Following the two Townhall meetings I would like to place the following matters on the next Board agenda (Dec 16):
But then, what about trustees who don’t want to be innundated with emails? Does it not make sense for there to be an “announcements” list and a “discussion” list?
Do you mean the trustees as a convened body, with the power to take binding decisions? Or the trustees in a sense of the mailing list or discourse, a venue for informal discussion?
Also - many of the BoD decisions are taken in secret and only revealed to the trustees at a later date; how will your suggestion work on that case?
At this point in time I would oppose further binding of the trustees by guidelines suggested by the BoD. Let’s started by the BoD abiding by the statutes, then maybe we’ll talk about guidelines for the trustees.
Hi Eyal!
That was the argument that led to the mess we have now, with so many people unintentionally excluded (as was evident in the second Townhall). The best approach would be a Trustees-only Discourse where people can control their own level of engagement, but failing that an opt-out mailing list arrangement rather than an opt-in arrangement would be preferable, although in my view staying engaged should be a primary duty for Trustees.
The Trustees are the primary formal oversight body for the Foundation per § 6(1) of the Statutes. I’d anticipate they would convene in the channel discussed above and occasionally have to vote formally (probably using the poll mechanism built-in to Discourse). I’d thus be reluctant to make the distinction you do here.
This is the community bylaws envisaged by § 10(3) of the Statutes, which indicates such rules shall be made initially by the Board, and implies it must be approved by the Trustees (certainly subsequent changes must be). For reasons unknown to me this has still not been done after a decade.
But it seems like you’re trying to solve the wrong problem. Won’t this mess be resolved by trustees being automatically subscribed to both lists (and getting information about opting-out + suggestion not to do so)?
I wouldn’t say that. The MC is the direct oversight body over TDF activities, and the trustees perform secondary oversight and meta-oversight, if you will. But TBH, our current statutory position as trustees is almost completely limited to electing the two other bodies, and a bit of rubber-stamping of things. What kind of oversight can trustees perform if we are not even able to convene ourselves, nor propose decisions for ourselves? Even when going through the MC we have an almost insurmountable limitation on forcing the initiation of any procedure.
Yeah, that one is a particularly nasty part of the statutes, I totally forgot about it. I hate the repeated emphasis on our how the BoD decides and the BoD does and we can’t do anything and are totally passive. At any rate, like I said, this is not such a good point in time IMHO for the board to get into that; if you guys want to go there, you’ll need to be very careful, and again I would currently and by-default vote against ratifying such a proposal.
Given you are proposing exactly what I am proposing (except without the use of a modern tool) it seems I am probably solving the right problem 
The reason I say it is that’s what the advice from Windheller indicates (see the portion Thorsten quotes). The MC and Board are effectively subsets the Trustees elect as a “standing committee” for certain tasks.
Totally agree, especially as neither the Board not MC adequately reflects the make-up the Trustees wanted at present. It seems unavoidable, though.
The proposal was, to share a very early draft, at the very least with the trustees (but better even in public), and then encourage discussion and input. That’s perhaps the best we can do at this stage, and there’s quite a lot the bylaws could clarify.
The current Board of Directors is probably the most transparent in the history of The Document Foundation, as we have at least started to share some information and some documents. Of course, this does not mean that we are doing what all TDF Trustees expect, but at least we are trying to improve.
All previous Board of Directors have not shared information and documents, in any form.
I think this was a consequence of the project’s history, as the first Board of Directors was in touch with all TDF Trustees, as the entire group was very small. At the time, we used to have a tdf-core mailing list which helped a lot, and did the job of informing TDF Trustees.
With the growth of the project, tdf-core was abandoned (I was extremely disappointed, but this was a BoD decision), and was replaced at a later time with tdf-internal. Unfortunately, while tdf-core was known by everyone, at least by word-of-mouth, tdf-internal is not very well known.
So, the BoD become accustomed to tdf-core as a transparency tool, but when the tool disappeared did not change the attitude, and transparency was gone. Again, no one was really responsible for this, but with the passing of time we are now at the current situation.
At the moment, we have many information and documents that should be shared, and most of them are from the past, which means that they cannot be shared without adding a comment that puts them in perspective. Missing that piece of information, the result of sharing would probably generate some confusion.
So, sharing the large amount of information and documents will take a large amount of time. At the moment, we do not have that amount of time. Once standing issues will be settled, we will probably be able to devote some time for this task.
As far as new documents are related, the BoD, a lawyer or an expert will draft a first version of the document to be discussed in public by TDF Trustees (not in public with a general public). Documents may change completely, if appropriate, based on the discussion, but before being approved by the BoD they will have to be checked again by the lawyer or the expert (if substantially modified).
This is a proper best practice in large business, and it makes sense to adopt the same also in our environment. Once approved, documents will be stored in a repository in order to be available to all TDF Trustees. If it makes sense, previous versions will also be stored, but they will be in read-only mode and a DEPRECATED watermark will be added to all pages.
This is not envisioned by TDF Statutes, but I think it makes sense enough not to be controversial (but I am open to alternative proposals).
Italo, document disclosure is not something you get a prize or a commendation for trying to do a little more of; it is something you are required to do, in full, by the statutes. I absolutely reject your appeal to a norm of delinquancy as an excuse.
When the current BoD was just elected, I sent you all a proposal, a sketch of plan for gradual release of documents (predicated naturally on not continuing to add to the pile, which should of course not happen). There was never any reply, not even a rejection. Close to a year has passed since then - and the time for doing something gradually is gone.
Just disclose all of the documents already! Especially the ones you are producing and receiving all the time, and hiding, thereby actively adding onto the pile of documents being unduly kept secret from us.
It is a bit like stealing someone’s wallet and making the excuse that at least you left them a couple of bills, unlike the other, more ruthless pickpockets.
Not acceptable. If you don’t have time to sort through them - you need to release the entire lot, without fine-grained sorting. It’s a bit like getting into a swimming pool: When you gradually get in slowly, it takes a lot amount of time, and it’s deterring and unpleasant. What you need to do is just jump in; it’ll be a brief shock, but you’ll simply get used to conducting TDF business in the light instead of the shadows.
And as a reminder to my fellow trustees, I will again quote from the statutes:
No, you are not. That is not what the statutes say.
A general publication of each and any document and correspondence cannot be mandated by the statutes, as there is a variety of reasons why something cannot be published. Imagine when TDF worked on the trademark demarkation agreement, everything would have been published while that situation lasted - it is likely it would have been detrimental to TDF.
Regarding the issues TDF has at the moment, also that situation still lasts.
I do agree with you that we need more transparency as we have seen the past years, but that is something the current board inherited, not created, and needs to deal with.
I don’t see either the word “correspondence” nor “documents” in there.
Hi Eyal,
you should know that I’m for publishing decisions and document the process that led to those decision, including legal statements for and against those decisions, as much as you do. I’ve confirmed that during our conversation at LibOCon and I’ll work with the board to do it.
In the meantime I’ve prepared a list of unpublished decisions from the previous term which fellow members of the board will check and if not part of ongoing legal matters will be made public soon.
Paolo, I was talking about the BoD as a body. I’m not judging it by what individual members say or think, but what the BoD does. But it’s true that we should always remember that individual board members may not agree with what the body decides.
I will say though, that when there is no know legal restriction regarding certain documents - you can just go ahead and publish them. You don’t need an explicit BoD decision. And the same goes for other TDF trustees who have a copy of a document which has not been explicitly embargoed and is not legally restricted from publication.
Naturally, there are exceptions, like private individual matters which the TDF happens to deal with. These exceptions are implicit in the statutes (which are always to be interpreted within the scope of binding legal norms) - and they are also implicit in what I wrote. You should not use those implict and valid exceptions to dismiss the statutory requirement. If it makes us feel better, let me rephrase: “Just disclose all of the documents, which you are not legally required to keep private/confidential, already!”
(and please don’t try and claim that these restrictions are what prevents the otherwise wholesale publication.)
As an individual member I agree with Italo’s statement for the main corpus of statements related to current matters.
However, you might have noticed that some elements have already been shared to address factually incorrect statements that have been made.
There are many other factually incorrect statements that could/should be corrected now that we can as members of the board of directors/trustees are not being actively censored for trying to inform the community. It will happen over time and I’m sure that some will give us plenty of new opportunities to correct them sharing more legal clarifications.
So, once again, I ask you to be patient and you’ll get the documents as stated by Italo.
Selective disclosure based on political expediency is not such a boon, Paolo.
But even if we ignore which documents have been released: During the current board’s term, there have been N documents / articles of information generated or received by the TDF which need to be released, and M that have been released. How big is M? 2, 3, 4 articles? Let’s say I’m mis-counting and it’s 10 somehow. But N is, what, 200? I can only guess; maybe less, maybe more. Sure, a lot of these are of minor significance, but that’s not the point. The point is that:
Being able to freely disclose legal statements that correct misleading messages is a boon that many did not have during the previous term and I’m happy to have got back the right to do it.
I can also choose to go back to old threads showing what legal statements others decided to ignore, selectively apply or decided not to request. Would that be a political expedient or would be information due to the community to be properly informed?
At present I believe is more important to focus on fixing the issues so that once that is done we can release the documents and everything will be a lot clearer to our community.
That would be a portion of the email and documents generated by the previous board which the current board had to analyse to get to the bottom of the main issues and then there are also other related issues that will need to be tackled as well.
The current board did its duty to check the validity of that large amount of information together with the legal team and is now acting. Apart from receiving confirmations about previous legal statements, this board hasn’t needed to receive much more than what was made available to the previous board so we are not withholding as much new stuff as you think we are.
It would have been great if you would have been so persistent during the previous term when legal statements and answers were flowing in and people got censored even for hinting at non sensitive legal information showing that some decisions being taken were wrong or that the board wasn’t taking decisions that could have fixed those issues back in 2022.
Soon, I would hope around FOSDEM if no other issues get on our way and the involved parties cooperate, you’ll get the documents as stated by Italo and you’ll be able to spend weeks in analysing and validating the information we have acted on.