturday, January 30, all day -> agenda and timetable draft shared today with BoD, -> will be made public next week

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. + any questions? (Lothar) + FOSDEM agenda sent out (Florian)

2. Discuss&Plan: 2021 budget planning, draft (Thorsten, Florian, All 10min) Rationale: Preparation for FOSDEM meeting, status of planning, missing bits and pieces, feedback so far, timeline * first draft of the 2020 closing ledgers and the budet is in Nextcloud - TDF Board - Budget 2021 * budget_2021.ods - preliminary budget draft * closing_preliminary.pdf - preliminary closing ledgers * italo_community.ods - community requests compiled by Italo * reserves_template.xls - accountant reserves spreadsheet template * https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2021 - ESC requests compiled by Heiko * next steps: finalizing proposals, adding latest numbers and late 2020 payments, ETA ~next week * first round of approvals on January 30, pre-FOSDEM meeting + clarifying the process (Lothar) + preliminary meeting (Florian) + spreadsheet for planning + 30k for community and marketing each proposed by Italo + topics worth tendering (Heiko) + Thorsten/Heiko to work on it    + final decision end of next week + https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2021 + want to ensure people are aware of the process and timelines (Michael) + everyone should give feedback and be able to make their proposals + started very late (Heiko) + there are proposals + good reason to go in tender + not announced as please-participate-here + who can vote? only ESC members? (Heiko) + ESC advises board, BoD makes final decisions (Michael) + do this earlier next year & advertise widely (Michael) + in October - we should start this process AI:    + on Florian's calendar -> kick off at LibOCon (Florian) + list of good topics (Heiko) + list from last year has been taken to this year + list based on bugzilla

3. Discuss&Plan: Business entity - next steps (Thorsten, All 10min) Rationale: 5 mins status update, 5 mins planning next steps + Why call it TDC? There was another name proposed (Michael) + TDF2 or TDF Business entity? (Thorsten) + call for proposals out long enough + maybe give another four weeks notice time + still see need for business entity + should go forward with that, evaluating options on the table + or decide to not do it  + want to know if we look into it or not in next 12 months (Florian) + we voted on priorities some weeks ago (Lothar) + was ranked not in the 1st place. + does that prevent somebody to work on it? (Thorsten) + otherwise mail the BoD discuss list again - 2 week deadline? + on the FOSDEM agenda anyway (Florian) + so announce now, discuss there. + could be helpful to have a clear idea for the reason for it (Uwe) + looking at the last months' development. + more and more in doubt if there is so much need for it. + can imagine some useful things to do with it, if it exists. + perhaps the 'why' is more important. + the need is stronger than before (Thorsten) + some paralysis set in. + is the Question what problem do we try to solve? (Florian) + form would be more obvious if we know what we want to do (Uwe) + a vision for what it does, not a business plan + my take is very clear (Michael) + we restricted the scope to make it un-controversial + plan: put PC apps in the app store & re-invest funds into development. + not sure if everyone has the same sight Michael has (Uwe) + still a plan to put things into the app stores? + plan was to have PC apps in the app stores (Michael) + be careful of open-ended questions, what could we do with the entity? + not the question of what could do, what is the goal of the company? (Uwe) + founding articles, what's the goal of the company? + not what it could do, but what it shall do in the next six months? + e.g. what right now TDF has subcontracted ecosystem companies with (Thorsten) + proposal - mail the list, have a discuss item on the FOSDEM agenda (Thorsten)

Public meeting ends at 13:23 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private Part

4. Discuss: Second Decade Manifesto (Florian, all, 10 minutes) Reason why not in public: Internal discussion in the board, then sharing with members and wider community Rationale: Discussion about the status quo of the Second Decade Manifesto and the next steps

5. Discuss: Advisory board seat request A (Thorsten, Florian, All 5min) Reason why not in public: Possibility for confidential Q&A Rational: Q&A, plan for decision making

Franklin Weng leaves the call at 13:36. Nicolas Christener to represent Franklin Weng.

6. Inform: Introduction possible new advisory board member B (Thorsten, All 5min) Reason why not in public: Requester asking for confidentiality for the while, possibility for confidential Q&A Rational: Q&A, plan for decision making

7. Discuss: Sync on pending tender (Florian, non-CoI'ed board, 5 min) Reason why not in public: Discussion about tender to be awarded Rationale: Final discussion and decision on pending tender

Private meeting ends at 13:49 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-12-18
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-12-18 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-12-18 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Board - Franklin Weng, Lothar Becker, Cor Nouws, Emiliano Vavassori, Michael Meeks, Thorsten Behrens Board Deputies - Paolo Vecchi, Nicolas Christener Membership Committee Deputies - Shinji Enoki Team - Stephan Ficht, Heiko Tietze, Florian Effenberger, Italo Vignoli, Guilhem Moulin Community - Michael Weghorn

Representation: Paolo for Daniel (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 the call or are represented.

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 13:03 Berlin time.

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. + any questions? (Lothar) + plans for tenders? (Heiko) + are there plans for the next tenders (Michael) + expect Florian to project back by two months and chase tenders + things should start about now. + would really like to start now - and be in good time. + Italo reached out to the community twice on this (Florian) + first email sent in november (Italo) + spreadsheet with requests for communities + that's the community marketing budget (Michael) + didn't see that for tech / development pieces. + if not done, push it now (Michael) AI:    + work on this (Heiko) -> see last year's list: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2020 -> tender roles draft: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/6L5g786jwZSrzYQ + eg. German community call - PDF accessibiltiy situation (Heiko) + from Keil - responsible person, collect topics around the effort + find someone who is able to bring up a number & package a tender + need help getting a quote / ball-park here from Michael, Thorsten + some thoughts on tendering (Lothar) + estimation is not free + it's man-weeks of work to ball-park hundreds of things (Michael) + want a public discussion, to build this (Michael) + can cut down a wish-list of 100 to some that should (Paolo) + best to select with some ballpark idea of cost (Michael)

2. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio2 next/second decade manifesto, status of proposal/draft (Cor/Florian, All 10min) * see mail from Florian to directors/mc at 04th of December 13:52 Berlin time with the link Rationale: discussion about the current draft, status of discussion, feedback so far, launching next steps, timeline * document shared, not much feedback so far * proposal Florian: share draft with public, at least with members + feedbacks? (Lothar) + should share with members (Florian) + first discuss with board (Michael) + would like a little more time to check it out (Emiliano, Lothar) + good to have discussion on ml (Lothar) + prefer to have private discussion first (Michael)

3. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio3 LOOL from TDF - website menu item, BugZilla, OpenGrok etc. (All, Florian 10min) Rationale: discussing next steps, timelines, What to do with the LibreOffice Online website menu item, the BugZilla component and the listing in OpenGrok. * BugZilla component * linked OpenGrok repository * website menu item * own LOOL instance + explain some concrete questions (Lothar) + aftermath of freezing repos, questions came up during recent team call (Florian) + it is frozen, mirroring is setup etc.      + but bugzilla still has the components - so can still file a bug + opengrok - where it points to? + logical: have exactly the same + contributions on the source, then do the same in bugzilla. + freeze or lock places to create content. + proposal seems to make sense (Michael) + is it possible to differentiate in Bugzilla / OpenGrok? (Lothar) + can we definitely divide Bugzilla between Desktop & Online? + an Online component for that - freeze or make read-only (Florian) + old repo, or mirrored? readonly but what output? + what to do with website / menu item + still points to nightly builds that donm't make much sense + ask Mike to update the page + definitely (Lothar) + go to github website (Paolo) + LibreOffice Online shows up as Collabora Online + something we should do here, no clarity on this point. + been pointed out as unclear on the dev-list (Michael) + can point to Mike Saunders' page in our github for LibreOffice Online (Michael) + seems reasonable to point to Mike's page. + not clear what's going on (Paolo) + need to decide & work on that. + why not create a new playground, and bring back LibreOffice Online in those tools. + contribute / play around / warning / experimental + a proper link for this + contention: this will create a competing project (Michael) + and require Collabora to differentiate against that. + got to give members a place to contribute to a TDF project (Paolo) + idea to evaluate another repo platform (Lothar) + was there an evaluation task for the team? + only thing that is European (Paolo) + github - try to avoid it as much as possible + https://www.tuleap.org/ - the site, very cool tools + why don't we use a small project like LOOL to create a new playground, discover & test tools. + so we move forward. + ATM LOOL is one thing and COOL is a 3rd party product + agree and need a playground to discover (Lothar) + isn't it right to have an evaluation. + setup a test platform - for team to discover new tools (Paolo) + many of old contributors moved to 3rd party platform + you want to fight while trying to improve & reconcile? (Michael) + want to have a project called LOOL and also COOL (Paolo) + how smart can we act as TDF (Cor) + to make best use of the ecosystem community members are doing + that's really our challenge as TDF. + bluntly starting with something that doesn't make C'bra flourish as a member of our community - is not great. + take time until end of FOSDEM - have information from evaluation about these things/tools (Lothar) + and discuss this at FOSDEM Meeting/End of January + whole COOL has showed us that TDF didn't look @ community (Emiliano) + didn't look at the community idea behind LOOL + even if I want C'bra to come back and collaborate around Online + would like to provide ground for the community to grow up based on TDF before then. + not only a thing - how do I manage opengrok + know in which direction we want to go                + try to provide some scenarios / hypothesis & evaluate that + and see how we can go out. + some ground for the community to go to TDF, which can include C'bra. + some support on community side + ok with what C'bra did + two red-herrings (Michael) + this is a tooling problem: people left becuase ... github + nothing very wrong the TDF tooling + simply re-visiting the vote we already had + going in circles, compete or don't for period. + not helpful to re-visit this continually. + shutdown is temporary (Emiliano) + would take more than six months at least + re-structure how the community interacts with the code + yes decided to freeze that, need to decide how to move on. + agree not in contradiction with freezing vote (Lothar) + is it six months? (Guilhem) + clarification on what temporary means? + more information on that - please give it, also its important to have a time. + also my understanding, some months (Lothar) + right, not exactly mentioned in the vote, but in the understanding. + answered an earlier question on board-discuss (Thorsten) + have something latest next summer would be my take + nothing specific decided (Paolo) + what Emiliano says - may take 6 months to be ready. + start creating a playground, using LOOL as an example of how to deal with that, and ready for FOSDEM. + lets all play together on that and see what we can do. + doesn't matter, ready when tooling is ready. + could be six months, or two. + not changing tooling - because mistake that was made. + some decision / non-decision that didn't clarify the relationship in the ppast. + fact of proposing, lets start evaluating these tools. + changing / test things, see how it works. + how people will react, like, not like tools ... + making the same mistake again (Thorsten) + talking about tooling - which is not the problem + start from the other way - think what we want + then engage with the community - 95% C'bra + the right way around. + having a competing project with tooling just widens the gap. + not happy with that, most happy trying to reconcile. + having this idea of C'bra not being community is dangerous + prefer to heal & get people back into one place + mistake that was made: collaborated for many years + and then managed to deeply alienate some rather large community member: perhaps that's the mistake. + experimenting with new tools is good (Paolo) + proposals haven't been coming forward + waiting for it - in the meantime open other avenues. + proposal: evaluate to discuss at FOSDEM (Lothar) + talk about tooling then. + we have thirty other projects, where we can experiment with tooling (Thorsten) + look at tooling, look into gitlab + GNOME & KDE have been doing this + experience is broadly good + lets not couple tooling with this rather delicate topic + of course, trying new tooling is a great thing in general! + would like any inputs on tooling (Emiliano) + would like some input from developers really. + some had issues with gerrit + get feedback from the community. + something we can work with (Lothar) => get information for FOSDEM => create a proposal to vote on for opengrok etc. (Florian) + what to do with own LOOL instance? + happy to provide latest supported COOL and help de-brand it for TDF if you want (Michael) + Thanks Michael for this (not voiced in the meeting, Emiliano)

4. Discuss&Decide: rolling release cycle (Michael, Thorsten, Florian, All 10min) Rationale: Discussion about the status of the rolling release idea/discussion, ESC feedback, next steps, anything else needed from the board? * status update from ESC + back and forth (Thorsten) + can do rolling updates + hard to impossible to pull it off until after 7.1 + get the UX changes for the tag & string-changes + personally swamped, not checked if anything happened there (yet) + a rolling release could start at any time + would take a master, short freeze, release it. + many views on the ESC (Michael) + would like to think this through with the ESC + and come up with a more concrete master-plan. + Q' what needed from the board? (Thorsten) + leave headroom in the budget to get the updater working on 3 platforms + aspect to agree on (Italo) + before announcing / releasing - how we manage + announcement of the rolling concept + normally - rolling, introduction of new features almost silently + cannot do this with LibreOffice, have to organize in a way that we can make announcements as we always did + once dev side is ok - need to plan marketing. + first clarify with dev / ESC / more concrete (Lothar) + then talk with Marketing. + no consensus yet at ESC, and some concerns there (Michael W)     + good to discuss there further. + want to wait on ESC's take (Emiliano) + then we can include marketing etc. as a board. + hope it's possible in timeframe to 7.2 (Lothar) + no problem if not in 7.1 - even if it is not in the next major release (7.2) is ok too (Emiliano) + Let's do it when a proposal is ready and approved (from ESC/developers) then vote(?) and get to details in other AoO (e.g. Marketing) + to be clear 7.1 a normal release (Thorsten)

5. Inform: Status of tenders (Florian, All 5min) Rationale: information about status quo of different (re)running tenders * X-ray debugger: awarded * ODF 1.3 delta: in evaluation, can't share further details * development mentor: re-tendering in January, awaiting feedback + x-ray awarded two weeks ago to Collabora (Florian) + dev mentor, missing feedback + plan - go live in January, and ping again + highly critical to get this role filled (Thorsten) + ping sub-group, to get feedback (Michael) + should we rush it? (Florian) + no agreed time last meeting, 2nd week of Jan (Paolo)

Public meeting ends at 13:54 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private Part

6. Discuss: Discussion about status quo of wealthmanagement (Stephan, Lothar, Florian 10min) Reason why not in public: confidential information about finance decision making

7. Ad-hoc/last-minute: Update on UPC

Private meeting ends at 14:02 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-12-04
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-12-04 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-12-04 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Board - Lothar Becker, Cor Nouws, Michael Meeks, Thorsten Behrens, Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener, Paolo Vecchi Membership Committee - Membership Committee Deputies - Uwe Altmann, Shinji Enoki Team - Stephan Ficht, Heiko Tietze, Florian Effenberger, Italo Vignoli, Sophie Gautier, Mike Saunders Community - Michael Weghorn, Aron Budea, Simon Phipps

Representation: Paolo representing Emiliano, Nicolas representing Franklin (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 the call or are represented.

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 13:04 Berlin time.

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. * Stephan: atmosfair donation * did this year, especially for travels * 1.2k € begin of year, then 500 € in May * no travels this year - shall do this anyways, it's goodwill? + thought we were trying to balance our offset vs. consumption (Thorsten) + only had 1 request for travel (Florian) + thought more a goodwill act (Stephan) + came from the board. + need to balance our use with offsetting (Thorsten) + this should be in relation to that + if there is some data-center consumption, that goes up       + expect these sums to go up in the future (Michael) + so for compliance reasons useful to have a clear conneciton here + agree (Lothar) + should consider costs of sharing the software (Heiko) + responsible for quite some CPU usage (Michael) + anyone else welcome to come up with a good model for this. + possibly it is cost-effective to optimize our S/W to             save our users' CO2 - but hard to model. => skip payment for this year, re-visit next year.

2. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio1 marketing plan results of member involvement for tagging (Italo/Mike, All 5min) Rationale: results of member involvement in tagging, next steps * Italo's e-mail "Summary of Discussion about Marketing Plan" from December 2nd + outcome of member discussion Paolo joined 13:13, representing Emiliano + summary sent (Italo) + two clear labels leading - Advance and Rolling + preference for 'Community' + happy to share more information for BoD if needed + to take decision (Lothar) + within the next days + decision on 1. marketing plan and 2. tag + subset of slides basis for vote, removing slides that are not in line with this plan + proposal for the tag - vote on it    + please plan for some development time - to factor that in, following options: (Thorsten) 1. shift the release date 2. start working on changes already - assuming they are approved 3. or decide earlier + string freeze Mon 14th dec (Florian) + will produce a slide-deck for marketing plan to vote on (Lothar) + will also have proposals for a vote on label (three options) + will pack this in a mail, so we're prepared to vote before 14th + string/ui/freeze 14-20th (Thorsten) + need to have someone implementing, reviewing, merging that. + deciding only on the 14th is pushing the envelope + would like a decision before the ESC call on the 10th (Michael) + if monday too late, get it done before (Florian) + can prepare the slides with the labels (Italo) + vote #1 - slides for marketing plan (Lothar, with help of Italo) - to be done via mail + vote #2 - concrete tag (Lothar, with help of Italo) - to be done via mail AI Lothar/Florian: Bring marketing plan slidesubset in first vote mail, bring tags in second vote mail with voting close around 10th Dec + vote #3 - in ESC, release model (Michael) + aim is to have things done around ESC meeting time on Thursday, December 10 + keep translation in mind (Sophie)

3. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio2 next decade manifesto, status of proposal/draft (Cor/Florian, All 5min) Rationale: when do get the proposal, clarifying/discussing process, launching next steps, timeline * Florian's e-mail "First draft of Second Decade Manifesto" from December 3rd + proposal shared yesterday (Lothar) + couple of changes not agreed yet (Lothar) + enlarge group of people to Board + MC  + quite constructive (Cor) + share on which ML? (Florian) + get a consolidated idea (Lothar) AI Florian: share draft with MC AI Florian: find a way to discuss via e-mail between board and MC

4. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio3 LOOL from TDF (Lothar/Florian, All 15min) Rationale: discussing next steps, timelines + decision this week + on the procedural pieces wrt. tied vote (3 vs. 3), replied today (Florian) + for me it is a decision taken by the board. + unless someone brings up a clear rational why 3 vs. 3 is not a tied vote, no reason to doubt that. + think Andreas may have confused quorum with vote counting (Thorsten) + my take too, not in favour of counting twice, but the rules (Lothar) + will freeze the repo, and update weblate. + only a temporary freeze while we decide what to do (Paolo) + the tone & style of interaction on board discuss going down (Thorsten) + two mails out of line - one just discussed + accusations there that may create risk - beyond the pale. + if a reason, please speak up with concrete issues (perhaps in private first), otherwise not happy being exposed to that. AI: TDF team: freeze Gerrit repository AI: TDF team: freeze Weblate repository + next steps? (Paolo) + mentioned understanding (Lothar) + reaching out & engaging new code contributors. + everyone's task. + evaluating alternative technologies? (Paolo) + changing tools to attract younger developers who don't know gerrit? + use smaller projects to test future tools + absolutely (Lothar) + you gave some hints on that. + no constructive comments on this + perhaps transfer LOOL code to new tools: gitlab etc.? + then re-opening it and see what contribution we get + see if other members would like to participate + a good idea to ask developers (Lothar) + stopped developing 20 years ago (Paolo) + tools & platforms (Thorsten) + are not per-se the silver bullet to attract more contributors. + how to attract people - is doing something interesting + a project that does nothing is per-se probably not interesting. + LibreOffice community is those with an existing commitment (Simon) + reason that is, codebase is exceptionally complex + AOO - community showcases bold words not yielding good code + caution board to avoid burning bridges with COOL + encourage people to contribute & build up a set of interests around TDF + don't think hosting will solve the problem + don't burn bridges with code/community + worst thing the board can choose to do. + currently called COOL (Paolo) + right of living on it's own, and those who can contribute etc. + as TDF hasn't got a LOOL anymore, should be free to open new doors; technology could be different. + Sophie mentioned gitlab ticket. https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3413 + not the time to be upset (Thorsten) + a severe risk of this ending up similar to OO     + we need developers - lots of them + right now, the code & developers are on github - so this is where we should start + illusion - we can create something from nothing and be interesting for developers - that is not going to happen. + COOL on github - is where the party is, new things happen - that's where devs go. + need to decide (Paolo) + a 3rd party product; we have nothing to do with it? + ongoing process (Michael) + good to be clear. + although a clever investment (Simon) + really a huge chunk of it is LibreOffice underneath + posturing around censuring, isolating developers of COOL is frankly out of place, sounds like Brexit discussion + kind of agree with Simon (Paolo) + what is the role of TDF in a project. + even if it is a 3rd party project, and TDF will embrace it and work together + just waiting for a proposal from C'bra - no big deal + if we decide COOL is a project to be promoted by TDF fine, but lets see how this goes. + don't forget we need new contributors (Lothar) + everyone should be reaching out to attract them.

5. Discuss&Decide: virtual FOSDEM meetings (Florian, All 5min) Rationale: Agreeing on our internal meetings around the virtual FOSDEM in February * FOSDEM: Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February * board, MC, joint meeting to be scheduled (approx. two days) * same week or separately? + foresee BoD, MC, team meetings (Florian) + find date + before or after FOSDEM? + can we de-couple? (Thorsten) + no need to tie them together + can meet earlier in January + Xmas break may block preparations (Florian) + can we accelerate the budget preparations + seems reasonable to de-couple (Lothar) + need a concrete proposal for a new date (Lothar) + weekend - Friday 29th - could use that (Florian) + week before FOSDEM. + Saturday 30th - whole day? + agree (Michael) AI Florian: setup call and include MC for some portion (Florian)

6.1 Inform: About the recent vote in Germany on the UPC (Thorsten, All 5min) Rationale: inform about an participation inquiry, discussing about involvement of TDF * https://ffii.org/bundestag-vote-for-unitary-software-patents-ffii-call-on-software-companies-to-donate/ + public or private? (Thorsten) + European Patent Court, UPC = Unified Patent Court + been working on this for the last 2 years (Paolo) + don't dislike it too much + has been going on for quite a long time now (Simon) + a project that FFII has a particular focus on     + a good deal of activism going on. + co-ordinate with FSFE / OFE - to make sure it's complementary

7. Tool-issue - Discourse? (Cor) + is it needed that the board takes a decision on this? + people working on it, do a test, they can decide + just let people know - if people are happy, just go ayead + no need to vote on it  + sub-projects doing great work, want to encourage & authorize, give them agency (Thorsten) + if they need money / resources - please do ask the board. + if someone in the BoD is heavily against - they can act + lets not encourage asking for permission all the time + thanks to Sophie for her report on it (Lothar) => no vetos, please go ahead. + thanks to Sophie for her work (Florian)

Public meeting ends at 13:49 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private Part

6.2 UPC bits

8. Discuss: Discussion about releases and marketing plan from 2. (Michael, Thorsten, Florian 10min) Reason why not in public: internal discussion about anticipated effects Rationale: Discussion about the status of the rolling release idea

Private meeting ends at 13:59 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-11-20
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-11-20 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-11-20 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Board - Emiliano Vavassori, Thorsten Behrens, Lothar Becker, Michael Meeks, Franklin Weng, Cor Nouws Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener, Paolo Vecchi Membership Committee - Muhammet Kara Membership Committee Deputies - Uwe Altmann Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier, Italo Vignoli, Heiko Tietze, Olivier Hallot, Guilhem Moulin Community - Aron Budea, Jan Holešovský

Representation: Paolo representing Daniel (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 the call or are represented.

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 13:08 Berlin time.

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. + any questions? (Lothar) + none

2. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio1 marketing plan discussion closed, further steps until the decision of the board (Lothar/Florian/Italo/Mike, All 10min) Rationale: launching next steps in process, changes needed?, how/when to decide it, member involvement + sent an E-mail with some ideas of the process (Lothar) + understanding of the overall process is clear / common-sense. + have finished open community discussion (Lothar) + member ranking of tags is coming up     + board deciding on the exact wording based on membership vote + idea is collect opinion from members (Italo) + discussion narrowed in a good direction + leave space to further understanding + not useful to have endless discussion + narrow down the choice + making prototype about the narrative + working on a couple of documents: 1. LibreOffice Technology positioning a guide on using LibreOffice Technology in communications 2. how to use the LibreOffice Enterprise label, in communications + these are separately running discussions (Lothar) + next decade manifesto, names of tags/splittscreen wording, rolling development model, LOOL etc.       + if veto/resistance per-se then shout out now, discussion in detail elsewhere + concerns wrt. the LibreOffice Enterprise brand (Michael) + re-create the differentiation problem in the marketplace. + want to avoid problems in four weeks + want to secure broad consent now. + re-look at the marketing plan (Paolo) + believe we should remove LOOL mentions for now + should be a live plan, we can modify it       + for the moment: don't spend time promoting LOOL until we have an alternative or an agreement + see all slides - some should not be there (Lothar) + why I'm for this / that. + should have a version next week - separate these out. => marketing should go ahead with this. + every person to have 1 or 2 choices (Italo) + prefer to get all input in a complete ranking (Michael) + agree no tag is no option (Lothar) + perhaps discuss this later

3. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio2 next decade manifesto, status of proposal/draft (Cor/Florian, All 10min) Rationale: proposal, clarifying/discussing process, launching next steps, timeline + nicely working together from two different angles (Cor) + different views + a few different ideas (Florian) + should sync soon to have a paper to be discussed + at least a draft to be consolidated (Cor) + how to proceed with the version? + maybe to share w/ larger group within 2 weeks (Florian) + should hand over to full board (Cor) + need a version a week ahead of the board meeting to have a chance to look in it(Lothar)

4. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio3 LOOL from TDF (All 10min) Rationale: discussing freezing source contribution on gerrit, mirroring COOL on github, planing decision process, launching next steps, timeline + do we need a decision? (Lothar) + please update + helpful to leave all the doors open (Thorsten) + mirror, switch gerrit off, don't invite up-load of patches, not that this happens anyway, switch that to be a mirror of COOL repo + not loose any contributions from history (Lothar) + just stops commits into gerrit. + can also contribute on github if they want (Thorsten) + and can send pull requests there. + no foregone conclusion here/there/anywhere. + avoids the impression it makes sense to contribute on gerrit + no-one looking / contributing there, action is now on github. + situation seems quite clear (Paolo) + close down gerrit, please do contribute to COOL + in this case, if no change, LOOL is dead, but ... as a board / community - need to decide + do we need to have an agreement with a supplier to maintain it            + or do we want to create a different LOOL, cloud is the future ? + proposal: remove it from the marketing slides, now it's someone else's project - why waste time on it any longer + unless we want to open up talks to do something different and/or start investing in possible alternatives. + cannot imagine (Franklin) + not too many contributions to LOOL / COOL + now want to close gerrit, to stop people from contributing ? + no-one contributing anyway (Thorsten) + no matter how the situation is, prefer keeping LOOL of course + actually there are developers + just around him, at least two companies - and some independent devs + too few ? - removing that, or stopping it just because there are too few contributors is the correct way. + feel we talk about two different things (Lothar) 1. short term action to freeze gerrit, so two lines don't diverge 2. second needs more time, to find ways to have other contributions we can bring in, for an online version beside Collabora. + don't think there is a contradiction (Thorsten) + can contribute to github as before, if gerrit doesn't accept patches; it's an orthogonal discussion. + don't want to make people think (Franklin) + that TDF doesn't support / want LOOL anymore + likely to make people think we don't want it anymore. + removing is not an option, but freezing (Lothar) + sure, but freezing is concernig (Franklin) + how we come up with a sensible plan is key (Cor) + what is the market situation, what is sensible from TDF's interest + a FOSS project on github, anyone who wants can join, + it's about marketing. + prefer to look at the history of the project (Uwe) + before saying TDF is not here to bring us S/W + but to bring us a community + TDF made a big fault in accepting Online in the 1st instance without having a community to develop that + what happens now is more or less a consequence of this + TDF should 1st hand care about the community + analogy to Apache - evidence of a vibrant community before accepting a project. + first have a community, then have a project. + for now - strongly suggest not to have gerrit open for commits to avoid a fork here. + if three at gerrit, and eight at github, in a few years can look how to bring it together again. + support Thorsten's proposal. + to understand (Emiliano) + do we think a online version is important for TDF ? + own view - cloud platform, was mostly contributed by ecosystem partners, is important to TDF. + if we want to push it on now, in a year etc. + keeping a TDF-only repo is key. + why freeze the actual one on gerrit ? and use fork of one on github / gerrit - don't know + then copying again the code from a partner, to have small or big differences ? + depends how we want to bring on the situation, and to invest on it        + involve the ecosystem partners, see if someone is available to maintain the version at gerrit. + invest in the sense we tender things ? (Lothar) + yes, clear resources by TDF non-existent (Emiliano) + clear - didn't invest at all in Online platform + at this point, if it's worthy, should think about tendering maintenance / development. + project needs a vibrant community (Paolo) + in a way the issue, TDF's fault - community not been pushed & created + one company contributing to it        + Collabora, on github, decided to remove the reference in the code "this file is part of the LibreOffice project" - signalling that the project is not part of the community/TDF + a bit of a shame. + matter of investment, some tenders could have been done. + can look at C'bra being a suppliers + could bring in 3rd parties, re-make it a community project. + repeat it again (Uwe) + goal of TDF is not tendering development of products + tendering development of product - urgently need a business unit to do that + a crucial point. + no community now - taken most of the developers away (Emiliano) + that's fine, don't have something for the product ATM + this is fundamentally a marketing problem (Michael) + community is growing significantly at github - 30+ new people + offering to tender ~trivial sums to maintain a competing on-line solution is ... a problematic approach. + we wanted to keep things from diverging so this choice can be made. + ultimately this is a marketing / positioning problem. + having been forked is not a problem (Franklin) + local Taiwan vendor - paid by the Taiwan gov't to produce an Online product for the Gov't            + Now seen as a competitor. This is totally ridiculous. + need to keep LOOL repository open. => discuss longer on the mailing list + still think we have to talk about it (Emiliano) + personal discussion in the meeting fastest way out. => talk about it next time. + if there is an evolving community around COOL (Uwe) + TDF should think how it can foster this one, and not start another concurrent one.

5. Discuss&Decide: Status of development mentor tender and about re-tendering it and when (Cor, All 10min) Rationale: discussion, next steps, clarifying timeline + split in public/private because of personal information (Lothar) + current tender failed, already repeatedly (Florian) + decide how to proceed now + mentor tender is an important role + why did this fail ? (Uwe) + several reasons (Florian) + no candidate we could hire in the end + no appropriate candidate ? + different reasons - didn't work out with one + normal things that happen (Cor) + nothing spooky / strange. + not an expert (Paolo) + followed various exchanges, perhaps we should review the whole process. + take time, look again @ beginning of next year. + can we have more explanation ? (Heiko) + nothing big behind it (Lothar) + just look at the things that are needed: not easy to find.

Public meeting ends at 13:54 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private Part


 * Mentor hiring (Thorsten)

Private meeting ends at 14:05 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-11-06
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-11-06 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-11-06 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Board - Lothar Becker (left at 13:45), Cor Nouws, Emiliano Vavassori, Franklin Weng, Thorsten Behrens, Michael Meeks (from 13:25 on) Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener, Paolo Vecchi Membership Committee - Uwe Altmann Team - Stephan Ficht, Mike Saunders, Italo Vignoli Community - Michael Weghorn

Representation: to check: Nicolas representing Michael, Paolo representing Daniel (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:04 Berlin time.

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF.

+ any questions? (Lothar) + how to put items on the agenda (Nicolas) + request for agenda items sent to directors list the week before (Lothar) + official agenda is sent out in time, Monday this time

2. Discuss&Decide: Focussing and prioritizing, sorting goals and action items for the board (Lothar/Florian, All 10min) Rationale: results on ranking, identify 5 most important and fokus energy/time on them, rest on hold until new weighting (after 6 weeks)

+ running tenders are not touched, stays independant (Lothar) + tender is running when it is published, right? (Emiliano) + right, three tenders open currently (Lothar) + Development Mentor + X-Ray Debugger + ODF 1.3 Delta and ODF bugfixing + relatively clear prioritizing established in the board ranking (Lothar) + should have a look on the first items + ranking: + Marketing plan + next next decade manifesto + LibreOffice Online + CoI and tenders + Florian, Lothar, Nicolas working on that + will test-drive this for the ODF Delta tender + come up with a matrix, roles etc - to visualise the process (and perhaps identify CoI) + three roles - managing director, tender owner (can be tdf member, staff, director), and technical role (specialist, also needs to verify delivery) + would be great to publish that (Lothar) + branding and TM policy, incl. OOo brand + could overlap (Thorsten) + some posts seen (Mike) + was important to make this statement (Thorsten) + but limited hope + actually nothing we do on this (Lothar) + KDE / GNOME tools (Nicolas) + might start implementing - Gnumeric is represented in the TC(Thorsten) + projects didn't publish report (Mike) + don't know what will happen + sounds interesting (Cor) + Mike to keep an eye on that (Lothar)

Michael joins 13:25

+ accessibility (Lothar) + some people collecting bugs/things to bring this list in   + some coordination in the german area + lack of implementing (Thorsten) + write down the problem + budget needed? (Cor) + want to do some accessibility stuff (Thorsten) + we estimated & helped develop some a11y proposals for last budget (Michael) + actively working on that - the next decade manifesto (Cor) + more work there the next next week, with Florian on vacation + LO Online to clarify what to do (Lothar)

3. Discuss: Status of marketing plan discussion and LibreOffice Online situation (All, Italo/Mike 20min) Rationale: Valuing feedback so far, clarifying timeline, Discussion about LibreOffice Online situation

+ status marketing discussion (Lothar) + discussion on ml not existing (Italo) + people discussing are missing lots of information + perhaps good to make a summary message + discussion meant to be focused on marketing list - not happened. + discussion status is the same as 15 days ago + not lots of interest from community / proposals on the list + will try to foster the discussion, deadline is next week. + not overly confident. + expect a decision by the members. + can we do anything ? (Lothar) + people are not reading all mailing lists, and miss information (Italo) + message in BZ today suggests people missing lots of the picture + Italo has to leave 13:30 + a problem to have a discussion on this (Stephan) + forced to have a discussion on a certain list, but it happens elsewhere - a problem of communication ? + forwarded it to list from bugzilla (Thorsten) + it's on the list now. + sit at a table & discuss it the only way + for better/worst - ML is decided to be that table + no-one around the table - so where is the discussion? + some but not enough on that list (Cor) + posted a link to this list to the bug report. + Timur has been involved in community QA for years + must bring people the best oportunities to contribute + way TDF is setup: official comms on MLs (Thorsten) + how it is today. + no better place: BZ is bad - no threading after the 20th comment. + can we use Tinder instead ? (Cor) + some new tools proposed (Emilinao) + but not there yet, so ML the only way + if people care - they can engage (Thorsten) + connecting the two perhaps helps short term with people mirroring bits in BZ. + perhaps our responsibility to active this discussion again (Lothar) + can make some statements there (Emiliano)

+ what do we do with LibreOffice Online ? (Lothar) + said will discuss on the ML some more + where are further comments ? + in the ML - asked a question, would be nice to have some official statements from one side (Paolo) + no clarity on it, don't know what to think anymore. + try to understand situation with LibreOffice Online + plan from the repository + does TDF still have a LibreOffice Online or not ? + will it be back-ported / stuff ? + still not clear to Paolo ... + two comments (Lothar) + its a decision we have to make. + answer: clarify - also do not see postponing the decision as possible ? + decide if we have to promote a LibreOffice Online (Paolo) + should we not focus on it because we don't have one + if not, shouldn't spend time on it at all. + very different thing. + whom are you asking ? (Thorsten) + what is the future of that project ? (Paolo) + hoped my mail was clear (Michael) + ~nothing happening at TDF's Online + all work is happening at Collabora. + TDF not that many developers (Paolo) + if parts are diverging, doing back-ports more complex. + doesn't make sense to have it. + technically no problem - nothing happens at TDF (Thorsten) + no real issue, stopped at one side, continues on another + hence dropping / mirroring question (Lothar) + can repeat this (Thorsten) + need to make this decision - currently a bit of an embarassment + currently, TDF has no devs (Paolo) + no resources to do back-ports, etc.          + there is no LibreOffice Online + code is there, but nothing happening (Thorsten) + it is a dead project. + should TDF consider they should do marketing on it (Paolo) + answer is 'no' at this point. + state we're in with marketing plan (Thorsten) + wise to postpone this at this stage. + ironically having no divergence makes it easiest to reconcile (Michael) + important to clarify the marketing (Paolo) + focus on the LibreOffice core code & forget about a project that was perceived for a long time as being part of TDF family. + love to see this as part of the wider family (Michael) + did we help create a startup ? (Paolo) + now growing with its own legs etc ? + apparently the perception of the project was wrong

Lothar leaves at 13:45, Franklin to be new session chair

+ what happened in the past - don't know (Paolo) + used to be a LOOL project + is going away on its own as COOL + easy to read the LibreOffice Online page (Cor) + is/was a source-code project - quite different. + a bit of a vague discussion. + need a good marketing plan - what is healthy for the community. + choice of 3 options on the table last week. + should work to clarify this for the members (Paolo) + think members are clear on the situation and can discuss (Cor) + remember CloudOn (Nicolas) + built a product based on the code that TDF put into the open + built an iOS app, bought by DropBox & vanished + TDF fosters possibilities to build things based on the sourcecode + for LOOL - C'bra provided lots of resources to get that done. + not say taken away from TDF, tried to do this in a good fashion in the TDF ecosystem. + didn't work out for C'bra so go it on their own + if we want to avoid the same thing in the future + take care - feel comfortable, happy to do so in our community and environment. + if I start a new product - wouldn't do it inside TDF, which is a bit sad. + in the past helping a startup create a new product (Paolo) + as with DropBox - money can kill a product + help: TDF provided hosting infrastructure - balance of the relationships -> massively C'bra -> TDF + continuity: C'bra not for sale, and in the event of problems the code will not die - it's FOSS + TDF doesn't have the devs to take it on though (Paolo) + shall we continue supporting startup ? (Paolo) + this COOL startup - used TDF resource + rather small contribution here historically (Michael) + is there a chance to get COOL back into TDF ? (Nicolas) + perhaps we can make the whole environment better + get it back again ? do we have some criteria there ? + support that (Paolo) + good thing, a realization here + if COOL can be organized to bring it back to TDF + in a way that's suitable for all of us - perfect. + need to see working together with TDF or with an external member. + in future if others come with platform to re-use LibreOffice - work out for rules for others to get involved + think - spinning it positively (Thorsten) + a wake-up call. + realize how important active development is           + how far we can push things without massive investment + especially for the more interesting online/mobile platforms. + hope we come out stronger. + a way to make TDF more attractive for companies to invest without betraying our mission & community. + good to discuss about it, finding the positive side (Paolo) + expectation and hope find a win/win + the more we wait, the more separation becomes wide + in favour of working on the marketing plan (Cor) + proposal Oct 24th, seen again on public marketing list for interesting things to investigate; lets do that. + C'bra has acted to give time to make space to decide (Michael) + would suggest shutting down gerrit Online to avoid divergence + we work vs. TDF master - currrently it could come back easily. + personally avoid github (Paolo) + we've been mirroring there for 10 years (Thorsten) + developers have decided already - it's settled + not a fan of github either (Franklin)

Public meeting ends at 14:01 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private Part

- No topic in private -

Meeting ends at 14:01 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) 1st part, Franklin Weng (Session chair) from 13:45 on Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-10-23
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-10-23 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Board - Lothar Becker, Daniel Rodriguez, Emiliano Vavassori, Cor Nouws, Michael Meeks, Thorsten Behrens (from 13:10 on) Board Deputies - Paolo Vecchi, Nicolas Christener Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier, Olivier Hallot, Heiko Tietze (from 13:19 on) Community - Michael Weghorn

Representation: Nicolas Christener for Franklin Weng (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:04 Berlin time.

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. * Olivier: Discussion about dropping LibreOffice Online from the foundation. * Am not in favor of this. LOOL code, documentation, wiki pages etc. are assets of the foundation. * As such, foundation is custodian of the content, should neither erase nor drop existing contents. * Understands decision is way beyond the board. * All these assets contain energy of members and constituents of the foundation. * Begs to not delete, drop or erase any contents of LibreOffice Online.

2. Discuss: Focussing and prioritizing, sorting goals and action items for the board in the light of LibO Con meetings (Lothar/Florian, All 20min) Rationale: Answering questions, discuss situation, suggest further steps with it, suggestion was: identify 5 most important and fokus energy/time on them and to bring them first to results, rest on hold until new weighting (after 6 weeks) * Lothar: Need to have all items on the lists that are urgent or important or both. * Running tenders should not be on the list, it's clear that they need to be worked on. ODF delta is published, X-ray in evaluation, so is dev mentor. * No explicit results expected in the next weeks. * Nobody hindered to work on any item, but it's in not in top priority all board and other resources should be invested into that. * Not doing everything at the same time. * Organize our resources, have common understanding what's next and what comes after that. * First step - what is missing from this list?

Topics sorted alphabetically: (Updated during this call, so changed since LibOCon meeting)

* Accessibility * Advisory board and cooperation * Business entity * App stores * Commercial activities * Capital investment * Communication hints and rules for international audience * Community bylaws * Tooling: Community participation, tools for developers * has to be balanced against cost of change (Thorsten) * migration done in single steps, e.g. Easy Hacks? (Paolo) * should be driven by developers and new dev mentor (Thorsten) * support this (Michael) * goal is also to get new contributors, some might find current tooling complicated (Paolo) * Conflict of interest and tenders * Diversity and inclusion * Education, universities and schools * Events, conferences, LibOCon 2021 and Hackfests, physical and virtual * LibreOffice Online * LibreOffice Mobile (Android and iOS) * Marketing plan and growth and diversification of the ecosystem * Next next decade manifesto * Public sector: activities with e.g. Kiel, Dortmund or Treuchtlingen * Trademark policy, branding, OpenOffice brand

* Goal is to have a ranking/priorities in the end, to focus resources and engagement to. * Nobody hintered to work on other topics, but board's top priority should go on what's ranked. * Emiliano: Can we use something similar as for tender ranking? * Lothar: Can we re-use that, make it 1-15? * Michael: Agree, don't make it too complicated.
 * Lothar: Any urgent item not on this list?
 * AI Florian: put items in a spreadsheet by Monday (to factor changes in), circulate for ranking, to be ranked within the next week.

Agenda items of Private part

3. Inform & Discuss: wealth management for foundation capital stock, evaluating meeting, proposal from Stephan, further steps (Stephan/Florian, Lothar, board members 10min) Reason why in private: confidential information about finance decision making Rational: evaluation and further steps

4. Last-minute: LibOCon update (Florian)

5. Last-minute: LOOL discussion (Thorsten)

Private meeting ends at 14:03 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-10-14
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-14 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-10-14 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Thorsten Behrens (BoD), Lothar Becker (BoD), Emiliano Vavassori (BoD), Cor Nouws (BoD), Michael Meeks (BoD), Franklin Weng (BoD), Daniel Rodriguez (BoD) Nicolas Christener (BoD Deputy), Paolo Vecchi (BoD Deputy) Stephan Ficht (Team), Ilmari Lauhakangas (Team), Christian Lohmaier (Team)), Olivier Hallot (Team), Heiko Tietze (Team), Florian Effenberger (Team), Sophie Gautier (Team), Guilhem Moulin (Team), Xisco Tarazona (Team) Jan Holesovsky

Representation: None (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:03 Berlin time.

Agenda

1. Welcome, introduction, invitation, representation and quorum (Lothar/Franklin, 5 minutes) Presentation of the agenda, confirmation of proper invitation, handle representation statements and determine quorum. Includes a welcome to the members of the new Membership Committee. + welcome to all (new) MC members (Lothar) + explains today's procedure + expresses a good mutual understanding

2. Update on key goals and focal points (Florian, 15 minutes) An update on various key goals and focal points, where we stand and what the next steps are.

1. Key goals 1. Streamline tendering process, sign two tenders and get them delivered (Nicolas, Lothar, Florian) 2. Hire development mentor, grow pool of code committers (board excl. Michael) 3. Grow non-coding community (Ilmari, Mike) 4. (Virtual) Hackfests where coders and non-coders meet (Mike, Ilmari) 5. Marketing plan, younger contributors, OpenOffice users (Italo, Mike) 6. Evaluating tooling, e.g. Discourse for AskBot, incl. tools for participation improvement (Sophie, Ilmari) 7. Campus program for student ambassadors (Italo) 8. Business entity (Paolo, Thorsten, Michael) + brief update (Florian) + presenting/explaining slides of 'keygoals.pdf' + see https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/wNEJSpDWEC9A6km

2. Focal points and budget items 1. Scholarship (Lothar, Florian, Stephan) 2. Donor management, CiviCRM, fundraising and campaigns (Italo, Mike, Florian) 3. New website (Heiko, Ilmari) 4. Weblate (Sophie, Christian) 5. Extensions and templates page (Christian) 6. Update on tenders - WebDAV, Xray-built-in debugger, Text layout, Automated ODF filter regression testing, Cleanup & further improve ODF conformance 7. Weblate Dashboard integration for Membership Committee 8. ODF 1.3 conformance and ODF 1.3 delta tender 9. FOSDEM 2021 and virtual meetings 10. Google Season of Docs (Olivier) 11. Google Summer of Code (Ilmari, Heiko) + brief update (Florian) + presenting/explaining slides of 'projects.pdf' + see https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/wNEJSpDWEC9A6km + #3 support from KDE (Ilmari) + #4 Sophie and Christian giving some further details + #5 Christian giving some further details + #10 Olivier giving some further details + #11 Heiko giving some further details + much appreciated (Cor)

3. Overview on downloads, budget and donations (Florian, Mike, Italo, 5 minutes) Update on our budget, download numbers and the status of donations. Incl. status of recurring donations and diversifying income stream. + more income compared to the past (Florian) + expenses a bit higher + spend more on tenders + to be published as usual + stop here, more discussion at next Board meeting (public part) + any further questions? (Lothar)

4. Various, quick questions and answers, closing of the public part, and invitation to next public board meeting (5 minutes) A few minutes for questions and answers. Everyone is invited to continue the discussion in the next public board meeting on October 23.

Public meeting ends at 13:40 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private part

5. Self-reflection: Eight months after FOSDEM - motivation, feelings and goals (30 minutes) We did a motivation and goals round at FOSDEM. What has changed since then, what does everyone feel right now? Three minute statement each.

6. Strategy and vision for 2021 and beyond (90 minutes) Where do we want to be at the end of this board's term? What is our vision for the months and years to come? We need to recreate trust and mutual understanding. Let's collect all the important or controversial items, vote on the most important 5, and prepare working together in subgroups of 2-4 people, so everyone is member of at least one subgroup.

7. Closing round: Feelings, expectations, goals by FOSDEM (30 minutes) How do you feel now? What are your goals and expectations to achieve by next February, during the virtual FOSDEM meeting? Three minute statement each.

Private meeting ends at 16:00 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-10-09
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-09 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-10-09 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Franklin Weng Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Franklin Weng (board), Thorsten Behrens (board), Michael Meeks (board), Emiliano Vavassori (board), Cor Nouws (board), Italo Vignoli, Ilmari Lauhakangas, Heiko Tietze, Sophie Gautier, Stephan Ficht, Aron Budea, Marina Latini (MC), Guilhem Moulin, Michael Weghorn, Daniel Rodriguez (board), Paolo Vecchi (board deputy), Jan Holesovsky, Uwe Altmann (MC substitute member, from 13:10 on), Olivier Hallot (from 13:28 on)

Representation: Paolo Vecchi for Lothar Becker (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

Deputy 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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. + no questions.

2. Discuss: on the Online situation, and possibly discussion about the MC offer to mediate (All, 20min) Rationale: Answering questions, discuss situation, suggest further steps with it    + a brief summary (Florian) + an announcement Michael sent out last week, wrt. a         change in the online approach + subsequent mail from the MC to offer to mediate. + looking forward to meeting with MC (Michael) + where we're at, makes sense to talk more- + heard enough people, happy to hear further/other feedback + quite clear there are some communication issues (Marina) + idea is not for MC to tell BoD what to do       + but to try to be the external mediator that can listen to the different opinions, and try to mediate the positions + and understand how to work in a constructive way. + stress: not the MC trying to take over. + one thing I like a lot (Thorsten) + this is not a BoD problem, but a community problem + community needs to get a grip & come to some conclusion + so highly valuable to include the MC, as a stake-holder + perhaps to get more membership voices? + while - love to discuss things in the widest possible venue, + this can be a bit of a drag on energy for very large groups + perhaps newly elected MC can represent the membership here? -> and come to a conclusion people can trust & get behind. + like the word trust (Marina) + main issue is a general lack of trust - in the BoD and elsewhere. + good to discuss openly; a smaller circle can help. + more open when there are not 1k people listening. + not just for discussing, but for clarifying & starting to work in a constructive way. + this is the goal. + what would be the outcome? (Heiko) + dropping Online from LibreOffice repository ? + people wonder where to submit patches + question -> submit icons to LibreOffice repo, or         directly to Collabora. + a decision needs to be made quickly wrt. what to         do with it in the short term. + agreed (Thorsten) + don't want to prejudice this decision. + need to decide this way or the other - or people get frustrated. + plan from TDF side one way or the other - important (Florian) + need some conclusions / thoughts. + one thought (Franklin) + question in the past - where to submit patches + not just happening this week, a long-term problem + have a decision quickly, make it clear. + as with other topics (Florian) + perception of trust / issues. + these come to the surface, given we discuss more in public + which is important. + this is just the condensed expression of what has been boiling in the past + is Heiko's position that of the team ? (Emiliano) + not made a statement so far (Heiko) + talk about it in the team. + don't feel like we have come to a conclusion. + people are confused as to how this will develop. + design group: move was accepted, but not too much discussed + 2-3 comments, nothing saying this will break everything etc.          + confusion is: split between core app & front-end + where do we submit our contribution ? + would like a quick response; not after 4 weeks. + an easy answer (Thorsten) + core repo stays where it is             + but will we continue to develop an online version? (Heiko) + have an opinion on that (Thorsten) + pragmatic: lets face the facts. + or can take a different route: ignore the facts & pretend we still develop it    + seems to boil down to personal ideas (Emiliano) + lets all just state our personal ideas + TDF needs an Online version somehow, strategically for next 10 years + personal point - not the shared statement from the Board + for sure, will be difficult; point is to have a repo at TDF + a plan to keep those repos synchronized ? (Uwe) + only (easily) works for github (Thorsten) + root of this is problem of competing w/ another brand (Michael) + need to compete in a way that doesn't harm the LibreOffice brand + that is important part of TDF's value + TDF has lots of things on his agenda, some intersect - spending money effectively, charitable purpose, app stores, mentor hiring, community development, marketing plan + recommend, in the meantime, TDF to shutdown LibreOffice Online + meeting at October 14th, maybe breakthrough then? + thread to compete with LibreOffice as brand vs. Collabora removed + some poision from the discussion removed + announcement done in a reply to my mail (Heiko) + how to monetize LibreOffice + discussed marketing plan, a collective around LibreOffice + not going to fly, ... + don't like it - want to produce FOSS for the community + not talk about business. + a clean cut - why not do it ? + can stop with the business discussion + personal opinion - listened to other opinions + saying we need the input / online version. + need a plan-B: + what happens if C'bra starts to not support LibreOffice + but its own office, and online + in this case, can still fork Online repo & bring it back + as our online. + hope we have a positive moment right now + appreciate stake-holders attributing this move as something positive, we all welcome. + turn it into discussions about development rather than annoying issues around the app. + trying to say at the beginning (Marina) + stop to discuss we against them + companies vs. TDF is not helpful + TDF can exist because it's a mix of business / ecosystem and also community part - volunteers contributing. + stop to have this strict view of what we are. + finally discuss openly & create / shape in a different way this foundation. + a way that can work fine for all the parties involved. + a foundation that can bring advantages for the ecosystem so a RoI - and at the same time something that is not completely changing the nature of the foundation. + have a manifesto, now 10 years old, now a good moment to think what we achieved, to shape all together what we want to be in the next 10-20 years. + not sure discussing forking it can bring something positive + try to have something that can work properly for companies and community. + love some help - pushing this rock up-hill (Michael) + actually understanding the problem and its depth is         something I've not seen yet + six months out - looked at TDF from another angle (Marina) + some things to improve needed since ten years. + definitely time to do something. + being able to create something that works for community, companies, investors and others wanting a MS alternative. + and get credit on the work done. + some team feedback (Florian) + had a call last week, the opinions are mixed + people are concerned, looking for a plan. + Heiko's view is not shared by everyone + in BoD & MC - not 100% the same opinion + what clearly took - in line with what Marina said should find a way to make it work out whatever it         could look like. + like to support Marina's approach (Cor) + look at the problem, and build on the next decade + including the team into our discussion (Michael) + Italo & Mike, particularly. + team listening in at least would be helpful.

3. Status & further steps in the subgroups in the light of discussions see above with: a) marketing plan d) TM licensing (All 5min) Rationale: Discuss and identify the next steps Redmine ticket(s):

a) LibreOffice 7.0/7.1 marketing plan   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3206    Status: Paolo, Franklin, Michael, Thorsten, Mike, Italo continue working on this, Follow-on meeting was done, information/what is uncontroversial and could be decided to be done now    + marketing call yesterday    + several discussion and action items    + deadline mid-November    + discussion on public marketing list, by ~November 15    + decision amongst TDF members only, by ~end-November      -> implementation in time for 7.1    + several bits and pieces independent from release/codefreeze/string freeze      -> Italo to bring forward to the board for decision    + yesterday's call notes to be shared in public by Italo

d) from subgroup to work out proposal for handling outrunning TM licenses End of September   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3319    Status: Cor, Paolo, Emiliano    + thought we agreed in the last call (Cor)    + proposal was to prolongue them for six more months (Florian)       + with cancellation period as/when if we're ready         earlier than expected (Paolo)    + disabled in the app store on the deadline (Michael)    + vote on it now ? (Florian)       + yes: Cor, Paolo    + vote:    "Prolong the existing TM agreement for six months, for     CIB / Collabora"        + in favour: Emiliano, Daniel, Franklin, Lothar (rep. Paolo)       + others abstain.

4. Discuss & Organize: BoD meeting Agenda proposals and Agenda joined meetings on 14th at LibO Con with MC and team (Florian, all 10 min) Rationale: Discuss and get a joined plan for the joined meeting

==   public from 13:00-13:30, private from 13:30-16:00
 * 1) 1) Wednesday, 14 October 13:00 to 16:00 - Board of Directors - moderation: Lothar and Franklin

no public part
 * 1) 2) Wednesday, 14 October 14:00 to 16:00 - Membership Committee - moderation: Marina

no public part
 * 1) 3) Wednesday, 14 October 17:00 to 18:00 - Board, Membership Committee and Team - moderation: Lothar, Marina, Florian


 * need to find meeting slot for MC and BoD only - not enough time during that day, and filling in the empty hour likely isn't an option either


 * meetings will take place on Jitsi
 * agenda for #2 done by the MC
 * agenda for #3 will be handled by Lothar, Marina and Florian - Florian already mailed team and MC with some ideas. One hour only, so need to focus.
 * agenda for #1 drafted by Lothar, Franklin and Florian. Idea is to showcase what's going on in the public part. Invitation to next public board meeting for discussion with the community, so just few minutes for questions. For the private part, we really should focus on the main topics and about working together, instead of a long list of topics. Virtual meeting, less time than usual.

Public part for October 14:

1. Welcome, introduction, invitation, representation and quorum (Lothar/Franklin, 5 minutes) Presentation of the agenda, confirmation of proper invitation, handle representation statements and determine quorum. Includes a welcome to the members of the new Membership Committee.

2. Update on key goals and focal points (Florian, 15 minutes) An update on various key goals and focal points, where we stand and what the next steps are.

1. Key goals 1. Streamline tendering process, sign two tenders and get them delivered (Nicolas, Lothar, Florian) 2. Hire development mentor, grow pool of code committers (board excl. Michael) 3. Grow non-coding community (Ilmari, Mike) 4. (Virtual) Hackfests where coders and non-coders meet (Mike, Ilmari) 5. Marketing plan, younger contributors, OpenOffice users (Italo, Mike) 6. Evaluating tooling, e.g. Discourse for AskBot, incl. tools for participation improvement (Sophie, Ilmari) 7. Campus program for student ambassadors (Italo) 8. Business entity (Paolo, Thorsten, Michael) Draft for German entity (needs ACK from Uwe pre-publishing): https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/tS4ag6dZWRwLcoL

2. Focal points and budget items 1. Scholarship (Lothar, Florian, Stephan) 2. Donor management, CiviCRM, fundraising and campaigns (Italo, Mike, Florian) 3. New website (Heiko, Ilmari) 4. Weblate (Sophie, Christian) 5. Extensions and templates page (Christian) 6. Update on tenders - WebDAV, Xray-built-in debugger, Text layout, Automated ODF filter regression testing, Cleanup & further improve ODF conformance 7. Weblate Dashboard integration for Membership Committee 8. ODF 1.3 conformance and ODF 1.3 delta tender 9. FOSDEM 2021 and virtual meetings 10. Google Season of Docs (Olivier) 11. Google Summer of Code (Ilmari, Heiko)

3. Overview on downloads, budget and donations (Florian, Mike, Italo, 5 minutes) Update on our budget, download numbers and the status of donations. Incl. status of recurring donations and diversifying income stream.

4. Various, quick questions and answers, closing of the public part, and invitation to next public board meeting (5 minutes) A few minutes for questions and answers. Everyone is invited to continue the discussion in the next public board meeting on October 23.

Public meeting ends at 13:47 Berlin time.

Agenda items of private part:

5. Private part for October 14 / Thoughts on next week's meeting agenda (shared with the public in the meantime)

6. if needed Discuss: on the Online situation (All 15min) Reason why in private: private exchange of board members about the situation and its handling inside the board Rationale: trust building for future work in TDF

Private meeting ends at 13:53 Berlin time.

Franklin Weng (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-09-25
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-09-25 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-09-25 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar Becker (Board Chair), Cor Nouws (Board Member), Thorsten Behrens (Board Member), Michael Meeks (Board Member), Emiliano Vavassori (Board Member) Nicolas Christener (Board Deputy), Paolo Vecchi (Board Deputy) Florian Effenberger (Executive Director), Ilmari Lauhakangas (Team), Sophie Gautier (Team), Italo Vignoli (Team), Stephan Ficht (Administrative Assistant) Marina Latini (Membership Committee), Uwe Altmann (Membership Committee Deputy), Dennis Roczek (Membership Committee Deputy) Jan Holesovsky

Representation: Nicolas Christener for Daniel Armando Rodriguez, Paolo Vecchi for Franklin Weng (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. + some questions/remarks? (Lothar) + thing coming up causing friction (Ilmari) + between volunteers and commercial entities + regressions and how to handle them + volunteers have a confused view of how development works + some of them think developers should have a responsibility to fix all regressions - 1 week, 1 month, or years old + different companies have different approaches here + TDF should invest in automated testing to reduce this problem. + why does that help ? (Lothar) + people do a change, and it breaks something (Ilmari) + problem is 'when' - ideal time is when it is being developed + everyone can see then. + some frustration around specific regressions (Lothar) + it's a big topic, concerns whole history of LibreOffice (Ilmari) + fully agreed (Thorsten) + everyone including devs most happy to catch problems early. + an ~infinite effort to make it watertight + but some areas are under-tested right now. + proposal - prepare something in the ESC + perfect world is impossible but can do better (Cor) + Sophie (in chat): Just to second what Ilmari said, this is often discussed in the FR community too + Xisco is already writing many UI tests (Michael) + which is really good. + ESC gets to vote on ideas anyway (Michael) + can we get input on where to focus the work ? + which areas catch the most regressions ? + can we increase coverage cheaply ? + more complex integration testing good (Ilmari) + perhaps including databases etc. => collect ideas, and see what we can do in the ESC. + expect tooling is not a fix for communication issues (Lothar) + alternative is commercial companies (Ilmari) + can elaborate minute details of contracts with clients + getting investment into LibreOffice is hard (Michael) + there is a very long tail of risk here that is ~hard to price + a development mentor ? (Kendy) + when a patch is merged, something that should have a unit test and does not + can poke them and ask them to create a unit test for that. + even some senior developers don't do that. + setting realistic expectations & understanding with users (Michael) + also an important part of this.

2. Discuss & Organize: Status & further steps in the subgroups with: a) marketing plan b) tender streamlining c)app store offering TDF d) TM licensing  (All 15 min) Rationale: Discuss and identify the next steps Redmine ticket(s):

a) LibreOffice 7.0/7.1 marketing plan   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3206    Status: Paolo, Franklin, Michael, Thorsten, Mike, Italo continue working on this, Follow-on meeting was done, information/what is uncontroversial and could be decided to be done now      + shared an updated version (Italo)         + has not changed that much         + a few pages with action items.         + now shorter and easier to read, and a ver. with just AIs         + plan to move quickly on bits that are not controversial            + ingredient brand, spread across the website.         + announce this before the conference, will be discussed there         + some action items related to legal issues - not touching.         + some need discussing with the community.         + idea: label for LibreOffice release managed by TDF             + Personal vs. Community and/or others ...             + we should start discussing this + agenda for next marketing call - + scheduled for week before the conference + October 8th. + have as a 1st step of discussion. + reduce the number of places the discussion happens: + no bugzilla, redmine - all on mailing lists. + restrict the vote to TDF members here - to             avoid making it an endless discussion. + avoid mascot-style problems + summary (Lothar) 1. marketing bits can be decided / uncontroversial do we need here a vote ? + what is planned not so clear (Michael) + may need decision on use of LibreOffice Technology (Italo) AI:           + can you write a paragraph on the decision (Lothar) + what should we vote on ? + if no veto in a reasonable time - just act. + have some feedback to share (Marina) + how do you prefer to get that ? + before the next marketing call or ? + asking for the overall plan ? (Lothar) + or for the Technology bits ? + includes this (Marina) + would like to understand where to share feedback. 2. needs a defined way to provide feedback (Lothar) where to send this (Marina) + either board-discuss or public marketing list (Italo) + lets use the public marketing discuss list (Florian) + send an E-mail to board-discuss & send it all to marketing. + we should have some moderation here (Lothar) + should have clear questions / opinion from membership

+ Probably a good idea starting with AI in MarCom Plan (emiliano)

+ We will clarify AI in the next Marketing Call (Italo)

+ is that Italo ? and when does the process end ? + when will we definitely decide ? + not later than end of Nov. (Italo) + we expect heavy public discussion (Lothar) + should make it clear that group that decides is members so we get to a decision (Italo)

b) KG22.01 - Streamline Tendering Process in 24 months   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3107    Status: Nicolas, Lothar and Florian had first call. Documents and process description in the works.    * last call skipped, todos are the same (Lothar)    * need to schedule another call    * Can we have minutes of the meetings? (Emiliano)    * Yes, will send you, Nicolas took some notes (Lothar)    * Marina (in chat): for the various subgroups, e.g. tender, could be possible to share the minutes with the MC?

KG22.01.1 - Two more tenders signed in 6 months URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3108 Status: X-ray debugger in review/evaluation; ODF 1.3 awaits publication wrt. KG22.01

c) form sub-group to work out and publish business entity proposals   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3294    Status: Criteria list (Lothar) Draft proposal for Luxemburg entity (Paolo), next meeting orga(Thorsten)  - https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/NeBWm25cd2LHyoq    Thorsten, Michael, Nicolas, Paolo, Lothar: due to holidays a part of the subgroup did coordinate, Lothar will update his criteria list/problem statement with feedback, Paolo to follow-up with ministry for clarification of details    * had various meetings with ministries (Paolo)       * need to check possible limitations around the kind of entity,         follow-up meeting next week       * no serious objections - From Board or community (Paolo)       * quite some silence after initial discussion, not much is happening - From the Board or community (Paolo)       * waiting for input, vacation times, previous proposal was not liked (Thorsten) * there was an action for Florian to get a German proposal? (Michael) * also on Thorsten's plate.

d) from subgroup to work out proposal for handling outrunning TM licenses End of September   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3319 (not public, I think this was a fault from me, should be public ticket?)    Status: Subgroup came up with a proposal    * text seems fine (Paolo)    * investigating other alternatives like new entity, TDF going to app stores itself etc.    * proposal to extend the existing agreement for 3 months, then see where we stand    * cancellation clause when alternative is available    * like to help in the sub-group (Emiliano)       * renewed already for 3 months, since we saw the end of the tunnel       * perhaps wise to extend for six months not three.       * not worried as long as terminates when alternative is there (Paolo) AI    => produce text to prolongate this for E-mail vote (Paolo, Cor, Emiliano)

3. Inform & Discuss: Status of redmine tickets of last board meetings (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 10 min) Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

Just to be discussed if any news on:

Membership Committee election (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/803 Status: done, first meeting was hold, information about it    + all accepted roles, members filed with authorities + MC first meeting yesterday (Marina) + nothing very special, caught up with filing. + will start to work on other topics soon, just 1 meeting. + for technical reasons on MC list to help if some tech. issue (Sophie)

coordination of LibOCon internal meetings (Sophie) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3293 Status: are communicated, clarifying what will be the agenda especially for the joined body meetings AI * agenda will be drafted by Lothar, Franklin and Florian * shared via board pad or Nextcloud, to be edited by all board members

Digital tool for participation improvement URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3251 Status: how are tests running? See last discussion about Open letter MC with the issue to have a better tooling for members involvement in discussions and decisions

Public meeting ends at 13:44 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private Part

4. Discuss & Decide how to proceed: grandfathering/change clauses for future TM agreements (Florian, all 5min) Reason why in private: confidential information about legal clauses Rationale: clarify status quo and pending questions/trademark grants, evaluation and further steps

5. Discuss & Decide how to proceed: Pending questions wrt. the license inquiry of an Italian Company about LibreOffice online (Florian/Lothar, all 10min) Reason why in private: confidential information about trademark inquiry Rationale: clarify pending questions/trademark grants, evaluation and further steps, see started email discussion

Private meeting ends at 14:00 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-09-11
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-09-11 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-09-11 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Franklin Weng Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Gabriele Ponzo (MC), Cor Nouws (Board), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Franklin Weng (Board), Florian Effenberger (ED), Thorsten Behrens (Board), Marina Latini, Nicolas Christener (Deputy), Michael Weghorn, Italo Vignoli (Team), Michael Meeks (Board), Stephan Ficht (Team), Kendy, Emiliano Vavassori (Board), Muhammet Kara (MC), Xisco Faulí (Team), Ahmad Haris (MC)

Representation: Nicolas for Lothar, Paolo for Daniel (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

Deputy 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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. + any questions? (Franklin) + -none-

2. Inform & Discuss: Open letter of the membership committee to the board (Board members, all 10 min) Rationale: Feedback and further steps for mentioned issues with old and/or new MC, especially handling of minutes of board meetings + any discussing about the MC Open Letter? (Franklin) + how was it perceived? (Kendy) + board not discussed it yet, but I understand the MC (Franklin) + past half year - many things gradually get on-track + suggestions in the open-letter, understand & mostly agree. + want to improve board <-> community communication. + agree - challenging to do the right communication (Cor) + in general agree (Thorsten) + fact that there is lots of public discussion & non-uniform opinion + is perhaps a positive sign - this is what people were asking for + outside view is lots of quarrelling - but that's now just public, was board-internal before + not continuously (Cor) + was regular + after 10 years some self-reflection / status-quo challenge is good. (Thorsten) + don't share the "all negative, all doomed, all a disaster" good things happening. + hope of a discussion - is when it starts people are willing to change their mind - or debate doesn't make sense. + writing an Open Letter is a bit of a last resort (Thorsten) + were all other avenues used before ? + board is quite diverse - opposite of uniform + good - we need the entire community represented. + writing it anonymously, and addressing the entire board is perhaps doing step 3 before step 2. + not talked to anyone, no-one talked to me - shouldn't MC reach out directly before? + been reached out to by many members (Gabriele) + wanted to represent their concerns. + not defined as anonymous; it's the whole MC writing to the Board. + want to avoid citing those who reached out to the MC      + a letter from the whole MC, had a vote - unanimously to do that + an offer to help. + timing was not so simple to carry it out. + lets see with the next MC      + was voting - whole of MC ? (Michael) + voting right just for the members (Gabriele) + but not got any objection from deputies + good to reach out - appreciated (Cor) + understand - keen to check details (Marina) + don't think a community member not feeling confident about a board decision - should be forced to directly contact the board members + the MC is here for listening too. + a community member can decide whether it's better to go direct, or indirect. + agreed & understood (Thorsten, Cor) + how many people contacted ? (Thorsten) + the number is around ten people (Gabriele) + around the same we have participating from community in the discussions + key points are (Gabriele) + CoI topic + Transparency topic + MC - private minutes + now time to find a solution + a proposal how to move this forwad ? (Thorsten) + will get lots of individual opinions + a process to come to some solution ? + or to agree to disagree + need first a tool (Gabriele) + a mess to check out mailing list / all mails + a tool is appropriate / required to find a place that is convenient and less time consuming. + look at other communities - Fedora, Mozilla, etc.      + must be some kind of tool to express democracy + having a clue of where the discussion is going + and quickly having a recap + we have redmine; is it shared with every member ? + not questioning what tool, but we need one. + looking for a silver bullet ? (Thorsten) + board meeting public part (Franklin) + MC people joined as community members, it's not a BoD/MC meeting + when we directors raise our thoughts, keep in mind that we are talking to community people. + Transparency is good thing up to a point (Michael) + we have had too little, having more is good + it also improves the tone of discourse + it make communication with the membership easier. + but: + topics that come to the board are quite difficult + board struggles to make decisions as 9 + why do we think having another 10 people will help accelerate this ? + Good for the board to have other people (Paolo) + looking at problems from other viewpoints + tools, redmine etc.      + experimenting with tools to exchange ideas, info & request + making them easier to track. + been through ML's after holiday to try to catch up. + things may be missed out. + external input may be helpful on CoI + will try with rest of MC to help this (Gabriele) + transparency, board meetings + not asking to take part in private parts of meetings + asking to recieve the minutes - in the same moment they are shared among board members. + without participating in the meetings themselves. + when ready / cleaned up - arranged the way we want to share. + ready to do the same + even if they are sharing the minutes + willing to share the private pieces too. + so willing to ? (Michael) + two kinds of privacy (Gabriele) + talking about privacy / membership + will not share about single / individual members + personal health / etc. situation + not their data - but of single members. + good to say that (Cor) + in the past many things are easy to discuss & write down + but personal bits / someone busy needs to be encouraged + personal / staff / legal topics in the board also (Michael) + could just avoid writing these down ? (Gabriele) + not meant to report the whole speech + private part could omit details on persons + if discuss topics can't be easily shared (Cor) + want to share that with others - who is responsible ? + can have a look at this (Paolo) + legal / personal bits cannot be shared. + but some other bits can be. + case by case situations can look at                 + as a std. rule - try between two teams share as much as possible to help each other. + minutes - forgetting a detail (Marina) + by statute - MC oversees that board acts properly, legaly etc. + if the MC is not getting this information on time, how can this body check that everything is fine. + eg. the TDC story - was informed of our discussions that startd many months in advance with the community + open invite to join in at the conference (Michael) + sharing the minutes could be a way to get insight into earlier discussions + can remove from minutes bits that cannot be shared & share them. + agree - we should share much more (Michael) + with not just MC but whole community ideally. + not expecting change from tomorrow (Gabriele) + can share the open-letter with the rest of the community + its an open-letter keep it in the ML (Franklin) + lets move to the next topic.

3. Discuss & Organize: Status & further steps in the subgroups with: a) marketing plan b) tender streamlining c)app store offering TDF d) TM licensing  (All 10 min) Rationale: Discuss and identify the next steps Redmine ticket(s):

a) LibreOffice 7.0/7.1 marketing plan   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3206    Status: Paolo, Franklin, Michael, Thorsten, Mike, Italo continue working on this, Follow-up when everyone is back from holidays       + have updated the slide deck and shared with the board (Italo)          + action items have been added.          + some can be implemented very quickly - release independent          + some have to be done at time of a release.             + don't think they have to be 7.1 particularly.          + will have to make some sort of formal announcement          + some need some open discussion with the members for a decision             + the tag name of the 'community' version.             + of course, we need to work on documents explaining the rational behind LibreOffice Technology, ingredient brands, and other ways of communicating.             + decision will not touch license, spirit of the product. + not because it's called personal - it is still FOSS + it communicates something, not blocking them from using it                + will help us to communicate in a more convincing way. + early next week - can have a call, to discuss what we need to do over the next couple of months.

b) KG22.01 - Streamline Tendering Process in 24 months   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3107    Status: Nicolas, Lothar and Florian had first call. Documents and process description in the works. Next call September 17.       + Nicolas did most of the work here (Florian)           + had a call two weeks ago, Lothar, Niclas, Florian           + next call - Sept 17th.       + a framework drafted: helping comparison, and bidders lower the amount of admin work beforehand.

KG22.01.1 - Two more tenders signed in 6 months URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3108 Status: ODF 1.3 delta is written, can be published when approval is given, Thorsten following-up with Regina atm + delta tender is good to go (Thorsten) + double checked with Regina + nothing there that is already solved. + other two - merge them into a larger bucket + Regina is collecting items for that. + initiate the vote for Delta-Tender (Florian) -> done just now during the call via e-mail

+ deadline is 15th September (Florian) + its still open for applicants until Tuesday. + what are the next steps there ? + evaluating the candidates & starting the interview process. + what is the timeline ? (Kendy) + subgroup of the call
 * Development Mentor question ? (Kendy)

c) form sub-group to work out and publish business entity proposals   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3294    Status: Draft proposal for Luxemburg entity published - https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/NeBWm25cd2LHyoq    Thorsten, Michael, Nicolas, Paolo, Lothar: due to holidays a part of the subgroup did coordinate, Lothar will update his criteria list/problem statement with feedback, Paolo to follow-up with ministry for clarification of details    + few questions raised (Paolo)       + next week to meet ministry to confirm plan conform to the regulations

d) from subgroup to work out proposal for handling outrunning TM licenses End of September   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3319    Status: proposal to be generated by subgroup (Paolo, Cor)    + AI Florian/Lothar: let it run via email, do not want to wait until the deadline come up

4. Inform & Discuss: Status of redmine tickets of last board meetings (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 5 min) Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

Just to be discussed if any news on:

Membership Committee election (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/803 Status: Preliminary results published, challenging phase until Tuesday, 2020-09-15, 24:00 CEST/UTC+2 * https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2020/msg00525.html + congrats to everyone - all now in the board call.

coordination of LibOCon internal meetings (Sophie) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3293 Status: Finalizing proposed time slots, Sophie to send out calendar invites * MC meeting: October 14 from 2:00 to 4:00 * BoD meeting: October 14 from 1:00 to 4:00 * BoD & MC & team meeting: October 14 from 5:00 to 6:00 + Sophie will follow up with calendar (Florian)

Public meeting ends at 13:49 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private part

5. Inform & Discuss: Pending questions wrt. the license inquiry of an Italian Company about LibreOffice online (Florian, all 10min) Reason why in private: confidential information about trademark inquiry Rationale: clarify pending questions/trademark grants, evaluation and further steps

6. Inform & Discuss: wealth management for foundation capital stock, evaluating the two proposals, further steps (Lothar, board members 5min) Reason why in private: confidential information about finance decision making Rational: evaluation and further steps, do we need a presentation from both banks in a board meeting?

Private meeting ends at 14:02 Berlin time.

Franklin Weng (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-08-28
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-08-28 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-08-28 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar Becker (Chair), Emiliano Vavassori (Board), Thorsten Behrens (Board), Stephan Ficht, Cor Nouws (Board), Sophie Gautier, Florian Effenberger, Michael Meeks (Board), Daniel Armando Rodriguez (Board), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Kendy

Representation: Paolo Vecchi for Franklin Weng (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:03 Berlin time.

Agenda

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. + any questions? (Lothar) + none

2. Inform & Discuss: status of running tenders, discuss again handling pending tenders in the queue (Daniel, All 10 min) Rationale: Status quo, defining further procedure with other tender tasks + another round of thinking needed wrt. tendering process (Daniel) + lots of other things on our plate, lets slow down tendering + new round about thinking on it (Daniel) + many other tasks on the desks, e.g. TM license or other entity + what would be next to bring in the queue (Lothar) + ODF 1.3 delta is written, can be published when approval is given + others are pending/work-in-progress (Florian) + WebDAV is next one, just in draft + it's one of the older tenders budget has been provisioned for, so would naturally be next in line + what does slowing down mean ? (Thorsten) + can work on a pipeline of ready-to-tender items + does it mean not publishing / having deadlines ? + didn't get consensus (Daniel) + just doing the delta tender ? and working on other topics + have several on our desk, all are important + we have busy days. + if you're busy, but others are free why stop it ? (Thorsten) + just a proposal - up to other directors (Daniel) + proposal not un-necessarily block (Thorsten) + duty of foundation to spend money, especially donations in a timely way. + proposal: tender whatever is ready. + originally - not doing all at the same time (Lothar) + if have resources to do another in parallel + then lets decided then. + keep in-mind, still some work from the Board for tendering + especially for Webdav + if we follow new proposed process from Nicolas. + agree: do work we can do, and not block + but not do everything at the same time. + sounds sensible (Thorsten) + would expeect a tender every 4-6 weeks or so       + happy with this as a result. + next proposal is webdav ? (Lothar) + Thorsten held the hat there + priority was ODF (Thorsten) + not got to specifics of webdav yet. + good example of not doing all at once (Lothar) + now pushing ODF or WebDav ? (Lothar) + priority to get ODF into good shape (Thorsten) + so we're not tendering duplicate things. + then next is Webdav. + what is %age of progress on ODF ? (Emiliano) + almost done (Thorsten) + just wanted to check where we are (Emiliano) + are we on the same track re: tendering ? (Lothar) + ok in a way - to produce tenders (Paolo) + one thing we noticed. + need to include / find more people who have the technical skills to evaluate the results + some specialists are bidding etc.         + important in the future to get more 3rd parties + are there better descriptions we can put in the code to simplify it for others ? + code should be well documented. + exactly the effort being done for streamlining (Lothar) + part of tenders: (Paolo) + not a developer anymore + look at certain type of code + if well written & documented - maybe helps to get more contributors to it. + should be part of future tender process. + an option to roll remaining ODF work into 1 tender (Thorsten) + continuing to work to untangle it.

AI from last board meeting: * Clarification of the various budget items (Florian) -> Thorsten following-up with Regina atm * COSM need of tendering clarification, and if drafting the text (Thorsten) + identified with a concrete name (Florian) + on budget twice in past years + missed this last time (Thorsten) + if strong feelings can re-consider + agree that Public Software is a charity + has been successful getting independent ODF funding in the past + extremely unlikely that TDF can win that funding itself + Public Software is independent etc. + do we need a vote ? (Lothar) + no. Originates from list of spending (Florian) + one of the projects listed, got confused with tendering + unless objections ? (Thorsten) + none.

Redmine ticket(s):

KG22.01.1 - Two more tenders signed in 6 months (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3108 Status: Two signed, two more tendered, one more pending

KG22.01.2 - Two more tenders delivered in 1 year (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3109 Status: Two signed, two more tendered, one more pending

KG22.02.1 - Hire an effective & skilled development mentor (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3112 Status: Tender published. Open until September 15. Feedback by October 30.

3. Discuss & Organize: Status & further steps in the subgroups with: a) marketing plan b) tender streamlining c) app store offering TDF d) TM licensing  (All 10 min) Rationale: Discuss and identify the next steps Redmine ticket(s): b) see above d) AI

c) Lothar proposing a call September 1; Paolo travelling and on holidays, so might be unavailable

* making a redmine ticket for d) with specification what is beside the marketing plan the purpose of the subgroup (defining how to deal with the outrunning licence agreements by end of September): https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3319  -> postponed to next board meeting

Tickets for a)  LibreOffice 7.0/7.1 marketing plan (Paolo)   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3206   Status: Paolo, Franklin, Michael, Thorsten, Mike, Italo continue working on this     + no progress (Paolo)     + continue to be disappointed in lack of AB feedback (Michael)        + perhaps vacation time - check again in a week or two (Thorsten)

Tickets for c)  form sub-group to work out and publish business entity proposals (Paolo)   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3294   Status: Draft proposal for Luxemburg entity published - https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/NeBWm25cd2LHyoq AI Paolo: clarify with ministry as TDF representative, as proposed, no obligation/cost for TDF for this

KG22.08.1 - Agree on entity form with legal backing URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3130 Status: Currently in discussion

KG22.08.2 - Have a majoriy of the stakeholder agreeing on the plan URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3131 Status: Currently collecting/discussing plans and proposals

KG22.08.3 - Establish entity and start execution URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3132 Status: Stalled until decision on entity has been taken

KG22.08.4 - Align marketing with TDC URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3133 Status: Stalled until business entity is in place

4. Inform & Discuss: Status of redmine tickets of last board meetings (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 5 min) Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

Just to be discussed if any news on:

Membership Committee election (Florian, Franklin) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/803 Status: Started. Nomination phase ended August 27. Now preparing the elections that start in a week from now. + nomination period finished yet (Florian     + all in progress   + if help needed reach out to the board, happy to help (Thorsten)   + candidates from all over the world (Lothar)

coordination of LibOCon internal meetings (Sophie) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3293 Status: Sophie reached out to the board for proposal + help from the board needed? (Lothar) + everything is going on (Sophie) + proposal sent by mail + October 14, 1300 Berlin time for board meeting; then 1700 board + MC meeting + check timezone - for Daniel is fine AI Sophie: check with Franklin for timezone AI Sophie: send calendar invite when timeslot is agreed + place to join for discussing technical details? (Thorsten) + next meeting: next Monday, August 31, 1800 Berlin time at https://meet.jit.si/oSLibCon AI Sophie: send invite to directors list + is there a mailing list? (Thorsten) + no, we sometimes have minutes shared via mail (Florian) AI Sophie: share latest minutes with Thorsten + talks are full? enough proposals? (Lothar) + yes (Sophie)

KG22.05.1 - Focused on new / younger contributors (Mike, currently on holidays) https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3118 Status: Some ideas shared on the mailing lists

KG22.05.2 - More creative / pro-active marketing + emphasising our unique strengths (Mike, currently on holidays) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3119 Status: Pending marketing plan, which is currently in discussion

KG22.06.1 - Team to present workshop at LibOCon 2020 (Ilmari) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3123 Status: Workshop will be scheduled for LibOCon 2020

KG22.06.2 - Decision yes/no/where to go by LibOCon 2021 [wrt. tooling discussion] URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3124 Status: Scheduled for LibOCon next year

KG22.07.1 - Write programme description (Italo, currently on holidays) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3126 Status: Pending. Florian got contact to Berlin university, Italo will follow-up with them too.

Public meeting ends at 13:40 Berlin time.

Agenda items for Private part

5. Inform & Discuss: Open issues with the licence inquiry of an Italian Company about LibreOffice online (Florian, all 10min) Reason why in private: confidential information about finance decision making Redmine ticket: do we need one? Rational: evaluation and further steps

6. Inform & Discuss: wealth management for foundation capital stock, evaluating the two proposals, further steps (Lothar, board members 5min) Reason why in private: confidential information about finance decision making Redmine ticket: do we need one? Rational: evaluation and further steps, do we need a presentation from both banks in a board meeting?

7. Inform & Discuss: Sort out pending private redmine tickets of last private board meetings (Stephan, board members 5 min) Reason why in private: in the nature of the private tickets Rational: Clarifying what is pending, and what to do, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones, do we need still a Redmine ticket for it?

Private meeting ends at 14:06 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-08-14
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-08-14 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-08-14 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar Becker (Chair), Franklin Weng (Board), Nicolas Christener (Deputy), Ilmari Lauhakangas, Italo Vignoli, Stephan Ficht (AA), Florian Effenberger (ED), Thorsten Behrens (Board), Daniel Rodriguez (Board), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Michael Meeks (Board), Cor Nouws (Board), Sophie Gautier

Representation: Nicolas for Emiliano (Paolo arrived late) (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:01 Berlin time.

Agenda

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. any questions? (Lothar)

+ proposal of cooperative by Kevin on board-discuss@ list + discussing about TDF owning things (Thorsten) + cooperatives as e.g. known in Germany add overhead (that helps keeping them stick to their purpose), that is likely pointless if TDF owns the thing in the first place (Thorsten) + cooperatives have one vote per member (Lothar) + things depend on how to structure the entity, more engagement of members involved, acting responsibly, more eyes on, engagement how entity is running, some examples given, (Kevin) + sustainability, engagement, more democratic control (Kevin) + diversification of control, more participation through ownership + more interaction of customers/users/clients, shown statistically through many studies + cooperatives last much longer than private organizations + more conservative spending, more responsible acting, as more eyes on things - no profit maximization mode + TDF already a foundation, nonprofit + benefit side probably not affected, but engagement side + samples: one Uber cooperative, fairbnb, hosting cooperatives + solution to TDF owning it? (Lothar) + here it gets complicated (Kevin) + cooperative could create legal contract between TDF and enterprises - admin stuff handled by TDF, helps to maintain control + if TDF should retain control, however, doesn't make a lot of sense + jurisdictions and corporate structures for fully-owned subsidies, to accomplish various purposes (Michael) + you seem to have experience, maybe we should look also into Canadian options + unsure if Canada is a good choice for business, but also look into Luxemburg or Ireland (Kevin) + phase of collecting ideas (Lothar)

2. Inform & Discuss: status of running tenders, handling pending tenders in the queue (status Florian, Lothar, All 5 min) Rationale: Status quo, defining further procedure with other tender tasks

Done tenders: ODF conformance Awarded tenders: MC dashboard Published tenders: Xray-built-in debugger, Development mentor Pending tenders: WebDav, Text layout, ODF 1.3 delta tender, Automated ODF filter regression testing, Cleanup & further improve ODF conformance, COSM release pipeline setup & ongoing ODF 1.4 work (planned for 2021) Related pending task: Streamline tendering process See also https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2020 + explanations about tenders (Florian) + ODF 1.3 delta was publicly drafted, ready for publication + that one needs board approval + deadlines? (Michael) + September deadlines for ~all tenders (Florian) + XRay -> Sept 1st, debugger & mentor -> Sept 15th + lets get more of these out, if there is no conflict/overlap for oversight (Thorsten) + prefers to keep the pipeline filled + invoices for many of the new tenders might only land next year anyway + clarification on the various budget items for ODF bits ? (Michael) AI:   + will clarify (Florian) + lets get them tendered (Michael) + first getting them into a tender-able state (Thorsten) + agreed with that (Lothar) + Who is reponsible for WebDAV / COSM (Lothar) + COSM - doesn't need tendering, just do it ? (Michael) AI:      + draft the text, then open for public comment (Thorsten) AI:      + clarify if we want to tender COSM anyway (Thorsten)

Redmine ticket(s):

KG22.01.1 - Two more tenders signed in 6 months (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3108 Status: Two signed, two more tendered, one more pending

KG22.01.2 - Two more tenders delivered in 1 year (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3109 Status: Two signed, two more tendered, one more pending

KG22.02.1 - Hire an effective & skilled development mentor (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3112 Status: Tender published. Open until September 15. Feedback by October 30.

3. Discuss & Organize: Planning further steps (in subgroups/AoO?) with: a) marketing plan   b) tender streamlining c) app store offering TDF   d) TM licensing  (All 10 min) Rationale: Discuss and identify the next steps + bringing idea of subgroups (Lothar) + responsibilty for ticket to move it forward

Redmine ticket(s): d)?

Tickets for a)  LibreOffice 7.0/7.1 marketing plan (Paolo)   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3206   Status: Paolo, Franklin, Michael, Thorsten, Mike, Italo continue working on this   + further steps promised publicly (Lothar)   + special targets? (Paolo)   + changes for the website (Thorsten)   + "old" group to continue (Lothar)

Tickets for b)  KG22.01 - Streamline Tendering Process in 24 months (Nicolas)   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3107   Status: Pending   + Nicolas pokes to come together (Lothar)   + Florian joins too

Tickets for c)  form sub-group to work out and publish business entity proposals (Paolo)   URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3294   Status: Pending feedback     + Lothar, Paolo, Thorsten, Michael, Nicolas

Issue with d) TM licenses, no redmine ticket so far (?),    + need to get app-store TM licensing addressed for Sept. expiry (Lothar)       + made a proposal for use of license for LibreOffice Online (Paolo)       + collecting people -> leave it open, discuss in the next board ? (Paolo)          + can join as well, important to represent interests (Cor)       + CoI Cor joining? (Paolo)       + group of three: who?     + intersects with the marketing plan vigorously (Michael)       + TM is a key part of this, and a disjoint group.       + need to co-ordinate between groups ? (Lothar)     + keep separate (Paolo)       + one is legality, another is promoting the ecosystem.       + keep them separate.       + counter proposal: keep the two groups separate at least until app store license is renewed/decided because of acute time pressure (Thorsten)     + would be nice to have a clear remit (Michael) + is it giving licenses to "LibreOffice Online", or renewing app-store licenses or ? AI: Making a redmine ticket for it/d), clarifying what is beside marketing plan the task for the subgroup (Lothar)

KG22.08.1 - Agree on entity form with legal backing URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3130 Status: Currently in discussion

KG22.08.2 - Have a majoriy of the stakeholder agreeing on the plan URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3131 Status: Currently collecting/discussing plans and proposals

KG22.08.3 - Establish entity and start execution URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3132 Status: Stalled until decision on entity has been taken

KG22.08.4 - Align marketing with TDC URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3133 Status: Stalled until business entity is in place

4. Inform & Discuss: Status of redmine tickets of last board meetings (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 10 min) Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

Membership Committee election (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/803 Status: Started. Nomination phase until August 27. Election afterwards. + waiting for candidates (Florian)

Digital tool for participation improvement (Daniel) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3251 Status: Daniel evaluating on VPS at TDF infra, will then come back with proposal

Next Decade Manifesto (Lothar) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3288 Status: Postponed to after marketing plan

coordination of LibOCon internal meetings (Sophie) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3293 Status: Sophie asking the groups. MC wants to have a meeting, team not during that week. Ask BoD during their next call what they prefer. -> Sophie: Does BoD want a meeting? Which time (think of time zones!)? + full timetable during LibOCon (Florian) + avoid BoD-meeting during LibOCon (Florian) + LibOCon is unique possibility, BoD to have time to discuss joined with TC, maybe some overlapping works (Thorsten) + little availability for the team due to organizing items during LibOCon (Sophie) + public or private? (Thorsten) + most likely private (Florian) + proposal to split into public and private, 3 h meeting, first half an hour public? (Lothar)

Just to be discussed if any news on:

KG22.03.1 - Encourage Italo, Mike, Heiko, Sophie, Olivier, Xisco, Ilmari to grow community (Ilmari) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3114 Status: Want to measure effects. First ideas shared in ticket. Have plan the next week. Ilmari to lead.

KG22.04.1 - Run five Community Bonding / Hackfest Events in significant geographies (Ilmari) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3116 Status: First ideas shared in ticket. Have plan the next two weeks. Ilmari to lead. Blogpost draft done by Mike.

KG22.05.1 - Focused on new / younger contributors (Mike) https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3118 Status: In progress

KG22.05.2 - More creative / pro-active marketing + emphasising our unique strengths (Mike) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3119 Status: Pending marketing plan, which is currently in discussion

KG22.05.3 - Find & turn USPs into nice stories about the project (Mike) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3120 Status: Pending marketing plan, which is currently in discussion

KG22.05.4 - Encourage OpenOffice users to join us pro-actively (Mike) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3121 Status: In progress. Some (private) ideas shared in the ticket. Need to decide how/when to make ideas public. Marketing-priv?

KG22.06.1 - Team to present workshop at LibOCon 2020 (Ilmari) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3123 Status: Workshop will be scheduled for LibOCon 2020

KG22.06.2 - Decision yes/no/where to go by LibOCon 2021 URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3124 Status: Scheduled for LibOCon next year

KG22.07.1 - Write programme description (Italo) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3126 Status: Pending. Florian got contact to Berlin university, Italo will follow-up with them too.

KG22.07.2 - Pilot & move to goal of finding five students for six month evaluation appointments (Italo) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3127 Status: Pending

KG22.07.3 - Re-evaluate wrt. scaling this up by libocon 2020 (Italo) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3128 Status: Pending

Public meeting ends at 13:43 Berlin time.

Agenda items of private part

5. Inform: appointment from TDF side with public affairs (Lothar, Florian, Thorsten) (board members 2 min) Reason why in private: because having not an ok for publicity of the contacts Rational: information of all board members about appointment

6. Inform: status of issue searching wealth management for foundation capital stock, seeking for a second proposal from the BW-Bank (1st bank for foundation wealth magnt in Germany) (Lothar, board members 3min) Reason why in private: confidential information about finance decision making Rational: status quo

7. Discuss & Plan: pending AI for removing redmine tickets from the past, needed discussion in the board because of no consensus about removing (Paolo, Thorsten, board members 10min) Reason why in private: confidential information in tickets Rational: status quo, further to dos

8. Inform & Discuss: Sort out pending private redmine tickets of last private board meetings (Stephan, board members 5 min) Reason why in private: in the nature of the private tickets Rational: Clarifying what is pending, and what to do, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones, do we need still a Redmine ticket for it?

Private meeting ends at 14:01 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-07-31
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-07-31 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-07-31 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar Becker (Chair), Franklin Weng (Deputy Chair), Cor Nouws (Board), Heiko Tietze, Florian Effenberger (ED), Michael Weghorn, Uwe Altmann, Stephan Ficht (AA), Daniel Rodriguez (Board), Nicolas Christener (Deputy), Dennis Roczek (MC), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Emiliano Vavassori (Board), Italo Vignoli, Michael Meeks (Board)

Representation: Paolo for Thorsten (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda

Public part

1. Q&A: Answering auestions from the community (everyone, 5 minutes) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF Lothar asking for any questions / suggestions? + Lothar asks about Hispanic online meeting + people from different countries participating, increasing audience (Daniel) + Had almost six hours of translations, nine talks, six countries + Spain, Mexico, Brasil, Costa Rica, Chile + Italo and Olivier joined too + Videos are also on YouTube + Increasing audience + Any specific content or speeches we should be aware of? (Lothar) + someone from Venezuela doing Dashboard (Daniel) + 800 people in the telegram group, big number + getting more people joining the community thanks to the events + Lothar asking if Daniel's proposed tool was discussed + first testing with small (Hispanic) group + asking for VPS on TDF infra to evaluate, will then come back with proposal + LibreOffice Asia in 2020 is cancelled because the original purpose was to let users in Taiwanese government users to meet international community friends, hence not plan to convert it to online either + COSCUP tomorrow, biggest annual FLOSS conference in Taiwan, will have a talk about ODF to      newbie users in non-profit organizations (Franklin)

AI Stephan: update ticket #3251 with the above information

2. Inform & Discuss: Status of public board action items (everyone, 5 minutes) Rationale: Provide a status update about the public board action items

form sub-group to work out and publish business entity proposals (Paolo) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3294 Status: Pending feedback

coordination of LibOCon internal meetings (Sophie) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3293 Status: Sophie asking team and MC what they prefer, then follow-up to BoD

Next Decade Manifesto (Lothar) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3288 Status: Postponed to after marketing plan

Digital tool for participation improvement (Daniel) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3251 Status: Collecting ideas and sharing with community

LibreOffice 7.0/7.1 marketing plan (Paolo, Franklin, Michael, Thorsten, Mike, Italo) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3206 Status: Continue working on this

Membership Committee election (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/803 Status: Started. Nomination phase until August 27. Election afterwards.

Public meeting ends at 13:17 Berlin time.

Agenda items of private part

3. Discuss: Internal and external communication and processes (everyone, 7 minutes) Reason why in private: Discussion about internal rules of procedures Rationale: How to improve our process in preparing, voting and timeboxing decisions; how to handle internal and external communication

4. Inform & Discuss: Status of private board action items (everyone, 5 minutes) Reason why in private: Discussion about private tickets Rationale: Provide a status update about the public board action items

Private meeting ends at 13:35 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-07-17
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-07-17 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-07-17 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar Becker (Chair), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Thorsten Behrens (BoD), William Gathoye, Michael Weghorn, Nicolas Christener (Deputy), Heiko Tietze, Italo Vignoli, Daniel Armando Rodriguez (BoD), Simon Phipps, Michael Meeks (BoD), Stephan Ficht (AA), Uwe Altmann, Emiliano Vavassori (BoD), Olivier Hallot, Xisco Fauli, Cor Nouws (BoD), Florian Effenberger (ED), Guilhem Moulin, Franklin Weng (Deputy Chair), one anonymous participant

Representation: None (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:03 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 5 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. Lothar: asking for questions * nobody speaks up

2. Inform & Discuss: marketing plan 2020-2025: Status quo, timetable, steps for decision taking (group of 6, All 10 min) (for document see: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/4pLtn9xn76BkxFK) Rationale: Status quo, Discussion variants, defining further procedure + timetable - close window of feedback today (LLothar) + for a decision until Monday + https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/07/09/marketing-plan-draft-discussion-about-options-available-and-timetable/ + several options (Thorsten) + hear the last round of feedback today & decide + Daniel had another idea: delay 7.0 verison by a little bit to have more time + would need deciding quickly + Florian proposed delaying / postponing until 7.1 (Michael) + impression & from the Adviory Board (AB) meeting (Lothar) + wise to postpone until 7.1 + feedback from AB is to slow-down / think again / discuss meaning of words. + my opinion. + broadly towards branding & about-box changes (Thorsten) + agree think a bit longer about that. + advise against not doing anything at all. + there are bits & pieces that do have consensus, e.g. on the website & other messaging + proposal to delay to 7.1 - we need a clear timeline (Florian) + not against delay to 7.1 (Michael) + lots of time required to do this work & interact with proposals + would love to get an independent expert in to help moderate / mediate that - and map it to what is possible with TDF. + can do marketing improvments - but need a clear message for Monday (Lothar) + is the consensus not moving towards LibreOffice Community? (Paolo) + not sure that its necessary to bring an external person in while we havn't decided. + really to handle the volume of feedback (Michael) + lots of information to process & answer (Thorsten) + it's a huge time / staffing / energy problem. + great to get so much feedback. + would be a shame to miss nuggets - so needs someone to look after that + would like time to anlayse all of the feedback (Sophie) + other under-developed parts of the plan (Michael) + TM licensing, Enterprise entity, website updates etc. + running out of time to do this. + is it easy to amend the code ? (Lothar) + yes trivial (Michael, Thorsten) + would like an explicit approval for the code change (Michael) + we decide this until Monday (Lothar) + but it looks likely. + AB concerns - re-branding of LibreOffice binary (Simon) + rather than the website + previous board, considered many of these items before + suggest we make progress on ingredient brand & website now. + agree binary changes on-hold to 7.1, while continuing to work through & agreeing the marketing strategy + and agreeing the ingredient brand strategy soon + agreed (Paolo, Lothar) + not stopping the work. + seen many useful suggestions for the website (Cor) + no hard deadlines for website (Thorsten) + can change it at any time, great for that + good to get around to it (Michael)

3. Discuss: Business entity (All 5 min) Rationale: Discuss and identify the next steps + status quo? (Lothar) + another round of questions with Mike. + evaluating several options currently (Paolo) + need more - so we can decide what the questions are. + as an option for US based org. yesterday - the privacy shield has been invalidated. + currently stalled - board busy with marketing plan (Thorsten) + thanks to Nicolas for proposing things & kicking us. + need several questions answered (Michael) + we should have several options on the table first (Paolo) + want to get things answered first (Michael) + to see if this is even useful for the project. + which way is best (Paolo) + then see if we can do it. + come up with a plan & poke Mike for an appointment ? (Thorsten) + put together several proposals + proposal - an evaluation on that as a blueprint (Paolo) + so we know what we decide to do  + need questions answered by Mike before it's even worth looking at (Michael) + is there any benefit to TDF to doing this + hammer it out in a sub-group (Thorsten) + Paolo, Thorsten, Michael + agree need questions answering before moving to which country. + grateful for the detailed Luxembourg proposal from Paolo (Michael) + would like similar proposals from Thorsten / Michael AI: form a sub-group to work it out (Thorsten, Paolo, Michael) (not decided yet (Paolo)) + obviously a written proposal on the item (Uwe) + would like it to be published + not been discussed with the wider board (Paolo) + lets see if the proposal makes sense + could have written something stupid. + rather discuss as decided 3 mins ago (Cor) + lets do this when it is proper (Lothar)

4. Inform & Discuss: Status of Action Items of last board meetings and redmine tickets (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 5 min) Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

As a reminder, there are following public Action Items from the last board meeting:

AI Florian: sort out how to handle old/existing tickets Status: in progress

AI Paolo/Franklin/Michael/Thorsten/Mike/Italo: marketing plan 2020-2025 -> continue working on this Status: in progress

AI Lothar: reach out to Italo for details on what happened in the Telegram group Redmine ticket: do we need one? Status: done, no need for further actions so far

AI Florian: Announcement around mid-July, elections early September, new MC in charge September 19. + AI: Emiliano to talk to Gabriele Status: pending questions clarified, announcement sent

AI Lothar: in one of next BoD Call bring in as agenda item: How to get a "next next decade manifesto" Redmine ticket: do we need one? Status: Done on last board meeting, consensus: writing manifesto postponed after marketing plan edition, if somebody starts in parallel it's welcomed

AI: to remove AIs done

5. Inform & Discuss: Digital tool for participation improvement (Daniel, All 7 min) Redmine ticket: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3251 Rationale: Adoption of a platform that favours participation, debate, interaction and collaborative elaboration of lines of action between TDF and the community + improve discussions/feedbacks (Daniel) + propose a platform + voting as a feature + may give advantages to non-native speakers + love the idea (Thorsten) + doesn't solve problem of too many communication channels - Telegram, mailing lists, IRC -> one more platform to monitor then + needs strategy to move people from mailing lists etc. to this new tool + give a try to the platform (Daniel) + consolidate things, avoid things getting lost (Paolo) + differentiate (Uwe) + between binding & non-binding. + binding: mailing-list + non-binding: chat-channels, social media etc. + perhaps good to separate these. + further discussion on the board-discuss list (Lothar)

Public meeting ends at 13:36 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private Part

6. Discuss: Internal and external communication and processes (board members 7 min) Reason why in private: public parts within item 5., private part internal rules of procedures Rational: How to improve our process in preparing, voting and timeboxing decisions; how to handle internal and external communication

7. Inform & Discuss: Information about Finance and Taxes (board members 7min) Reason why in private: confidential information about status quo Rational: status quo, further to dos

8. Discuss & vote (if text is ready): Update on Development mentor job advert (board members 7min) Reason why in private: confidential information about job posting Redmine ticket: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3112 Rational: status quo, further to dos

9. Inform & Discuss: Sort out pending Action Items, Status of private Action Items of last board meetings and private redmine tickets (board members 5 min) Reason why in private: in the nature of the private tickets Rational: Clarifying what is pending, and what to do, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones, do we need still a Redmine ticket for it?

Private meeting ends at 14:07 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-07-03
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-07-03 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-03-07 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar (BoD), Thorsten (BoD), Franklin (BoD), Nicolas (Deputy), Emiliano (BoD), Michael (BoD), Daniel (BoD), Drew, Stephan, Italo, Ilmari, Sophie, Sam, Florian, Aron, Paolo (Deputy), Cor (BoD), Dennis, Simon

Representation: None (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 minutes)

Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF.

2. Inform & Discuss: Status of Action Items of last board meetings and Redmine tickets (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 5 min) Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in Redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

As a reminder, there are following public Action Items from the last board meeting: AI: Florian to add updates to Redmine tickets and make public where possible, announce to lists -> done * link to public board tickets: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/projects/board-public * link to private board tickets: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/projects/board-private * previous, private board items will be transferred * ticket ID will stay the same, so previously private tickets can be tracked in public later on * AI (public): sort out how to handle old/existing tickets

AI: marketing plan 2020-2025 Paolo/Franklin/Michael/Thorsten/Mike/Italo -> continue working on this * work continues.

3. Inform & Discuss: LOOL item/marketing plan 2020-2025: Status quo, Questions&Discussion about the document, further steps (group of 6, All 15 min) (for document see: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/jzryGw7XDkJadmo#pdfviewer )

Rationale: Status quo, Discussion of written proposals/documents, further procedure

* Summarize where we're at (Lothar) + remarks on the board-discuss list + is it the right link ? + yes has not changed (Italo) * several action items that are related to the plan (Italo) + some related to product string freeze + have been managed by developers + some others are related to documents + will work on them next week - finishing annual report currently. * making good progress (Michael) + we have around a month, prolly worth starting build LibreOffice Online Personal. * Personal vs. Community (Paolo) + some discussion - but happy to follow Italo's branding expert + background: talked with some former colleagues (Italo) + in larger agencies, one was a schoolmate + working in brand-management in advertising or related + sent a short description, and asked to come up with a name + when they replied; provided a list of names which included Community + these people are not OSS involved - most use Mac + answers/comments on 'Community' were fun: + "do we support people with addictions ?" + 1st concept brought to mind. + a lot more consensus on Personal. + not Personal in the sense of legally personal + not talking about a license, but a concept of being used by an individual. + although we are in the tech. area - we don't think about this. + 1st association personal - Personal Computer + 4 people who are experts - highly educated. + talking about software. + also asked about 'Home' (Lothar) + perceived as not a professional product (Italo) + key asset of software - pro. software for individual use but professionaly developed. + Home perceived as more amateurish. + not in favour of Home (Lothar) + only the reaction of people will tell us if we're right or wrong (Italo) + community outside of FLOSS has not the same meaning that we give it. + had to explain - people who are advocates: a community of interest. + our perception may be influenced by our narrative.s    + minature scale negative reaction (Ilmari) + good idea to draft some FAQs + when people start debating the topic on social media etc.       + will write about this in the plan document (Italo) + a small summary of the dicussion had. + how the Personal brand fits with LibreOffice Online (Simon) + not for PC, not installed + but for an individual to use it (Italo) + one term for all uses. + less optimized for Online - then again the perception of normal users - outside the tech. world + software - don't understand S/W browser vs. installed locally often + extremely larrge number of users - completely different from us in how they relate to technology + no one single term - perfect for everything. + think Personal gets closest in different flavours. + may be wrong - see what happens when the product is deployed. + meta-comment (Florian) + short on time, hard to get things together + for the future - for these decisions - consider the option of a members vote. + our membership base includes volunteers, individuals, enterprise, should be a good representation of the community + a suggestion; have them vote etc. + a sales point to become members. + perhaps if proves not to be working re-consider it later + for clarification, decide if we want to re-consider it later or not + Dislike the Community vs. Enterprise (Michael) + differential marketing against 'Community' is unfortunate. + getting string changes under time pressure (Thorsten) + LibreOffice 7.0 string freezes etc.   + for Online - agree with Simon (Thorsten) + pay off to think / brainstorm a bit more there + pressing thing - is hard deadlines. + feedback for the group + marketing team ? (Lothar) + broadly very happy with Personal (Thorsten) + defer to Italo there. + like the separation there & the target group. + wonder if it works there. + comment - to fix the issue (Paolo) + we have LibreOffice. and LibreOffice Enterprise + so don't have a demarcation + we have something more. + how does that differ from what we have now ? (Michael) + what we have doesn't work + it doesn't steer people effectively. + started here two months ago (Cor) + where we started (Simon) + on the BoD a while ago, comment year+ ago + TDF doesn't have a place for producing enterprise editions in its mission / activities + community members do that: hence the idea of ingredient branding. + so CIB/Collabora etc. can use that. + should focus on making a good tool for community users + this river flows from this discussion. + lets not talk about enterprise at all - community members can use this to indicate they're part of the community. + happy to listen to others (Italo) + expressed my thoughts + community voting an issue: + had to get out of Telegram design-group + someone with no competence in branding + we have a lot of experts in branding + don't expect people without knowledge to start saying we're experts. + no energy to start discussing with people that have no basic understanding. AI Lothar: reach out to Italo for details on what happened in the Telegram group + members is really not the end-users we target (Michael) + perhaps good to ask those widely. + good to get input from members too (Thorsten) + should be open for feedback. + helps us to explain better & be more convincing. + agree with Ilmari we should have a FAQ (Sophie) + people in community - may feel don't own the product if we don't use the word community + we need to explain, Personal is quite different to community edition. + feel they are part of it. + we need a clear domain (Michael) + so eg. French Gov't users - think "this is the wrong thing" + when they see it in the enterprise. + I see 'community' as a positive term. + "wow we're using the community edition" + agree with that (Sophie) + lets keep in touch with ethics & principles (Paolo) + indeed - unethical to use it in a large company, saving money without contributing (Michael) + so helpful to steer people that way.

4. Inform & Discuss: Upcoming Membership Committee election (Florian, Franklin, All 10min)

Rationale: Time table, procedure, call for candidates

Announcement around mid-July, elections early September, new MC in charge September 19. Eligible voters are all members as of Q3. + third quarter members will be announced soon + these have active and passive electoral right for the membership committee + membership committee size can be changed by the board + AI: Emiliano to talk to Gabriele + announcement to be sent ~next week

5. Inform & Discuss: Planning of BoD, MC and team meeting at LibOCon (Florian, All 5 min)

Rational: Discuss and Define need, dates and (virtual?) location

LibOCon dates: Thursday, October 15-Saturday, October 17. Potential Hackfest around that date too, and mini summits.

+ we do quite a good job of early announces etc. now (Michael) + what's the main difference ? (Emiliano) + duration mostly 6-8 hours (Florian) + remember different time-zones (Lothar) + can try to compress the issues into six hours (Emiliano) + with planning, can stretch it out into several days + Daniel & Franklin should be accommodated (Florian) + Florian to come back with a proposal (Lothar) + MC & Team should also be asked.

Public meeting ends at 13:48 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private part:

6. Inform & Discuss: Information about Finance and Taxes (board members 10min)

Reason why in private: confidential information about status quo

Rational: status quo, eventual upcoming decision, further todos

7. Inform & Discuss: Status of private Action Items of last board meetings and private redmine tickets (board members 5 min)

Reason why in private: in the nature of the private tickets

Rational: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-06-19
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-06-19 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-06-19 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Michael Meeks (BoD), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Daniel Rodriguez (BoD), Emiliano Vavassori (BoD), Franklin Weng (Deputy Chair), Arnaud Versini, Uwe Altmann, Michael Weghorn, Thorsten Behrens (BoD), Sophie Gautier, Lothar Becker (Chair), Florian Effenberger (ED), Stephan Ficht (AA), Italo Vignoli, Xisco Tarazona, William Gathoye, one anonymous participant

Representation: Paolo Vecchi for Cor Nouws (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 minutes)

Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF.

Lothar: asking for questions? >no questions come up

2. Inform & Discuss: Status of Action Items of last board meetings and redmine tickets (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 5-10min)

Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

Lothar: procedure handled? Florian: project to have redmine task: BoDpublic and BoDprivate Lothar: have a look of the AIs Florian: gives overlook (see further down); items are announced Lothar: any other AIs? Florian: pending tender

As a reminder, there are following public Action Items from the last board meeting:

AI: KG 3 grow non-coding community + create some KPIs that we can measure. (Florian) -> added first details to https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3114 AI: KG4 community bonding/ hackfests + ask the staff if they have ideas for a virtual hackfest (Florian) -> added first details to https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3116 AI: Florian to add updates to Redmine tickets and make public where possible, announce to lists -> done at https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/projects/keygoals and https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/msg04549.html AI: marketing plan 2020-2025 / LOOL + Paolo/Franklin/Michael/Thorsten/Mike/Italo -> continue working on this.

3. Inform & Discuss: LOOL item/marketing plan 2020-2025: Discussion of written proposals/documents, further procedure (from last board meeting, 6 member group, All 15-20min) (for documents see Nextcloud: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/jzryGw7XDkJadmo)

Rationale: Status quo, Discussion of written proposals/documents, further procedure

+ is there a timeline ? (Lothar) + not yet finalized, if there is consensus can work on it (Italo) + some activities not evident on the slides + need to make clear what the activities are + also transform it into a short document we can share. + important to build out the detail (Michael) + this is a concept (Lothar) + we don't want to go into details at this stage. + domain-names etc. can be tweaked after a decision on the concept. + very interested in feedback from outside the board (Lothar) + possible to do it via the mailing list + need to define how long this period will last + paper is a good starting point (Uwe) + some may know different views on marketing to Italo. + a basic idea: mostly about users ...         + but who will use our product. + good idea - to have clearly in our head: + two totally different products: + binaries - TDF & ecosystem distribute + community - + different thoughts on how we go with each of them + separated from each other. + things go one into another. + also - POV - discuss between ecosystem companies & community + division between community & ecosystem not helpful (Michael) + language needs to unite from the beginning + two kinds of users: contributors & end-users + agree (Sophie) + contributors not automatically users + contributors & end-users not the same + an example of what is lacking ? (Lothar) + more marketing to users. + lots of reasons why LibreOffice is a great thing (Uwe) + not much thinking about to whom we are speaking. + slide 29: (Lothar) + clusters of users. + can address them with specific marketing instruments + these are for binary users (Uwe) + major goals: not to enhance users of binaries + but to enhance number of community members + more emphasis: on similar thoughts on community vs. user + not a sharp distinction. + thanks to Italo & Board for working on it (Sophie) + useful document. + possible plan @ previous board meeting (Paolo) + me / Franklin / Thorsten / Michael + a professional can do a great job. + also to the group of six - done the hard work here (Lothar) + good to keep momentum (Michael) + when should we have a decision about this ? (Lothar) + as early as possible. + need to have at least a large number of details in-place. + for the announcement of libreoffice-7-0 + some areas: can take more time + external website + really important part of this (Michael) + can't separate the marketing. + by mid July - need the final decision (Italo) + should announce it - before we announce 7.0 + otherwise - two announcements can cannibalize each other. + re-cap: need to fix marketing before breaking ecosystem (Michael) + so both need to happen together + lots needs doing: TM licenses, external business website bits + decision about the concept ? (Lothar) + can we poll board members ? (Michael) + no need for a formal decision - but need to build consensus + With this poll of every board member it should be clear, that a later contradiction to the conceptual issues of the paper would be very problematic (Lothar) + no issues with concept (Emiliano) + some details perhaps. + no issues either (Daniel) + details. + concept can be done ASAP (Franklin) + if not have consensus before certain date may need to           turn it into a vote + in favour (Thorsten) + think it is high time to do it. + in favour of it (Italo) + should allow other parts of the project to happen. + very happy with the document (Lothar) + from my perspective (Michael) + very good base, detail. + major improvement to the project if we get it right. + Any feedback from Cor on the marketing paper's concepts? (Lothar) + Cor agrees with the proposal (Michael) + no need for a vote (Lothar) + don't see details as a real blocker (Italo) + if continue to work together as in last couple of weeks. + made good progress; agree a good starting point for the project as a whole. + should solve many of issues & mis-understanding + not all will happen in one day. + something for users to digest. + lets not over-do it with voting on everything (Thorsten) + at least on minor detail. + concept approved - happy with work Italo put in (Paolo) + have a meeting of six early next week & execute (Michael) + thank Italo for hard work, cohesive document (William) + pity - got it only yesterday - 1 day to read it carefully. + slide 35 -> regarding LibreOffice Enterprise & std. + don't think specific domain names are needed from SEO perspective. + makes sense to have another site (Michael) + expect ecosystem participants there + level of control - not taken over by commercial interests (Paolo) + that said - supposed to be for business (Thorsten) + detail needs working on. + should be for whole contributing ecosystem (Paolo) + have a neutral place - with limits (Italo) + website of each entity - free to write what they want. + a jump-page to the entities' pages. + where also - the volunteers can use it to promote the commercial version without risk. + idea is to have a page - business related (Italo) + Enterprise /Business + want to get more detail -> scenarios ... see around LibreOffice + choose the interface / supplier there. + as community members - should get enterprise support. + Download page - expect to separate Personal vs. Enterprise (Michael) + leverage existing SEO concerns (William) + a detail - relegate it to the mailing list (Lothar) + get ideas about that. + practical terms - plan to do a re-vamp of LibreOffice website (Florian) + this is work in progress; can co-ordinate on this + need to get priorities for this website to co-ordinate them together + should incorporate what we are doing here.

4. Inform & Discuss: "Next next decade manifesto", a renewed document, do we need it, and if: How is the procedure? Stakeholder participation? Time frames? (from last board meeting, Lothar, All max. 10min)

Rationale: Clarifying the need and if, the further procedure with it and risks of such a process

+ expect it to grow out of this (Michael) + do we need such a new document ? (Lothar) + how do we get it ? lots of stakeholders + my request - based on having a stable & enduring basis (Michael) + but we have a five year marketing plan + so that meets most of the needs for stability & dependability. + agree - bit by bit create a new manifesto (Paolo) + leave it on the side until we have implemented this marketing plan. + highly desirable - to have such a mission statement (Thorsten) + really makes things much easier to coalesce behind a shared vision + rather say it is important to have. + agree more urgency in immediate marketing structure right + really don't want to stop anyone doing this in parallel. + more than nice to have - important for the community. + agreed - just the time to do it (Michael) + postpone - work on & discuss this marketing plan ? (Lothar) + love to see not a board thing - task for all (Thorsten) + can we spread the work out a bit ? + suggest one workshops in virtual conference (Florian) + for marketing & manifesto + think they are very overlapped - so one session (Michael) + is this for everyone ? (William) + for everyone - emphatically want feedback (Lothar/Thorsten) + manifesto - some structure & why we do it          + nice to add code of conduct bits into the manifesto

Public meeting ends at 13:50 Berlin time.

Agenda items private part

5. Inform & Discuss: App store licence agreements with Collabora/CIB/? running out End of June (board members 10min)

Reason why in private: confidential information in discussion about later contracts and potential conflict of interests in public audience

Private meeting ends at 14:02 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-06-05
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-06-05 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-06-05 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Cor Nouws (Board), Lothar Becker (Chair), Michael Meeks (Board), Thorsten Behrens (Board), Daniel Rodriguez (Board), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Nicolas Christener (Deputy), Stephan Ficht (Admin Assistant), Florian Effenberger (Executive Director), Uwe Altmann, Simon Phipps, Italo Vignoli, Pulkit Krishna, Dennis Roczek

Representation: Nicolas for Franklin, Paolo for Emiliano (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:03 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 minutes)

Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the new board and about TDF.

* Lothar: How is the Corona situation, can we do something for the local communities? * Daniel: We currently use our Jitsi to get in touch with the local community. Nothing else we need for the moment.

2. Inform & Discuss: Status of redmine tickets/key goals of the board (Thorsten, Nicolas, Björn, All 15min) (for the goals see item 2 on: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Meetings#Minutes_2020-03-13)

Rationale: Clarifying which tickets/list and Key goals, actual status of them, quaterly update, and what todo, who is caring, until when


 * Nicolas: Goals are in Redmine, tickets marked as private, only visible to board right now. We could make things public and track progress there.

* Key goals from FOSDEM 1. streamline tendering process in 24 months 1.1 two more tenders signed in 6 months + one is awarded - close to being delivered + another close to being finalized - going into tech details 1.2 two more tenders delivered in 1 year 1.3 need to plan more spending for tax office. + this is/was completed, voted & filed & acknowledged for 2020

2. grow the pool of code committers. 2.1 hire an effective & skilled development mentor. + working on the job offering / tender + gathering feedback & improvements + share with the BoD likely next week for feedback. + is half-way done.

3. grow non-coding community 3.1 encourage Italo, Mike, Heiko, Sophie, Olivier, Xisco, Ilmari to grow community + a recurring / permanent item (Florian) + eg. documentation meeting attendance grows + emphasis on growth rather doing the work (Michael) + can we quantify and track this ? AI:        + create some KPIs that we can measure. (Florian) + would like this too (Thorsten) + season of docs gets us a new volunteer (Florian)

4. have 5 community bonding / hackfest events before 2022 where coders & non-coders meet, ESC events. 4.1 have these in significant geographies + hack-fests are hard to plan for the next year (Florian) + wait until the end of the year - to see how things are progressing - otherwise go virtual. + now have a great opportunity to learn virtual events (Thorsten) + can learn how to have virtual events, easier to setup and run, with less cost involved. + lets take the opportunity. + second it (Lothar) + hackfest around the conference ? (Lothar) + Sophie mentioned mini-sumits. + can we get talks down in time at conf ? (Michael/Florian) + 30mins max - perhaps 20mins better ? + French community had a translation sprint (Thorsten) + Hackfest in Germany 2 months ago around Corona (#WirVersusVirus - Corona hackathon) + good ideas to steal from elsewhere. + meeting in person is super important; really miss it. AI:   + ask the staff if they have ideas for a virtual hackfest (Florian) + eg. bug-hunting sessions ? (Thorsten) + with Jitsi open all the time, play with it eg.           + really support it (Cor) + had some 1st thinking in Dutch community some weeks ago

5. marketing must emphasise project over product 5.1 focused on new / younger contributors 5.2 more creative / pro-active marketing + emphasising our unique strengths. 5.3 find & turn USPs into nice stories about the project 5.4 encourage OpenOffice users to join us pro-actively.

6. Ask team to evaluate new tooling and involve the community in the discussion. e.g. Discourse as AskBot replacement; also matrix/riot/chat 6.1 team to present workshop at LibOCon 2020 6.2 decision yes/no/where to go by LibOCon 2021

7. create campus programme for student ambassadors to attract contributors 7.1 write programme description by end of February 7.2 pilot & move to goal of finding 5 students by April for six month evaluation appointments 7.3 re-evaluate wrt. scaling this up by libocon 2020 + timeline has shifted, people not present at universities + budget is approved Eur 12k - for travel & rental space + do we really need to travel ? (Michael) + at Sun - asked for applications (Simon) + advertised as jobs people applied for + normal application, interview & app't process + doesn't need to go there to do it         + local ambassadors may have costs (Florian) + want to foster local activities + ideally with existing members already there. + tended to give fixed annual budget (Simon) + got a quarterly report back to co-ordinator + who mentored, ran events, provided resources. + ran a monthly meetup for ambassadors + admin costs too for transferring money (Florian      + can we do this now ? (Michael)          + digital campus' can still be recruited on          + hard to get co-operation from universities (Italo)             + if we pay them for doing it, sorting out how we do that             would be quite difficult.          + talking to staff from University of Luxembourg (Paolo)             + would love more information on spreading LibreOffice there.

8. Enable the creation of an effective TDC organization 8.1 complete negotiation of TM agreement by May 8.2 align marketing with TDC + this is being radically re-evaluated currently + ongoing work (Florian)

+ might make things public in redmine (?) + nice progress indicators on tickets - BoD could update that + in BoD - can discuss later, how we do the daily work + who does what until the next call + track in redmine, or wiki for that.
 * how does BoD track action items & make progress (Thorsten)

AI: Florian to add updates to Redmine tickets and make public where possible, announce to lists

3. Inform & Discuss: LOOL solution proposals (Franklin, Michael, Paolo, Thorsten, Italo, All 20min) (for documents see Nextcloud: ?)

Rationale: Status quo, Discussion of written proposals/documents, further procedure

+ Italo should present the plan (Paolo) + last BoD meeting idea of having board members write something + has evolved into working with specialists + to create a basis from which we can start + disjoint from TDF app-stors question (Michael / Thorsten) + some consensus on having things in a separate entity + still under discussion (Paolo) + but want to discuss this in a neutral way + still evaluating this. + make sense to de-couple this to avoid confusion (Paolo/Thorsten) + Summary of discussion (Italo) + document is a draft of a presentation (Paolo) + not yet a document, the start of the conversation + the relationship / connection between TDF & ecosystem is          still being explored. + how we can deal with apps / LOOL etc.        + it is a complex matter + various elements to take into consideration + like to start working on. + commitment to do this openly (Lothar) + Italo is doing a starting draft (Paolo) + need to produce action items from this. + positive progress (Michael) + we start to understand the problems. + consensus fixing any one of them - is not great => we need several interlocking changes to move somewhere else that makes sense. + now doing groundwork for having LOOL bits done (Lothar) + not just LOOL, there are bits that need to work together (Paolo) + starting to update the website, new brands etc. + Italo can bring in feedback from the mailing list. + a general marketing plan for TDF ? (Uwe) + yes; part of it - todos for LOOL (Lothar) + Italo can now speak + distributed a draft + close to final - but some details are missing + but the main idea is: + common & consistent message for outside world + necessary to make people easy to identify. + as belonging to the LibreOffice project + group project communication under this umbrella. + companies can do their own communication. + one version from volunteers - easy to identify + LibreOfice Home vs. LibreOffice Community eg. + messages support characteristics of this. + can drop Fresh/Still and find something easier to remember by people. + community developed / released version will have the same messages / same tags. + have a clear element of the project: ecosystem + so far has never been clearly identified + as an element of the project. + have the "LibreOffice business" umbrella brand only used by ecosystem companies. + similar but opposite tags ...               + eg. volunteer support vs. professionally supported. + find an agreement + one large umbrella / reference name: + LibreOffice Project + LibreOffice Home / Community / Whatever + LibreOffice Business + can be used for any version of the S/W + Desktop / Online / Mobile + perhaps Mobile is not a pro. product + mobile suites not professional product. + having a differentiator + one of the ideas -> have a clear visual sign that provides differentiation: + between volunteer supported & pro supported. + stronger characterization of difference + ensure that is a close connection of ecosystem to project. + having a website - clearly "LibreOffice Business" related + indepedent from TDF. + but co-ordinated with TDF. + with a higher degree of freedom wording the products + volunteer supported one: "if you are business you should buy from an            ecosystem company" - perhaps problematic on TDF premesis + room for improvement: + in document distributed - don't focus on details + so it can be messages to the outside world + for the LibreOffice 7.0 announcement. + want mid-late July something finalized. + Good to expand scary sounding slides (Michael) + make it more concrete & clear - a couple in particular. + propose expand that and see it published (Lothar) + Good to see discussed (Cor) + would like to see a few things clarified before sending out too + Community Support (Michael) + marketing has helpfully removed 'support' here and there + if support is the thing we build demand for - having free 'community support' under-cuts this. + idea - speak not as TDF, but as the LibreOffice project (Italo) + press releases - not TDF announces, but LibreOffice Project announcements + a small detail - but LibreOffice is tougher to identify as        a company - whereas TDF can look like one. + explain why we speak as a project - after 10 years, speak as a project - not a foundation. + a detail to discuss later. + agree - nuances in the wording. + point out the issues - but don't block on details. + want to integrate the marketing messages (Italo) + into a general strategy - with agreed actions + companies free to do whatever they want in their marketing. + co-ordinated releases (Cor?) + some discussion here. + lets not get bogged down in details (Italo/Lothar) AI: + Paolo/Franklin/Michael/Thorsten/Mike/Italo -> continue working on this. + need legal / contract / TM bits -> that come out too (Michael) + use these to support this initiative.
 * Lothar: Seems things turning into some meta-topic wrt. marketing plan

Public meeting ends at 13:54 Berlin time.

Agenda items of private part:

4. Inform & Discuss: Part2 of Status of redmine tickets/key goals of the board (Thorsten, Nicolas, board members 10min)

Reason why in private: if needed when confidential information is included in topic above

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-05-22
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-05-22 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-05-22 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar Becker (Chair), Franklin Weng (Deputy Chair), Michael Meeks (BoD), Thorsten Behrens (BoD), Cor Nouws (BoD), Emiliano Vavassori (BoD), Daniel Armando Rodriguez (BoD), Nicolas Christener (Deputy), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Stephan Ficht, Heiko Tietze, Uwe Altmann, Miklos Vajna, Jan Holesovsky, Shinji Enoki, Sophie Gautier, Florian Effenberger, Marco Marinello, Andras Timar, Guilhem Moulin, William Gathoye, Gülsah Köse, Aron Budea, Muhammet Kara, Dennis Roczek, Simon Phipps

Representation: None (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:04 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 minutes)

Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the new board and about TDF.

* hope to finish over the weekend, then bring it out
 * Q&A/statement on business entity currently in third round (Lothar)
 * no further questions

2. Inform/Discuss: Ecosystem & Sustainability (Michael & Thorsten, All 15min)

+ Board wants to be more transparent about decisions + that is good, but we need to publish more data. + please listen, absorb - everything we say will be     in the minutes or published later: + questions / challenges possible at the end.

"The foundation promotes a *sustainable*, independent and meritocratic community for the international *development* of free and open source software based on open standards."

LibreOffice has included companies into the ecosystem from the beginning + the word 'community' includes people working at companies + inspire a higher loyalty to the project & the idea: unifying. + economics seems harsh + value volunteers time & support of course. + need to model & understand these things - Eco-system

+ Started: + Sun -> ~50 developers -> we were eager to include them + IBM -> ~10 developers -> tried to get them to work together with us           + big happy family...     + Oracle -> OpenOffice not a contributor to net margin -> gone. + IBM -> encouraged us to form, didn't join -> differentiation. + we all lost hard.

+ Then: Linux Distros + SUSE - 15 developers, RedHat -> 5 developers, Canonical - 1 developer + Munich? -> peaked at 7 - now down to ~1 + The flourishing years 2012-~2014 + KACST ~5, CloudOn ~2, Igalia ~1.5, Lanedo ~2, Ericsson ~2, Synerzip -> ~12, MultiCoreWare -> ~15 (2 months) + all of these disappeared: no economic driver.

+ More recently (Thorsten) + SUSE - 15 -> 0 devs. -> 2013             + Canonical from 1 to 0 devs. -> 2017             + RedHat from 5 to ~2 developers - 2018 + can't assume Linux Distros would magically do the coding

+ Now we are here: + 1&1 -> 1 developer + Munich -> 1 developer + TDF -> went from 1 to 2 + RedHat -> ~2 developers + RedHat -> 2 developers + NISZ -> 3 developers + CIB -> 7 developers + Collabora -> 25 developers + and some more volunteers.

+ very little virtuous cycle driving growth in sales -> feature / function
 * The ecosystem is not growing, but not shrinking ~40 paid developers

+ ~70% of commits from ecosystem companies + tend: larger features, longer term development, maintenance, GSOC ++ mentoring + ~30% of commits community -> but ~70%+ of mentoring is companies. + look at how a project looks like with volunteers but no commercial ecosytem: + Apache OpenOffice -> good people ...
 * What does the ecosystem do ? (Michael)

+ easy to work out from our annual report + estimations -> + avg. TDF staff member FTE cost order of Eur 50k without overheads + So 40 people at TDF would cost ~Eur 2 million + TDF spends ~Eur 150k on feature development / tenders outside of fixed-costs per annum currently + do it in-house: + we could pay 3 people with that
 * What does it look like in money ? (Thorsten)


 * The ecosystem provides a 10x multiplying factor for development

=> TDF is the tip of the iceberg that is the ecosystem. => We cannot meet our purpose or sustain the product without a healthy ecosystem.

- no LTS - short, frequent release cycles + neither of these seem to deter mass use in business. - nag dialogs, info bar stuff -> to drive TDF donations + community members unhappy ... -> professional product. - tell people software is un-supported when inappropriately using Online - important for TDF to have users visiting download page, also for downloading security updates for LibreOffice + live updates provided by community as a patch / feature. + not enabled. + we know: when we don't update the "new version" XML + donations drop substantially + TDF is funded by people visiting the download page
 * Compromises to drive the ecosystem / pull money into it & TDF: (Michael)

=> Example -> providing free LibreOffice in an app-store + self-updating, no need to visit TDF ...               + sounds wonderful - but potentially deeply problematic for TDF & sustainability. + needs to be looked at -very- carefully.

Thorsten - People sometimes confuse paying for a product, when donating (c.f. feedback we see on Ask and Bugzilla) + normal feedback "I paid, but can't download" - TDF download donations sometimes believed to drive feature development + implement feature with money. - Online - currently scarcity: source code, only development binary dockers of online - CIB & C'bra charging for LibreOffice in app-stores & re-investing - perhaps others.
 * Desktop is quite different:

+ Developers: + Munich -> initially didn't contribute to the code -> then saw the light & joined us    + Linagora -> no significant contributions from whole French Gov't.     + Brazil -> 1 million users -> no paid developers until recently. + others: RedHat/Collabora/CIB - contribute all their code back. + work as members of the community.
 * The "non-contributor" problem

Conclusions (Michael) + why is ecosystem success seen as failure ? + why is the ecosystem 'othered' as non-community ?

"The foundation promotes a *sustainable*, independent and meritocratic community for the international *development* of free and open source software based on open standards."

Change is inevitable, and necessary -but- those who advocate for change without careful consideration of the consequences must bear responsibility.
 * "The only constant is change" (Thorsten)

Need to assess, and balance - with the other compromises listed

if parameters change substantially, we need a plan to substitute for what we're certainly loosing then in terms of ecosystem contribution.

Lets not loose again after loosing Sun, IBM, Linux Distros ...

Revenue: is 90% of your revenue from the app-stores? + ~5% of revenue from app-stores (Michael-as-Collabora) + insubstantial revenue currently from app-stores (Thorsten) Breakdown of revenue? (Michael-as-Collabora) + consultancy is a smaller part of revenue + product is a large part; can see sectors Education/Government/Business ... Changing the overall setup -> needs a plan (Thorsten)
 * Uwe:

Do we know that downloads leads directly to donations? (Heiko) + there is a graphic showing the correlation (Florian) + lets get it from Italo. + updater XML was not updated -> massive drop in donations (Florian) + S/W did not show the notifiation - a significant drop; July 2017/2018 + hard to imagine that no linux user ever donates (Heiko) + not what is said - but the *majority* of donation driven by visits to download page + popup of course also drives people to donate (Michael)

abstract (AI): + overall number of developers shrinking + need money in the ecosystem to pay staff in TDF and elsewhere + address the "non-contributor" problem + the direct relation downloads/donations AI: Italo: provide graphics downloads/donations AI: define procedure to bring in the information

Rationale: Discussion, relevance and dependencies for TDF

3. Discuss: Quick check of fitting prerequisites and procedure of the vote for the next agenda item (Lothar, Board members, All 5 minutes)

Rationale: Clarifying about voting of the next agenda item + Now is not the time for a vote - so no need.

4. Discussing about proposal of Paolo: (Paolo, Board members 15 minutes)

+ Interesting discussion of ecosystem, linked to all of these things. + everyone knows there is a need for a commerical ecosystem out there + naturally balance the needs of commercial ecosystem with drive & spirit of TDF + in the statues - can read about commercial partners + scope / objective - make all software we develop Android,Windows,MacOS easily usable by users + development has to be user centered + LibreOffice Online + takes a good deal of effort to provide a FLOSS package that TDF is obliged to deliver + today have Marco, been working with him in another project + making it available for a school - with no budget for this + TDF in theory is obliged to make free software available to all to be used + have to increase the user-base of this platform, and increase committers. + personally - told - feeling at the moment by some developers + would like to contribute, but wondering, contributing to TDF / Collabora + a mixed-message coming out there. + clarify what is LibreOffice Online - and who is maintaining it            + when someone contributes where that contribution will go        + at the same time - have to tell everyone (Paolo) + use it for personal use, non-profit org, school - duty to give it for free: + always been part of the plan. + a bit late in implementing. + have to support those who have been contributing to the project + Collabora, CIB + recognize their efforts though marketing & advertising + not to use in enterprises without support. + make it available to everybody, make it easy to use. + recognize - something much better from a technical & ethical POV + than other platforms out there. + some other organizations + LibreOffice Online is integrated - decided to start promoting other types of similar platforms. + as easy as possible to promote LibreOffice Online + will need professional support. + going out with a TDF branded LibreOffice + we are here for the community / duty to give the free version + look at our long list of commercial partners & developers. + even increasing opportunities of revenue. + are limited - personally by commercial offering has been put together + Michael & Thorsten - can confirm - long discussion before became part of BoD - so that we can together re-tune the offering, getting revenue to contribute to the project. + have to increase the number of companies that contribute to this project. + spirit of proposition + agreed to have it discussed.

+ hard for end-users to install Online too. + it is worth reflecting on this - lets have a plan, a careful assessment & compromise + a discussion to be had - TDF helping the commercial ecosystem (Paolo) + with an increased number of users. + Univention makes it easy - for non-techies to use LOOL + still need technical expertise. + thinks TDF would need to host it themselves (Thorsten) + for the world out there _that_ is the easy way to use it           + but believe that is out of scope for TDF + challenges that we are required to do that + if we are to make it easily digestible - provide binaries?
 * Fundamentally difference Desktop / Online (Thorsten)

+ tried to use it himself. + as it is designed & architected - hard for individual user to deploy + even given a working docker container + handling of certificates + hosting in containers + is beyond the skills of many, many people. + an alternative proposal: + without inadvertently harming the businesses in the ecosystem + start - by making available a version for Raspberry Pi       + making one that is designed to use with Nextcloud's RPI distro + also have an appliance that they sell here + work with Rene & Raspberry-Pi ecosystem + that works on your internal network - with just IP addresses + no nasty signing certificates + not intended for internet use + but would work within a household, small business, and/or inside a school. + do this as an on-ramp + and avoid accidentally destroying Collabora / CIB + paper about this in the members area on TDF nextcloud + take this forward instead of this unfortunately poorly thought out proposal.
 * Keen to get LibreOffice Online into lots of people's hands (Simon)

+ Paolo's pronunciation is as bad as his - can't understand what was said + suggests Paolo to have something written down to prepare it. + a request from Simon as well (Lothar)
 * Remark as an aside (Uwe)

+ with background & discussions, like Simon's suggestion here + know lots of people enthusiastic there.
 * Look forward to written ideas (Cor)

* unhelpful of referring to ecosystem as "other" people * clear ask to solve the marketing problems, was skipped * build consensus before bring a vote to avoid dividing community unnecessarily * LOOL already in Nextcloud, ownCloud etc. * some of these versions don't refer to LibreOffice, are white-labelled * we might need to get used to LibreOffice Online not to be called LibreOffice Online * avoid TDF duplicating work done by ecosystem members * marketing could be significantly improved * looking at things in a balanced way, voting right now is premature * not against TDF distributing LibreOffice Online * good thing to grab bull by horns & discuss it    * significant improvement in marketing required for TDF to provide LOOL binaries + would like a paper to bring these ideas together (Lothar)
 * asked for community to speak up (Michael)

+ in the agenda just a few points of a ticket that has been opened in internal systems + with a longer description of the project + didn't just come out and say - lets vote for it. + when something not moving - indeed tends to push hard + so just go for a vote + then convert it into a conversation / discussion + many other people would like to provide their feedback. + so it may not be what it seems. + lots more can be known - including the economical side + not been told by commercial ecosystem + what is the damage that we cause you ? + if we go out with a branded version of LibreOffice Online + we don't know. + how to proceed further ? (Lothar) + would like to continue discussion about ecosystem on members list (Sophie) + give E-mails to the internal list + any reason not to do it on board-discuss in public ? (Thorsten) + propose to default to public if possible. + propose hint members to members list (Florian) + how do we get to this document ? (Lothar) + get a few efforts to do this concrete LibreOffice Online theme. + who are the people to lead & build consensus ? (Michael) + many of TDF's problems intersect. + next next decade manifesto would be my hope + circumstances have changed as we saw in the ecosystem talk + we actually need to deeply care about the ecosystem too. + clarify - Paolo - responsible for bringing a document for a vote (Lothar) + plenty written already + would like to do this with Paolo (Franklin) + have difficulty to build a LOOL instance recently + concern is how you say it (Cor) + prepare a 1st document that we build on to create something sustainable or a good base. + you mentioned the word 'vote' + no (Lothar) + result should be content for a later stage for voting (Lothar) + we need some written content which we can compromise on       + if we have a discussion in public (Cor) + come up with the best proposal possible - discussion in public. + poor choice of committee (Michael) + sorry for being a poor choice (Franklin) + the ability to reach out to building a durable compromise is vital + not convinced this composition achieves this. + we have a concrete proposal from Simon (Thorsten) + build another proposal, while we work on Simon's ? + work on a procedure for documents (Lothar) + Franklin/Michael/Paolo/Thorsten + just did -> as of now, work in public with Simon's proposal (Thorsten) + get it into a proposal we can vote on. + happy to hear other proposals + today learned something about the Raspberry Pi (Paolo) + original issue was - to make available in general LibreOffice Online on general platforms + have another project running in the background. + Proposal (Florian) + everyone is free to come up with a proposal. + Thorsten/Michael/Simon came up with this one + something is done -> can share in public + what is proceeded in a board call + no problem with lots of proposals. + plea for people to work constructively with others (Michael, Paolo) + unhappy; process to vote first, then think is nearly un-precedented (Michael)
 * Clarify the situation (Paolo)

abstract (AI): + need for a balanced commercial ecosystem + software to be easily usable by any users regardless the OS used + easy to promote LibreOffice Online + Fundamentally difference Desktop vs. Online + need to increase users + solve marketing problems + consensus to avoid dividing community + discussion just started, to be continued in public AI: define procedure to get written ideas/proposals AI: agenda item for next BoD call, public part AI: Franklin, Paolo, Thorsten, Michael to work on a proposal for discussion in public later on AI: in one of next BoD Call bring in as agenda item: How to get a "next next decade manifesto" (Lothar)

+ comment: minutes are late (Florian) + if you can look at them - would be helpful.

+ 27 people in the room - works more or less properly with Jitsi (Lothar)

Voting proposal via Mail from Paolo Vecchi at 16.05., 13.15 UTC+2: "...

Enable the infrastructure team to deliver the following packages with TDF and LibreOffice branding: - docker images - ownCloud connector (from which we have already got confirmation of acceptance) for LOOL - once that is in place I will ask NextCloud for the opportunity to do the same - Univention marketplace packages for LOOL - all packages and connectors will be maintained and updated on a monthly basis unless urgent patches/bug fixes are required sooner - the latest stable version of LOOL code will be used to build the images - the infrastructure oversight team will ensure that all issues that may impede the execution of this plan are identified and solved promptly - the infrastructure oversight team should evaluate, and report back to the BoD, if TDF should use its own Gerrit server for LOOL or Collabora's see ticket https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132349 - LibreOffice branded documentation/help files should be created to make it as easy as possible to install docker images/Univention packages - TDF's LOOL packages will be free and supported only by the community. No paid/support options will be made available by TDF - In the download page it will be made clear that if LOOL is used in enterprise environment support options are available through the members of TDF's ecosystem

At a later stage eventual limitations in terms of concurrent users/documents will be discussed. ..."

Rationale: explanation of voting item(s), getting a valid voting result on Paolos proposal as described above

5. Discuss: Status of redmine tickets of the board (Thorsten, All 10min)

Rationale: Clarifying which tickets/list, what todos, who is caring, until when + just to make sure board knows where action items are + postponed to next call

Public part ends 14:02 Berlin time.

Private Part

- No topic in private so far -

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-05-08
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-05-08 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-05-08 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Andrea Gelmini, Paolo Vecchi (Deputy), Nicolas Christener (Deputy), Gabriele Ponzo (Membership Committee), Franklin Weng (Deputy Chair), Sophie Gautier, Emiliano Vavassori (Board), Michael Meeks (Board), Florian Effenberger (ED), Thorsten Behrens (Board), Lothar Becker (Chair), Stephan Ficht, Cor Nouws (Board), Uwe Altmann

Representation: Paolo for Daniel (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 15 minutes) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the new board and about TDF.

* Edmund Laugasson via mail on tdf-internal: Request for Discussion about "killer features" zooming in impress&calc, SVG as "Stand alone" Document Format in LibO and a request for help to engage developers for an ODP export script in SOZI + Lothar asks for further questions + Edmund not present, was his email read? + Previously wrote also on tdf-discuss, I answered him (Thorsten) + asking for the help of the board + is the right place to discuss 'killer feature' here? + perhaps ESC is better (Thorsten) + just had a long budgetting round with proposals (Michael) + would have been good to do that with more time so people can propose things like this. + Michael asks for more time for soliciting budgetting ideas + Gabriele: time slot was alotted/provided, but Edmund not present + Cor: he was pointed to the ESC, good idea to discuss and bring it up again + Lothar: propose to hand over to the developer list, as this is not budget-related + Thorsten: bit unclear what needs to be done, time to bring this in front of board in a few months + Sophie: maybe to hand over to bugzilla + Lothar: Who will answer him? Thorsten volunteers, can do in public. AI: Thorsten to reply to Edmund. + Lothar asking for other questions...;

+ silence for over a month on this, heard nothing so far + very curious about what happened in this month, what happens in the next few weeks. + looks like a full shutdown of the whole topic - of course, not what is wanted by most people + definitely in-progress (Cor) + board was discussing, looking into details, the past month + not sure what happens in the next weeks + from your side might seem nothing happens, good to ask. + complexity is not new here (Uwe) + as a reminder - there is a group of people, designated by older board to do this discussion + I was part of this group, nothing on these discussions + why are we not getting any information ? + what is the reason to have these disussions in private ? + going through a process of getting legal advice (Michael) + process ongoing + discussion in board for three years already, why legal advice now? + frustration (Thorsten, Uwe, Michael) + confirm lots of work going on (Paolo) + sorry not to include you (Cor) + new board looking at it     + tough internal discussions best not done in public + also have an opinion on it & legal insight (Uwe) + would like to be included in the discussion + others also in the community + don't think a closed discussion is good. + left TDC solution, working on a new solution (Lothar) + which can then be discussed in public + we're building a proposal & some ideas here + have a new / idea of a solution & bring it & discuss it. + good thing done - review everything (Paolo) + from basic assumptions, why go in one direction vs. another + now looking at legal side to validate them or not. + not a huge amount of communication - back to basics. + why in private ? (Uwe) + if no urgent reason, should be in public. + all for opening the discussion to the public (Paolo) + serious discussion internally + new arrivals had to re-learn about previous decisions + first one to say this process was not that clear. + personally pushing to re-start & present process to community + working on ideas, evaluate compliance perspective options. + does the community like these options. + steps expected within a month + then for some community consultations. + like whole community understanding & all being happy. + will wait for that (Uwe)
 * TDC question (Uwe)

2. Information: periodical status quo report of the Areas of oversight (All/board members AoO team, 1 minutes for each: infra, QA, documentation, lang++, cert, dev&releases, licence, events, affiliations, marketing = 10min)

Rationale: Short info about activities, problems, ((potential))(upcoming) issues for the board * infrastructure (Franklin, Emiliano): nothing specific, maintenance, everything fine * Q&A (Cor, Nicolas): nothing special to mention, from distance can confirm people are active, nice process checking new stuff, regressions soon and fast, happy * documentation (Daniel absent, Emiliano): lots of things, lots of documentation for 6.2, follows the project, really active, nothing that needs board decision, doing pretty job by themselves, more than ok  * NLC (Franklin, Daniel absent): didn't notice any discussion recently, everything seems fine * certification (Franklin, Lothar): Italo in contact w/ LPI management, concrete proposal will be discussed with board * developer certification (Thorsten): certified two devs this year, regular review in ESC * development (Nicholas, Michael): nothing to report, 7.0 Alpha1, all in time, all on schedule, metrics look pretty good * license (Michael, Thorsten): few corner cases, generally all is looking good, team helping out here as well chasing things * events (Cor, Emiliano, Paolo): + call next week, bring to decision to the board, costs for the venue (Open Suse / TDF (Florian)  * affiliations (Paolo, Nicolas): only issue is within OASIS, Thorsten's in the loop, seems resolved now, not aware of anything else; AB meeting was held last month    * marketing (Cor, Franklin, Daniel absent): Italo working on virtual marketing plan, shared a few days ago, nothing to decide yet, marketing team can do things     * OpenOffice Twitter activity - we comment on social media and promote LibreOffice, things seem to go well, marketing team happy, Nicolas helping out too, it's a great opportunity for everyone    * assets and finance (Michael): we have a budget, things have been submitted and filed, Annual report is done too, review of 2016-2018 - re-confirmation of non-profit status.    * contracts, hiring, taxes, legal compliance (Lothar, Paolo, Michael) - seems to be under control.

3. Discuss: Process of publishing the Board minutes, additional ways for informing and discussing issues (Lothar, Florian, All 5 minutes) + Stephan writes the minutes + Session chair have to approve minutes from Etherpad + Stephan to send to directors@ then + after few days, Stephan to send public part out, and archive private part + Uwe: acknowledges private part is important, but missing the agenda - what topic is talked about in private? Make this public. + Thorsten: in favor, some topics need to stay private though even as summary + Uwe: saw several topics in the past not obviously reasons for private, so please tell the reasons + Lothar: we're making good progress here, shifting things to the public call, supports idea to make topics public, failing that give a short reason why we can't + Uwe: consider bylaws - not about choice, but about reason for privacy + Cor: asking for trust + Sophie: minutes are published on the wiki; archived in nextcloud + Florian: public decisions and minutes in wiki and on board-discuss@; private bits will be migrated to Nextcloud (Florian and Stephan to work on this) Rationale: Clarifying the process with all/public, collecting new ideas for additional interactions between board and members

4. Discuss: one of the highest Ranking in budget vote: streamlining tender process, what to do in general, what to do for ODF 1.3 delta tender (Lothar, All 5 minutes, if needed shifted to the private part) + how do we proceed with ODF 1.3 delta tender + reached out to Regina on this (Florian) + have some updates to share, plan how to proceed. + a running tender - nothing can be seen by potential bidders + overall streamlining rocess ? (Lothar) + had a call with Florian (Nicolas) + worked on a skeleton for a new tendering document + some formulas to calculate and weight proposal quality + ideas coming together, first draft in next couple of days + do we need ODF 1.3 delta for 7.0 ? (Michael) + suspect only the ODF 1.3 tender is needed (Thorsten) + code freeze at end of month, delta tender not do-able for 7.0 + thought from Regina this is definitely for 1.3 readiness (Lothar) + perhaps needs discussion with Regina (Thorsten) + need statements of use for OASIS ODF 1.3 standardization process + believe ongoing work will be enough here. AI:    + talk to Regina to see what is up (Thorsten)

Rationale: see (private) ticket https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3107 What and starting streamlining-the-process activities, what to do for concrete ODF1.3 delta tender and who

Public part ends 13:45 Berlin time.

Agenda items for the private part:


 * Paolo: just as a side note - people responsible for areas should match people who speak on these

5. Information: Remaining AoO periodical status quo report (All/board members AoO team, 1 minutes for each: employees, assets/finance, contracts = 5 minutes)


 * contracts, hiring, taxes, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks & brands

6. Discuss: New Proposal for AB membership (Thorsten)

Private part ends 13:58 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-04-24
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-04-24 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-04-24 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Franklin Weng Keeper of the minutes: Michael Meeks

In the meeting: Michael, Thorsten, Franklin, Florian (ED), Paolo (Deputy), Nicolas (Deputy), Emiliano, Cor, Daniel

Representation: Nicolas for Lothar (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/subject"Representation statements")

Deputy 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 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 13:05 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 15 minutes) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the new board and about TDF. + no-one present to ask questions.

2. Discuss: Process of publishing the Board minutes, additional ways for informing and discussing issues (Lothar, Florian, All 5 minutes) Rationale: Clarifying the process with all/public, collecting new ideas for additional interactions between board and members with Lothar not attending the call skipping

Public part ends 13:09 Berlin time.

Franklin Weng (Session chair) Michael Meeks (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-03-27
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-03-27 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-03-27 Location: BigBlueButton

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar (Chair), Franklin (Deputy Chair), Cor (Board), Michael (Board), Emiliano (Board), Thorsten (Board), Daniel (Board), Nicolas (Deputy), Paolo (Deputy), Florian (ED), Stephan (AA), Dennis, Ilmari, Michael W, Kendy, Regis, Uwe

Representation: None (See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

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 4 Board of Directors members are attending 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (Lothar and Franklin, max. 15 minutes) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the new board and about TDF. Lothar: invite for questions; is anything BoD could do wrt to Coronavirus? Ilmari: date to decide LibOCon, have it as virtual conference instead? Florian: call w OpenSuse next week to decide e.g. hotel bookings, logistics, other bookings etc.; have to wait till May, Bavarian authorities will announce news after Easter, don't expect news before Easter Thorsten: pls don't book travels right now, untill situation will be clarified; expecting 2-3 months before LibOCon when people will begin to book; want can we do to support e.g. schools perhaps even from the infra side? help to mitigate, core to TDF's mission; not for general public but e.g. for schools Florian: e-learning platforms were partially down; providing materials, conferencing, collaborative editing? Thorsten: selective access to e.g. Nextcloud, LibreOffice online; spin out a separate VM. Where to discuss that? website list Paolo: decentralize tools, provide VMs Dennis: in the Baden-Württemberg-country teachers are not prepared to handle group-learning, issues w migration from private server to public Lothar: continue discussion on other platform

Dennis: TDC paper is stalled - is that Coronavirus ? Michael: Still stalled based on Staff & community's concerns, nothing is going to happen without sorting this out. Lothar: will see if we can get an intermediate document describing what we want to do in next days / 1-2 weeks. Thorsten: Corona weighs down on people's time including Mike's

2. Information: Annual report, finances and budget (Florian, 10min) Rational: giving information, bringing transparency to process/deadlines, planing follow ups Lothar: Florian to give explanations Florian: report consists of activity report and financial report (incl. reserve building) for activity report - nothing missing, team is writing the English version for approval, in parallel will be translated into German to hand over to the authorities for financial report - approval of accountant-prepared closing ledgers, plus reserve building, i.e. budget planning for 2020 AI: to agree about budgets (see on Nextcloud) Lothar: concrete timeline? Florian: need first agreement from BoD to finalize, should have this as topic for the next board call Michael: previously we had a community process, involving the ESC, generating ideas, costing them & ranking them Thorsten: agree, need to get ideas done & costed, call-out for annual budget planning went out to NLP community Michael/Thorsten: need to take this to the ESC ASAP, not great to not have much time here. AI: Italo/Florian follow-up with NLC project AI: Thorsten/Michael follow-up with ESC AI: Florian: factor in estimations, eg templates, student program, fix tendering and other key goals etc.  Thorsten: plan to get an idea of how much discretionary budget is available Florian: broad-idea is in the spreadsheet, previous BoD's approved budget is included in there. Approved, not yet spent Eur 170k, and on top another Eur 155k. Lothar: will be a reminder, then after next week bring all to the budget Michael: need to get estimation of budget needed to meet key goals eg. fix tendering legal budget etc. Florian: Budget needs to be finished by end of April to have filings prepared.

For previous years, see https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/financials/ and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers

3. Information, Discussion: LPI agreement (South America) for certification (Daniel, 10min) Rational: information what was asked, status quo, discussion about follow on  Lothar: Daniel to explain LPI agreement Daniel: proposal a desktop user certification not especially LibreOffice (certify users for basic tasks on FLOSS desktop); user capacity to do minimum steps; important to gather more volunteers in the community Lothar: inquiries done, not to do it only at South America, Daniel: possibility to reach out worldwide Daniel: use LPI knowledge for certification Cor: has to be worked out in detail, likes the idea Lothar: bring it to certification committee? commonly approved

4. Status quo about / Tracking of Board Actions Items/ToDos/Goals in Redmine (Lothar 5min) Rational: clarifying single point of search for todos and status, timeline, involved persons, clarifying needed confidentiality for which one Lothar: idea to use redmine (Nicolas prepared a lot) Cor: risk to have too many small tickets/put every small task into a ticket, in general good idea Lothar: some todos left in some minutes, we don't remember to do them Cor: Is it important enough then? Lothar: keep the middle way Lothar: other questions from the audience? > NO

Lothar: Please take care of yourselves during these times, and let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

Public part ends 13:37 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-03-13
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-03-13 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-03-13 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Sophie, Stephan, Nicolas (Deputy), Ilmari, Cor (Board), Florian (ED), Lothar (Chair), Emiliano Vavassori (Board), Drew, Michael Weghorn, Franklin (Deputy Chair), Uwe, Michael (Board), Thorsten (Board), Paolo (Deputy), Daniel (Board), Kendy, Gabriele, William, Sam Tuke

Representation: None

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 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 13:01 Berlin time.

Agenda: Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (Lothar and Franklin, max. 20 minutes)

Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the new board and about TDF.

* Lothar explains document is in the works, needs some more time, ask everyone to be patient * was announced via mail, document will be brought out when it's ready

* questions:

- Uwe: problematic situation on TDC, what happend? - Lothar: further questions arrived that can change answers, so decided not to bring it out - Uwe: quite vague - Lothar: shall we use another platform? - Michael: jitsi is great, other things cost money, hangouts limit at 10 - Emiliano: official jitsi servers/bandwidth has been powered in the last days, still the platform is now overcrowded - Florian: Jitsi overcrowded - Thorsten: keep on going agenda - Lothar: head on with agenda...

2. Finalizing and publishing the FOSDEM goals (Lothar, Franklin 10min) Tooling -> Nicolas - Lothar: what has done for FOSDEM goals (and sub-goals)? - Thorsten: plan was to bring them into form and publish these, these were agreed on at FOSDEM - Franklin: Nicolas was looking into tooling, latest proposal was to use Redmine, sounds like a good idea to Franklin - Thorsten: sounded like consensus here, let's get on with it

Rational: clarifying todos, timeline Proposal: reread and cluster FOSDEM goals for publishing, Blog about Goals in the next 14 days, instantiation of a tracking tool for the goals

* Key goals from FOSDEM 1. streamline tendering process in 24 months 1.1 two more tenders signed in 6 months 1.2 two more tenders delivered in 1 year 1.3 need to plan more spending for tax office. 2. grow the pool of code committers. 2.1 hire an effective & skilled development mentor. 3. grow non-coding community 3.1 encourage Italo, Mike, Heiko, Sophie, Olivier, Xisco, Ilmari to grow community 4. have 5 community bonding / hackfest events before 2022 where coders & non-coders meet, ESC events. 4.1 have these in significant geographies 5. marketing must emphasise project over product 5.1 focused on new / younger contributors 5.2 more creative / pro-active marketing + emphasising our unique strengths. 5.3 find & turn USPs into nice stories about the project 5.4 encourage OpenOffice users to join us pro-actively. 6. Ask team to evaluate new tooling and involve the community in the discussion. 6.1 team to present workshop at LibOCon 2020 6.2 decision yes/no/where to go by LibOCon 2021 7. create campus programme for student ambassadors to attract contributors 7.1 write programme description by end of February 7.2 pilot & move to goal of finding 5 students by April for six month evaluation appointments 7.3 re-evaluate wrt. scaling this up by libocon 2020 8. Enable the creation of an effective TDC organization 8.1 complete negotiation of TM agreement by May 8.2 align marketing with TDC [ note renumbered from conflict with campus amabassadors]

3. Take over Document Freedom Day campaign by TDF (Franklin, 10min)

Rational: discuss take over, checking about consensus to do, next steps (vote via email?) - Lothar: asked to explain - Franklin: when raised this topic was urgent. Actually takes place last Wednesday of March (March 26). - Franklin: no one takes care of the website. DFD is an important part and mission of TDF. Proposal is to take control over DFD, belongs to FSFE. Proposal is TDF to take control over the campaign. - lead and encourage more communities to celebrate events about document freedom, collect their events and have a report of that - was discussed in the marketing meeting, people supportive - for this year just post a blog about DFD to encourage others - contact FSFE wrt. DFD domain, so from next year on we can actively run a campaign - also mentions ODF Advoacy project - TDF in a good position to have such a campaign

- feedback - Gabriele: last year looked like this thing is likely forgotten, this year due to Corona likely no events anyways, take care of in the future - Sophie: agrees, important event - Lothar: prepare to do it next year - Gabriele: prepare internal presentation - Sam Tuke: I think SFI have complete control in recent years, not fsfe. Not sure about the domain specifically. Also as ex campaign manager of DFD years ago let me know if I can advise on anything in future - Lothar: bring all together to prepare for next near

4. Status quo about Pending Actions (Lothar 5min)

A.2020-01-30.NC get an estimate on template creation cost A.2020-01-30.MM get an estimate on template code work A.2020-01-30.TB setup ESC call/discussion on OOXML improvement A.2020-01-30.FE estimate costs of Campus Ambassador programme Update bank warrants -> Florian [waiting for Berlin representation statement before]

Rational: clarifying todos, timeline

-Nicolas: main idea is to start project to create shiny and high quality templates -Lothar: have to end private call because of Jitsi issues...; sorry for the bad connection and the issues, will look into fixing this problem for the next call

Public part ends 13:29 Berlin time.

Minutes 2020-02-28
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-02-28 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-02-28 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker Keeper of the minutes: Michael Meeks

In the meeting: Lothar (Chair), Franklin (Deputy Chair), Michael (Board), Daniel (Board), Thorsten (Board), Emiliano (Board), Cor (Board, from 13:10 on); Paolo (Deputy), Nicolas (Deputy); Florian (ED), Stephan (AA); Marco, Dennis, Simon, Ilmari, Brett, Guilhem, Eliane, Sophie, Gabriele

Representation: None

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 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 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public part:

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (Lothar and Franklin, max. 30 minutes)

Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the new board and about TDF.

Questions Eliane via e-mail: - Why new company will be located in UK? Simon: Could be incorporated anywhere, not doing cross-border trade dealing with MS & Apple. so most important issue - is staff employment most likely to be commercial marketing, contract, project management roles will need to work in an office with CEO of TDC wherever its CEO lives - will need to be the place it is incorporated so can work under local employment law with them. Current proposal is to have Simon as CEO, so makes sense to be in the UK           UK have Community Interest Company (CIC) + registered to serve the interests of a specific community + allows TDC to serve the LibreOffice community without being owned Reason not wanted to be a subsidiary + TDF has a broader role than just this + Legal, regulatory and other risks could apply + and so can insulate TDF from liability in a way that ownership & control would not. Question of how to - communicating needs of TDF -> TDC ? + handle money from app-stores & spend it on LibreOffice + amount of operations money is smallish + code contributions would have to go through stock ESC approval + if there is a cash surplus - needs to be donated to TDF + regular input from TDF should not be necessary to do this. UK: CIC - can state in incorporation - surplus is donated to TDF + without having formal ownership & so direct liability If TDF is not part of TDC (Dennis) + Version 0.4 of the paper - was a note, that TDF controls TDC indirectly + is that no longer a part of this ? + That is still there (Simon) + but this is done through a non-ownership approach. + rights to appoint director, and share ownership would be seen as control 1. company is a guarentee company: limited liability + a group of members - pay a small sum in the case of it going wrong + those members - can appoint initial directors. + also entitled to add/remove them in the future. + members in control of directors if they choose to be. + initial members: steering committee TDF put in place. + will continue to appoint people to that body to steer it. 2. Branding is vital to TDC + LibreOffice has that brand recognition for >200m people + so being able to act as the exclusive agent for TDF in app-stores is a very significant element here. + without this right, TDC would struggle to function + so TDF can put rules & controls in the TM agreement to ensure that the brand is correctly used. So - the combination of the purpose of the CIC - to serve the LibreOffice community, and the TM agreement - gives TDF the ability to direct the overall direction without becoming the formal owner. Statutes of CIC ? Dennis)               + there will be written - that BoD members are elected from TDF board ?                + No; keen indeed, to avoid the perception of ownership by TDC (Simon)                   + anticipating that the TM agreement provides safety for TDF            Process is underway, articles are drafted & definition of community (Simon)                + at the tail end of discussing that with Michael, Thorsten, Uwe, Nicolas                + hoping we can make that available to TDF members                + can see CIC36, and INO1 form, and articles of association                + not going to find written explicit control by TDF                    + because it's not good for TDF                + implicit control            If TDC does something bad ? (Dennis)                + expect TM license to have unilateral revocation on 30 days                  notice by the TDF board (Michael) + and this is highly effective + if it goes wrong, TDF has authority to withdraw this (Cor) + no real rules around this. + but important for both parties to co-operate + so can expect clear communication around difficulties ensure that they understand each other well + expect the TM license to be like the other ones TDF has (Simon) + but with 30 day notice, and at the Board's discretion + so eg. can withdraw CIB's license at 1 days' notice. Gabriele's microphone not working + also use board-discuss@ list for questions (Lothar) + a concern wrt. cash-flow wrt. funds to work on code (?) Concern wrt. having same people in both boards (Gabriele) + will not be the case, TDC - a commercial board with no                 overlap with TDF + anticipate having a paid board incl. a lawyer, financial controler & a S/W business background + not drawn from TDF board. Lots of questions (Paolo) + would like to see articles of incorporation + but heard members - who can influence direction + who are the members, and how to become one ? + seems like anyone could become members + a straightforward company limited by guarentee (Simon) + we can define who can become a member in the articles + its not open membership + the BoD has to approve each membership + using the model articles for a CIC with a large membership + basically ~unchanged - so it is easiest to approve by regulator + will let the directors decide who the members are. + if want to become a member - let directors decide ? (Paolo) + if I become a member can decide what directors do                  + 'member' has a specific legal meaning: (Simon) + share the liabiltiy if the company is wound up                     + before incorporates: subscribers, afterwards members + to become one - agree to share liabilty, and ask BoD to                       approve of what's going on there. + I think that for the survival of the project, donations answer (Eliane) for themselves. So who exactly is interested in the TDC project? + read that as "who is interested in it?" (Thorsten) + outgoing board, and so far incoming board is interested + we need something like TDC, which complements what TDF can do                        + a shared understanding with old & new boards around TDC + read that as "surely all TDF needs is donations ?" (Simon) + donations depend on users downloading the S/W + this looks like it is becoming harder for all users + future looks like "Windows 10S" + donations come from downloads - so without the, + TDF has to spend against its mission + and this has proved extremely challenging. + each BoD has talked on how to invest donations in                          improving LibreOffice + TDC is one vehicle to keep us spending money on S/W + will have other meetings in future (Lothar) + thanks - particularly to Eliane who asked the question & triggered this ! + perhaps think about use of Jitsi for next time: >20 participants.

2. Discuss: Areas of oversight (Lothar and Franklin, 5 minutes)

Rationale: Fill in the missing names (marked with ***) and agree on the final list. Final vote then via e-mail.

employees: Michael Meeks, Thorsten Behrens, Lothar Becker infrastructure: Franklin Weng, Emiliano Vavassori QA: Cor Nouws, Nicolas Christener documentation: Daniel Rodriguez, Emiliano Vavassori native language projects, translation, marketing, non-English QA activities etc: Franklin Weng, Daniel Rodriguez certifications and other business development activities: Franklin Weng, Lothar Becker development & releases including schedules: Michael Meeks, Nicolas Christener license: Michael Meeks, Thorsten Behrens events: Cor Nouws, Paolo Vecchi, Emiliano Vavassori affiliations, e.g. advisory board, peer foundations, politics: Nicolas Christener, Lothar Becker, Paolo Vecchi marketing, communication & design: Cor Nouws, Franklin Weng, Daniel Rodriguez assets, finance: Thorsten Behrens, Cor Nouws, Lothar Becker contracts, hiring, taxes, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks and brands: Lothar Becker, Paolo Vecchi, Michael Meeks

3. Discuss: Changes to Rules of Procedures for the new board (Michael, 10 minutes)

Rationale: trying to reduce mail volume by speeding up voting procedure on consensual topics. Final vote then via e-mail.

Proposal: topics not on the board agenda 72 hours in advance can still be voted on in board meetings - but in the event that a board member later wishes to alter their vote, or a non-present member needs more information they can vote to defer the decision by e-mail in the next 72 hours. Such decision to then be taken in the next scheduled board, and such item to be considered to be on the agenda for that board meeting.

+ for example the previous item - lets avoid 10x mails & hassle (Michael) + so if someone complains in 72 hours we re-reach consensus + if some substantial changes are made in a call (Thorsten) + or if a proposal is not brought to the BoD before the meeting + people do need time to grok that. + a useful measure - in a diverse board - people can read at a leisurly pace, think it through. + 72 hours delays things. + its only for things not on the agenda in advance (Michael) + so no delay. + wasting time to vote in BoD call (Emiliano) + doing it later via E-mail is better. + no major issue - esp. if agree something is urgent (Paolo) + or has a small impact, all in a meeting and agree on something + then agree - just do it, and that's it. + suggest lets see how thigns are working with the new board (Thorsten) + re-visit in 3 months time. + see how it is working. + if full BoD is present - can fix problem that its' not on the agenda and can vote it through. + concerned to codify something leading to rushed decisions. + what is the concern wrt. last-minute topics ? (Cor) + 1st one to speak up & say need to think about it. + happy to defer if people actually vote by E-mail (Michael) + will ensure we look at this again in 3 months (Lothar)

4. Discuss: Minutes and information from the board to the bodies (Emiliano, 5 minutes)

Rationale: Discuss about and finding two or three board members for defining a workflow and the mechanisms to share the minutes with TDF‘s bodies and the general public. This Workflow proposal to be discussed via e-mail or during the next board meeting.

+ suggest strenuously avoiding having private board meetings (Michael, Thorsten) + unless there is a good reason for those + proposals tabled in the meeting itself, with no advanced notice - terrible style + Emiliano, Thorsten and Florian will conduct a concrete proposal for that to the board

Public meeting ends 13:50 Berlin time.

Lothar Becker (Session chair) Michael Meeks (Keeper of the minutes)

Minutes 2020-01-17
The Document Foundation Board of Directors Meeting 2020-01-17 Meeting Minutes

Date: 2020-01-17 Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Björn Michaelsen Keeper of the minutes: Michael Meeks

In the meeting: Björn (Board), Michael (Board), Thorsten (Board), Cor (Board), Simon (Deputy), Kendy (Deputy); Emiliano (new board), Daniel (new board), Nicolas (new board), Lothar (new board), Paolo (new board); Florian (ED)

Representation: Simon for Marina

Deputy Chairman of the Board is in the meeting. One of the Chairwoman 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 5 Board of Directors members are attending 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.

The meeting commences at 14:06 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public part:

1. Discussion: FOSDEM (15 min.) + Other ideas ? + Proposal for new board to adopt (Simon) + start of every meeting - declaration of CoI for agenda. + starting with the TDF board - include an opportunity for directors present for items on the agenda. + for the new board to decide. + last week actually saw one declared + never a dispute later about declations + makes sense to vote when new BoD is in-place (Bjoern) + no other comments. + Before / after lunch + retrospectives on the project etc.       + hope to have this as a collaborative round-the-table + good idea to have some ideas about your oversight areas + link here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_rules#Decision_making_and_responsibilities AI: + schedule: Thur. evening BoD dinner (Florian/Italo) + can continue discussions over dinner + different tone & environment to continue things (Simon) + a great place to resolve disputes / complexities + board only, and required + cheese & wine place near the Bourse (?) - https://lafruitiere.business.site/

2. Discussion: "appoint Sophie as new CoC contact person" (15 min.) + suggest we vote on this now (Michael) + thought the meeting was last week wrt. advanced notice. + existing rules of procedure have 3 days of notice (Thorsten) + prevents blind-siding of non-native speakers (Bjoern) + Vote: "appoint Sophie as a new CoC contact person" + unanimous approval from everyone. + Announce & thanks for Bubli: + how urgent is this ? (wondering if this needs a proper PR before FOSDEM) (Bjoern) + done by publishing the minutes (Thorsten) + The Board wishes to thank 'Bubli' Behrens for all of her hard work on CoC issues over many years, and her service in     this role. + Should we advertise the CoC around FOSDEM ? (Simon) + in opening-statement for Devroom / Hackathon ? (Bjoern) + seems reasonable.

Public meeting ends 14:25 Berlin time.

Björn Michaelsen (Session chair) Michael Meeks (Keeper of the minutes)