The Document Foundation
Board of Directors (In-Person) Meeting 2022-06-10 to 2022-06-12
Meeting Minutes
Location: Berlin, co-working space
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board - Thorsten Behrens, Caolán McNamara, Jan Holešovský, Emiliano Vavassori, Cor Nouws, László Németh
Board Deputies - Gábor Kelemen, Gabriel Masei
Membership Committee -
Membership Committee Deputies -
Team - Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht
Community -
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 meeting consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the meeting 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 meeting.
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.
meeting 2022-06-10 commences at 12:00 Berlin time
no Public Part
Private Part
1. 12:00 - 15:00 arrival and hall way talks
2. 14:00 - 15:00 employee oversight group meeting
3. 15:00 - 16:00 pending ToDos and last-minute agenda tweaks
+ review & sign-off on agenda
+ employee topic
+ travel reimbursals for directors
+ Feedback on legal advisor proposal
+ AI Thorsten ask for a concrete offer (not committing to anything)
+ update LibOCon
+ Move location, keep dates?
+ Keep location, move dates?
+ concern that covid restrictions would be back
+ Some other option?
+ near some larger airport?
+ AI Cor poke some contacts near Schipol
+ AI Gabor check options in Budapest
+ or - hybrid-via-lots-of-local-conference, connected virtually
+ requirements: around 150 people, 3-4 meeting rooms/auditoriums - some 3-4 days, including board/community meetings
+ Bolzano, Kolpinghaus - or somewhere else entirely?
+ Kolpinghaus might be harder for remote participation
4. 16:00 - 17:00 Reports from oversight areas
+ general discussion on how/where/what to report
+ ai thorsten share ASF report templates
+ important to know what is going on, see probs early on
+ also good if people see we're listening
5. 17:00 - 18:00 CoC discussion (board-only)
meeting 2022-06-10 ends at 18:00 Berlin time.
meeting 2022-06-11 commences at 10:00 Berlin time
no Public Part
Private Part
1. 10:00 - 12:00 Retrospective
+ 2010-2022 fast-forward & highlights - Florian/Thorsten
+ what are we proud of
+ pulling it off with the foundation and the fork
+ getting people over (some left - both projects)
+ getting stiftung talked through
+ getting so much companies / industry support - also getting so much good will from everyone
+ managing to become a respected/recognized entity
+ and factor 10 increase in donation in 2013 - with the download donate button
+ keeping so many people engaged (and initially pulled over from OOo) - some since >20 years
+ managed to enable, and attract enthusiastic native lang projects
+ special scripts, languages and writing schemes
+ and those that did not - we managed to re-build with new volunteers
+ we are a role model, others looking at us favourable
+ welcoming place for volunteers and companies alike - that people continue like & trust to join.
+ what needs work
+ recognise all the good work, large and small - and talk about it
+ growth mindset - we're stagnant since 2013, essentially
+ attract new contributors
+ by going out and talking about all the exciting stuff
+ and making contribution a pleasant & rewarding experience
+ attract more AB board members - and tune the message to what they need / be flexible about the conditions
+ too much focus on sustaining/being stable - no risk taking
+ in many areas
+ strategy
+ technology
+ fresh ideas in general (like bibisect, images with prebuilt LibO)
+ trying new things - exciting & surprising - get the fun back into the project work
+ get the work (in particular on the board) to be much more effective, and less tiring
+ get out of the way, if community people / individuals fix or improve things
+ listen better and support the needs of core contributors & users (volunteers, companies, users)
+ and grow stronger ties / improve communication with native lang / far-away communities, in particular where there is cultural/language barriers
+ define a healthy way to introduce user needs into project decisions
+ still very EU-centered - never managed to catch on in the US / north america
+ better marketing of the TDF & membership & governance - tell people what is even the point
+ also get the vote participation up
+ be more aware and proactive about cultural differences and language barriers
+ new board term - all
+ what are we proud of
+ managed to meet in person, very constructive first day yesterday
+ HR decision
+ when push comes to shove, decisions are being made
+ people - despite knowing what's at stake - they ran again for the board
+ and finding enough candidates in the first place
+ finding 5 new / returning board members
+ new board members stayed, despite the initial frictions
+ excellent help from Florian & staff, with onboarding work & input
+ getting things done
+ attic proposal, communication best practice
+ getting a budget done in time
+ what needs work
+ sorting out / coming up with a fair way not to exclude people on the board
+ leave room for discussions (and ways to amend), before voting
+ wind down the current way to handle matters (and make sure it remains exceptional)
+ fix our way of interaction
+ make sure people feel safe (also non-board/public venues) to speak up
+ "create a safe space, for people to provide even imperfect contributions"
+ get the full board more engaged
+ level-up new board members, more quickly
+ provide a safe space for new board members to share ideas
+ make people feel safe to make mistakes
+ overall mission: get frustration levels massively down
+ by understanding what they are
+ and listening to others
+ also learn more what various communities/sub-groups feel
+ consider the mindset (on the board) that we should be serving (instead of "bossing around"?)
+ better scheduling of work (e.g. no votes over long weekends)
+ accommodate the fact that board members have limited time
+ pace things better / decouple if faster progress is required
+ better organisation of board work in general - compartmentalise better?
+ get trust levels way up
+ re-focus board work onto the future & vision
+ reflect on the original vision of the project
+ much closer monitoring of competitive landscape and bugzilla - and keep the users (also in far-away places) in mind
2. 13:00 - 15:00 Mike / legal Q&A
+ Mike can perhaps join from 13:00 on - for about one hour
+ Mike introducing himself - legal counsel of TDF since the beginning
+ he's been writing the statutes (with Florian) back in 2010/2011
+ keeping in close contact with the Berlin foundation authority
3. 13:00 - 15:00 Reflection & Goals
+ ~~what needs fixing~~
+ ~~agreeing on key goals~~
4. ~~15:00 - 16:00 hallway talks
5. 16:00 - 18:00 Vision
+ where do we want TDF to be in 5 years
+ Gábor: Please read this piece of wisdom: [https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show\\\_bug.cgi?id=129962#c5](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show\_bug.cgi?id=129962#c5) (also related to the earlier key goals topic; more of a LO-as-product than LO-as-community/TDF issue)
+ Gábor: Q: What would be a reasonable goal for the dev mentoring topic? (perhaps this fits better for the key goals topic?)
+ brainstorming session 5 year goals
+ catch up with the industry
+ move away from desktop-only
+ direct democracy implemented via decidim
+ have 10% of project budget decided/voted on by members
+ setup member-voted bugfixing
+ to incentivise membership status
+ indirect goal: grow membership
+ more membership incentivising - e.g. send swag
+ incentivise voting by members
+ e.g. by providing extra swag
+ lobby EU to use LibreOffice everywhere
+ as domestic technology with european values
+ and complement that perhaps with EU grant money (to possibly tender out in smaller chunks, c.f. NLnet)
+ find new markets and users
+ double number of developers
+ be on every student's computing device, for all schools and universities in the EU
+ be one of the top 5 go-to organisations, for EU policiticians, for FLOSS and digital sovereignty questions
+ have teaching LibreOffice programming & coding details be university / computer science subject
+ have ODF documents (and LibreOffice) advertised on all EU government pages
+ rework the project / add toolchain innovations, to much improve on-ramp
+ get newcomers to hack LibreOffice in 5 minutes
+ make LibreOffice bugs debuggable in 5 minutes for newcomers
+ provide a feature / function map, to find the code for a specific feature, or menu/toolbar item
+ provide AI-assisted ways to debug, find related bugfix commits, or regressions
+ significantly increase contributions from non-EU communities & entities
+ and find audience-specific ways to incentivize contributions
+ overall improve the way we appreciate contributions
+ take measurable steps to improve community metrics across the board
+ move away from vanity metrics
+ objectify non-code contributions
+ spend 10% of project budget on overall education about IT and FLOSS topics
+ by hiring 3 people over 3 years, to educate on LibreOffice
+ be fully interoperable
+ further professionalise, e.g. by setting up a separate business entity
+ significantly increase number of in-person community meetings (hackfests, conference), if conditions permit
+ marketing to continue to balance communication about project and product
+ undertake a full brand and logo refresh
+ come up with new, innovative, cool marketing ideas
+ e.g. like LO branded common goods/consumables
+ or some marketing campaigns - if there's funds
+ make better use of our installed base, to attract contributions
+ e.g. during download, not only point to donation button, but volunteer your time
+ substantially increase diversity in the project
+ community (i.e. contributing people)
+ board and MC
+ staff
+ both in terms of country/continents, as well as gender
+ goal: one more from each above category in both board and MC
+ in 2 years, get two additional companies into the ecosystem
+ be the largest FLOSS community in the world, without major conflicts anymore
meeting 2022-06-11 ends at 18:00 Berlin time.
meeting 2022-06-12 commences at 10:00 Berlin time
no Public Part
Private Part
1. 10:00 - 12:00 Strategy & planning
+ wrapping up from Saturday
+ how do we get where we want to be
+ who does what, budgetting / resources
+ AI Thorsten/Floeff convert ideas into deck
+ leave time til mid next week
+ then ask board to vote/everyone gets 7 votes - please just put yourself as co-owner
+ 25 items in total
2. 13:00 - 15:00 Misc board business
+ How to support related software
+ hunspell had an effort at sponsored development from Mozilla from basically was problematic. Maybe László could describe how/what went wrong and what not to do if we tried to "help out" other projects
+ Lázsló: got mail from dutch hackers, who got a grant from MoCo, to fix a bug. all went wrong, emails not answered, wasn't aware grant money was spent. grantee didn't communicate/play well with existing community. then forked, and changed the license unilaterally
+ FOSDEM '19 talk: <https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/nuspell/attachments/slides/3230/export/events/attachments/nuspell/slides/3230/presentation.pdf>
+ FOSDEM '20 talk: [https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/clc\\\_nuspell\\\_version\\\_3\\\_of\\\_the\\\_new\\\_spell\\\_checker/attachments/slides/3727/export/events/attachments/clc\\\_nuspell\\\_version\\\_3\\\_of\\\_the\\\_new\\\_spell\\\_checker/slides/3727/presentation.pdf](https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/clc\_nuspell\_version\_3\_of\_the\_new\_spell\_checker/attachments/slides/3727/export/events/attachments/clc\_nuspell\_version\_3\_of\_the\_new\_spell\_checker/slides/3727/presentation.pdf)
+ lesson learned: try contracting/talking to the project owners/leadership
+ Emiliano: previously, we've always contacted/tendered specific things
+ Caolán: e.g. look at libjpeg - core contributor has tagged bugs with 'will fix for funding'
+ we prefer funding our own needs (in third party floss) - and also, offer support for boring stuff, like releasing/tagging stuff - can our own staff help there?
+ and possibly, if we feel it is appropriate, offer to move it over to our infra/repos
+ just make sure to suitably credit the original developers
+ gabor: EU has some new initiative towards supporting critical FOSS sw: <https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/fosseps/news/funding-sustainability>
+ ESC/developer proposal discussion
+ Status updates
+ board process proposal - open items
+ communication & tools
+ Thorsten demoes the various decks
+ shared matrix channel (board/staff/mc) -> AI Guilhem to set the room up
+ hiring web dev proposal
+ last round of review for job offer, then publish
+ Florian to line-up/prepare interviewers, including availability
+ Florian/Ilmari/Heiko
+ hiring core devs proposal
+ discussed above, ETA get final proposal in 2 weeks
+ Gábor: hiring QA engineer/analyst proposal: <https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/PsGnyGHBXmjzmqB>
+ draft been discussed on board-discuss
+ some last edits from Gábor
+ then send out - around 4 weeks application period
+ Cor: roll some feedback/lessons learned in, from past attempts?
+ Florian to line-up/prepare interviewers, including availability
+ Gábor/Gabriel/Florian/Xisco
+ status workshops onboarding / paolo questions
+ pending, but blocking on Florian time
+ concrete questions from Paolo
+ needs consulting with Mike
+ then collect & answer in writing
+ status AB member
+ pending, mail needs sending
3. 15:00 - 16:00 buffer
+ report on pending oversight areas
+ provided:
+ certification
+ infra
+ documentation
+ license & development
+ affiliations
+ pending:
+ QA
+ AI Gábor
+ native lang
+ AI László, Gábor, Ayhan
+ employees & hiring
+ AI Thorsten
+ finance
+ AI Thorsten
+ marketing
+ AI Cor
+ provide summary minutes for the public
+ AI Florian to provide agenda & send out
meeting 2022-06-12 ends at 16:00 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)