The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2020-12-04
Meeting Minutes
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Lothar Becker
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board - Lothar Becker, Cor Nouws, Michael Meeks, Thorsten Behrens,
Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener, Paolo Vecchi
Membership Committee -
Membership Committee Deputies - Uwe Altmann, Shinji Enoki
Team - Stephan Ficht, Heiko Tietze, Florian Effenberger, Italo Vignoli, Sophie Gautier, Mike Saunders
Community - Michael Weghorn, Aron Budea, Simon Phipps
Representation: Paolo representing Emiliano, Nicolas representing Franklin
(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 6 Board of Directors members are attending the call or are represented.
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.
* Stephan: atmosfair donation
* did this year, especially for travels
* 1.2k € begin of year, then 500 € in May
* no travels this year - shall do this anyways, it's goodwill?
+ thought we were trying to balance our offset vs. consumption (Thorsten)
+ only had 1 request for travel (Florian)
+ thought more a goodwill act (Stephan)
+ came from the board.
+ need to balance our use with offsetting (Thorsten)
+ this should be in relation to that
+ if there is some data-center consumption, that goes up
+ expect these sums to go up in the future (Michael)
+ so for compliance reasons useful to have a clear conneciton here
+ agree (Lothar)
+ should consider costs of sharing the software (Heiko)
+ responsible for quite some CPU usage (Michael)
+ anyone else welcome to come up with a good model for this.
+ possibly it is cost-effective to optimize our S/W to
save our users' CO2 - but hard to model.
=> skip payment for this year, re-visit next year.
2. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio1 marketing plan results of member involvement for tagging (Italo/Mike, All 5min)
Rationale: results of member involvement in tagging, next steps
* Italo's e-mail "Summary of Discussion about Marketing Plan" from December 2nd
+ outcome of member discussion
Paolo joined 13:13, representing Emiliano
+ summary sent (Italo)
+ two clear labels leading - Advance and Rolling
+ preference for 'Community'
+ happy to share more information for BoD if needed
+ to take decision (Lothar)
+ within the next days
+ decision on 1. marketing plan and 2. tag
+ subset of slides basis for vote, removing slides that are not in line with this plan
+ proposal for the tag - vote on it
+ please plan for some development time - to factor that in, following options: (Thorsten)
1. shift the release date
2. start working on changes already - assuming they are approved
3. or decide earlier
+ string freeze Mon 14th dec (Florian)
+ will produce a slide-deck for marketing plan to vote on (Lothar)
+ will also have proposals for a vote on label (three options)
+ will pack this in a mail, so we're prepared to vote before 14th
+ string/ui/freeze 14-20th (Thorsten)
+ need to have someone implementing, reviewing, merging that.
+ deciding only on the 14th is pushing the envelope
+ would like a decision before the ESC call on the 10th (Michael)
+ if monday too late, get it done before (Florian)
+ can prepare the slides with the labels (Italo)
+ vote #1 - slides for marketing plan (Lothar, with help of Italo) - to be done via mail
+ vote #2 - concrete tag (Lothar, with help of Italo) - to be done via mail
AI Lothar/Florian: Bring marketing plan slidesubset in first vote mail, bring tags in second vote mail with voting close around 10th Dec
+ vote #3 - in ESC, release model (Michael)
+ aim is to have things done around ESC meeting time on Thursday, December 10
+ keep translation in mind (Sophie)
3. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio2 next decade manifesto, status of proposal/draft (Cor/Florian, All 5min)
Rationale: when do get the proposal, clarifying/discussing process, launching next steps, timeline
* Florian's e-mail "First draft of Second Decade Manifesto" from December 3rd
+ proposal shared yesterday (Lothar)
+ couple of changes not agreed yet (Lothar)
+ enlarge group of people to Board + MC
+ quite constructive (Cor)
+ share on which ML? (Florian)
+ get a consolidated idea (Lothar)
AI Florian: share draft with MC
AI Florian: find a way to discuss via e-mail between board and MC
4. Discuss&Plan: tempPrio3 LOOL from TDF (Lothar/Florian, All 15min)
Rationale: discussing next steps, timelines
+ decision this week
+ on the procedural pieces wrt. tied vote (3 vs. 3), replied today (Florian)
+ for me it is a decision taken by the board.
+ unless someone brings up a clear rational why 3 vs. 3 is not a tied vote, no
reason to doubt that.
+ think Andreas may have confused quorum with vote counting (Thorsten)
+ my take too, not in favour of counting twice, but the rules (Lothar)
+ will freeze the repo, and update weblate.
+ only a temporary freeze while we decide what to do (Paolo)
+ the tone & style of interaction on board discuss going down (Thorsten)
+ two mails out of line - one just discussed
+ accusations there that may create risk - beyond the pale.
+ if a reason, please speak up with concrete issues (perhaps in private first), otherwise not happy being exposed to that.
AI: TDF team: freeze Gerrit repository
AI: TDF team: freeze Weblate repository
+ next steps ? (Paolo)
+ mentioned understanding (Lothar)
+ reaching out & engaging new code contributors.
+ everyone's task.
+ evaluating alternative technologies ? (Paolo)
+ changing tools to attract younger developers who don't know gerrit ?
+ use smaller projects to test future tools
+ absolutely (Lothar)
+ you gave some hints on that.
+ no constructive comments on this
+ perhaps transfer LOOL code to new tools: gitlab etc. ?
+ then re-opening it and see what contribution we get
+ see if other members would like to participate
+ a good idea to ask developers (Lothar)
+ stopped developing 20 years ago (Paolo)
+ tools & platforms (Thorsten)
+ are not per-se the silver bullet to attract more contributors.
+ how to attract people - is doing something interesting
+ a project that does nothing is per-se probably not interesting.
+ LibreOffice community is those with an existing commitment (Simon)
+ reason that is, codebase is exceptionally complex
+ AOO - community showcases bold words not yielding good code
+ caution board to avoid burning bridges with COOL
+ encourage people to contribute & build up a set of
interests around TDF
+ don't think hosting will solve the problem
+ don't burn bridges with code/community
+ worst thing the board can choose to do.
+ currently called COOL (Paolo)
+ right of living on it's own, and those who can
contribute etc.
+ as TDF hasn't got a LOOL anymore, should be free
to open new doors; technology could be different.
+ Sophie mentioned gitlab ticket.
https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3413
+ not the time to be upset (Thorsten)
+ a severe risk of this ending up similar to OO
+ we need developers - lots of them
+ right now, the code & developers are on github - so this is where we should start
+ illusion - we can create something from nothing
and be interesting for developers - that is not going to happen.
+ COOL on github - is where the party is, new things
happen - that's where devs go.
+ need to decide (Paolo)
+ a 3rd party product; we have nothing to do with it ?
+ ongoing process (Michael)
+ good to be clear.
+ although a clever investment (Simon)
+ really a huge chunk of it is LibreOffice underneath
+ posturing around censuring, isolating developers of COOL
is frankly out of place, sounds like Brexit discussion
+ kind of agree with Simon (Paolo)
+ what is the role of TDF in a project.
+ even if it is a 3rd party project, and TDF will
embrace it and work together
+ just waiting for a proposal from C'bra - no big deal
+ if we decide COOL is a project to be promoted by TDF
fine, but lets see how this goes.
+ don't forget we need new contributors (Lothar)
+ everyone should be reaching out to attract them.
5. Discuss&Decide: virtual FOSDEM meetings (Florian, All 5min)
Rationale: Agreeing on our internal meetings around the virtual FOSDEM in February
* FOSDEM: Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February
* board, MC, joint meeting to be scheduled (approx. two days)
* same week or separately?
+ foresee BoD, MC, team meetings (Florian)
+ find date
+ before or after FOSDEM?
+ can we de-couple ? (Thorsten)
+ no need to tie them together
+ can meet earlier in January
+ Xmas break may block preparations (Florian)
+ can we accelerate the budget preparations
+ seems reasonable to de-couple (Lothar)
+ need a concrete proposal for a new date (Lothar)
+ weekend - Friday 29th - could use that (Florian)
+ week before FOSDEM.
+ Saturday 30th - whole day ?
+ agree (Michael)
AI + setup call and include MC for some portion (Florian)
6.1 Inform: About the recent vote in Germany on the UPC (Thorsten, All 5min)
Rationale: inform about an participation inquiry, discussing about
involvement of TDF
* https://ffii.org/bundestag-vote-for-unitary-software-patents-ffii-call-on-software-companies-to-donate/
+ public or private ? (Thorsten)
+ European Patent Court, UPC = Unified Patent Court
+ been working on this for the last 2 years (Paolo)
+ don't dislike it too much
+ has been going on for quite a long time now (Simon)
+ a project that FFII has a particular focus on
+ a good deal of activism going on.
+ co-ordinate with FSFE / OFE - to make sure it's complementary
7. Tool-issue - Discourse ? (Cor)
+ is it needed that the board takes a decision on this ?
+ people working on it, do a test, they can decide
+ just let people know - if people are happy, just go ayead
+ no need to vote on it
+ sub-projects doing great work, want to encourage & authorize, give them agency (Thorsten)
+ if they need money / resources - please do ask the board.
+ if someone in the BoD is heavily against - they can act
+ lets not encourage asking for permission all the time
+ thanks to Sophie for her report on it (Lothar)
=> no vetos, please go ahead.
+ thanks to Sophie for her work (Florian)
Public meeting ends at 13:49 Berlin time.
Agenda items of Private Part
6.2 UPC bits
8. Discuss: Discussion about releases and marketing plan from 2. (Michael, Thorsten, Florian 10min)
Reason why not in public: internal discussion about anticipated effects
Rational: Discussion about the status of the rolling release idea
Private meeting ends at 13:59 Berlin time.
Lothar Becker (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)