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