Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, May 15th, 1800 Berlin time (UTC+2)

[thb]

Dear Community,

find below the agenda for our TDF board meeting on Monday, May 15 at 1800 Berlin time at https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/TDFBoard

This time, there will be no public part, as the board is focussing on getting the year 2023 budget finished.

For time zone conversion, see e.g. The World Clock - Time Zone Converter - Germany – Berlin – Berlin vs Romania – Bucharest,Turkey – Istanbul

Please note, that per board decision from 2023-03-08, board calls will be audio-recorded privately, for easier minuting:

[VOTE] Start audio-recording TDF board calls again, for better minuting

AGENDA:

Private Part

1. Status Report: Organize next in-person BoD meeting (Gabor Kelemen, Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)

   Proposal: Gabor would like to organize the next in-person BoD meeting to make progress on various legal/budget/etc.

2. Status Report, Discuss: TDF 2023 Budget Planning (tdf-board, 50 mins)

   Update on budget, new items, continue planning from FOSDEM in-person meeting.

3. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)

   Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after sending the agenda

Total scheduled meeting time: 60 mins

– Thorsten

[andreasma]

Hi Thorsten, hi all,

why there is no public part with a q&a item for questions / input from the community? The last BoD call was already four weeks ago.

And it’s surprising that the invitation / agenda was send out not on Friday but on Saturday.

And one further question: who will participate in the second item of the private part of the meeting? If I remember correctly there are three members of the board with a CoI on this topic:

Declaration of Conflict of Interest - Thorsten Behrens

The Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, in accordance with paragraph 8.3 letter d of the Statutes of the Foundation, publicly acknowledges that Thorsten Behrens, in his capacity of member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, has been determined to have a conflict of interest, lasting longer than one month, at least over the following topics: budgeting, tenders, contracts and management of foundation’s assets (trademarks).

Declaration of Conflict of Interest - Cor Nouws

The Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, in accordance with paragraph 8.3 letter d of the Statutes of the Foundation, publicly acknowledges that Cor Nouws, in his capacity of member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, has been determined to have a conflict of interest, lasting longer than one month, at least over the following topics: budgeting, tenders, contracts and management of foundation’s assets (trademarks).

Declaration of Conflict of Interest - Gábor Kelemen

The Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, in accordance with paragraph 8.3 letter d of the Statutes of the Foundation, publicly acknowledges that Gábor Kelemen, in his capacity of member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, has been determined to have a conflict of interest, lasting longer than one month, at least over the following topics: budgeting, tenders, contracts and management of foundation’s assets (trademarks).

Regards,
Andreas

[thb]

Hi Andreas,

@andreasma

why there is no public part with a q&a item for questions / input from the community? The last BoD call was already four weeks ago.

As stated at the top of the agenda, for this one time, the board needed the full call slot to make progress with the 2023 budget.

Your question wrt. participation in calls, on topics with declared interests, has been answered repeatedly already. Please stop the badgering.

Best, Thorsten

[andreasma]

Hi Thorsten, hi all,

Am 16.05.23 um 01:39 schrieb Thorsten Behrens via The Document Foundation Community:

thb https://community.documentfoundation.org/u/thb
May 15

Hi Andreas,

andreasma:
why there is no public part with a q&a item for questions / input from the community? The last BoD call was already four weeks ago.

As stated at the top of the agenda, for this one time, the board needed the full call slot to make progress with the 2023 budget.

Your question wrt. participation in calls, on topics with declared interests, has been answered repeatedly already. Please stop the badgering.

I’m asking on participating on the item about the budget on the call on May, 15th, 2023 and I don’t see that this question has been answered yet. And from your reply above you seemed to have some issue with answering my question.

And to add here:
a) it is wrong that you or someone else from the board answered the question about participation of members with a CoI repeatedly.

b) you answered only once and your answer had no proof. You only made a statement, which was in your (the three members with a CoI) case incorrect. It is clear that you three have to stay out of any discussion about / influencing of the budget, because you have a likely business interest in at least very large parts of the budget (known from e.g. the preliminary budget for 2022; more then 800,000 Euro for development tender: https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/preliminary-budget-for-2022/9084). If you take place in the discussion of the budget the decision (and the budget) will be void.

Regards,
Andreas

[deneb_alpha]

Hello @thb and Directors.

I was wondering if there are any news on the 2023 budget.

As per today, even if the topic was in the private agenda of the Board call that took place on May 15th, I suppose that a final board decision on the 2023 budget is still pending given that the community didn’t get any official message.

I’m writing in particular because it’s almost end of May and the budget for 2023 is still pending, and as emergency, it has been approved case by case, according to custom requests sent to the board.

As you know, I was involved in the last Outreachy cohort, and for 2023 I submitted a request for supporting two mentees for the Outreachy cohort. Looking at the time, we only have the chance to apply for the winter cohort, because, in the meantime, the deadline for the spring cohort is expired.

At the same time, the Membership Committee requested budget for some projects related to the board of trustees, but its approval is still pending with the 2023 budget.

Can you share any status update?

Thanks for your support,
Marina

[thb]

Hi Marina, all,

it will likely take a little bit longer with the final budget (TDF has been granted a deadline extension), so any urgent items, please bring them to the attention of the board, so we can approve them individually.

Best, Thorsten

[deneb_alpha]

Hello @thb,

@thb

so any urgent items, please bring them to the attention of the board, so we can approve them individually.

The board has already all the budget requests sent by all the community members.

Instead of asking to all of us to re-evaluate until when we can wait for a final approval, and after that deadline ask for this “per urgent case special board approval”, could the board proactively decide, and clearly communicate to all of us whom submitted a budget request, which are the budget items that the board can already approve without waiting further?

Thanks,
Marina

[thb]

Hi Marina,

the hope is, to have a preliminary budget at least within the next two weeks. For Outreachy spring edition, apparently that deadline was in February already (I believe also the boards you were in, never had a budget by then).

Again, if something is more urgent, we ask community members to raise the issue (budgetting otherwise necessarily needs to look at the full picture, i.e. how much money is available, and then apportion budgets to requests - by some means of splitting up the funds fairly).

I hope that works for everyone, and apologies for the bumpy process (again) - clearly nobody, including the board, is happy with the situation.

Best, Thorsten