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