The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-02-11
Meeting Minutes
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Lothar Becker
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board - Thorsten Behrens, Emiliano Vavassori, Lothar Becker, Michael Meeks, Cor Nouws
Board Deputies - Nicolas Christener, Paolo Vecchi
Board Elect - Caolán McNamara, Gabriel Masei, Jan Holešovský, Gábor Kelemen, Laszlo Nemeth
Membership Committee -
Membership Committee Deputies - Shinji Enoki,
Community - Michael Weghorn, Simon Phipps, Imran Sarvar Khan
Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Olivier Hallot, Heiko Tietze, Guilhem Moulin, Sophie Gautier
Representation: Nicolas for Franklin, Paolo for Daniel
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 or represented in 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 13:01 Berlin time.
Public Part
1. Q&A: Answering questions from the community (all, 10 minutes)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF
+ the mailing list thread is really hard to read (Heiko)
+ improve the situation by using decidim?
+ in the budget ranking a project for implementing it (Emiliano)
+ how does it help? (Michael)
+ provide proposals, and collect votes (Emiliano)
+ have to structure workflow for process
+ platform once installed - is empty
+ how do we reduce noise so we can hear everyone? (Michael)
+ right way is with moderators (Emiliano)
+ interesting topic to see how it can help (Cor)
+ needs some work to set it up for us
+ focus is to have all members in the platform
+ get them to express their needs
+ been involved with Consul and decidim (Simon)
+ very complex to setup, hire a consultant to configure it for us
+ quite a good time, and worth using, like installing CiviCRM
+ budget proposal for 2022 - is to have budget for that
+ if solution to noise is moderation - can do it on ML (Michael)
+ proposal - tool better fitted for the purpose (Emiliano)
+ discussing in bugzilla is not the best tool
+ mailing list the same - how obsolete is mailing
+ possible to have a test account? (Lothar)
+ yes, but it needs to be forwarded to Infra - let's see how to implement it with the Team (Emiliano)
+ well worth trying & playing with that (Thorsten)
+ if we can find something more productive, less stressful, more crisp way of getting feedback
+ may take a while to play & get up-to-speed
+ meantime trying stop-gap measures on board-discuss to be more productive self-moderation or whatever else - makes sense
2. Discuss: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs. (Paolo, all, 15min)
Rationale: Items and Discussion about them
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00141.html
+ couldn't follow *all* mailings (Lothar)
+ Paolo can give a short summary, please
+ Paolo's proposal of what we think we should do (Paolo)
+ enable TDF to grow in-house skills
+ start dealing with several items, bugs, a11y, RTL, Chinese/Korean things
+ so we don't have to wait for budget / tenders
+ build up internal skills for the rest of the project
+ start publishing apps in the app-stores
+ able to deal with the issues
+ check / react quickly to security issues
+ Caolan deals with fast - having someone to deal with things internally
+ a lot of support for the proposal
+ lots of additional informations
+ some that - TDF is not made for that
+ some questions regarding: can we actually do it
+ process is the same as for tenders
+ issue has already been solved
+ Michael W had some answers to Kendy
+ shaping an interesting project
+ let's define a procedure (Lothar)
+ reading most of the mails (Cor)
+ short version - certainly some areas of coding development that are poorly covered by what the community does
+ somehow hard to tender
+ do it in a way that doesn't compete with ecosystem members of TDF
+ quite some questions on how to organize it so it works complexity of code, amount of work involved, choices to make
+ current information: is it do-able / feasible to try to work on
+ imagine: give it a try inside TDF; a few people - period of two years
+ does it work out that way - need the details
+ what we need to solve before, is it possible at all
+ a sub-group working on a paper? (Lothar)
+ mentoring & developers question
+ to say right away it will fly - don't believe it
+ need to think how to test that - Q's before
+ wrote a short statement last night (Thorsten)
+ broadly not against it
+ think it's premature just hire developers
+ then laundry list of problems is solved
+ agree - universally helpful - to have internal dev expertise
+ broadening that base is helpful
+ we do have developers - they are just not called developers
+ the pretence that TDF has no devs is not so nice to what staff already do
+ not against broadening the base
+ formidable problems - needs good planning & thinking
+ once hired - keep them around - have a plan before skill-set
+ on app-stores: it's all over the code-base, need a very universal developer to fix all the problems
+ any time/place - Apple decides some API not ok
+ bottom line: lets plan for & discuss that - but not a done deal that this is the solution
+ fallacy - developer is a developer (Michael)
+ a11y developer to turn them into something else - long time
+ LibreOffice take a long time to grow
+ not against hiring people
+ wise to message as development mentors
+ so we multiply our effectivegrow a big, fun community
+ like to separate the discussion of employing devs to sell LibreOffice in app stores is a big change: should be separate
+ beyond that not against it
+ don't not do it because it's hard (Paolo)
+ having internal developers will need to be trained & educated
+ part of the mission of TDF
+ naturally - up to us & people we find, to see what skill-set they have and dedicate them to one area
+ all part of normal process of employing people & helping them to grow in the organization
+ Thorsten, Michael have companies it's normal - we do it
+ following the discussion (Olivier)
+ extremely tiring to discussion - ML not the best
+ like to try to untangle the issues
+ perhaps go in an intermediary step
+ allocate budget for an amount of person-days from the ecosystem
+ of a sr. developer - and assign tasks to them
+ an intermediary step between hiring & giving opportunity to ecosystem companies
+ without complex & hard to settle tender process
+ as Paolo says - complexity is no reason not to do it (Cor)
+ indeed not; but a reason to be clear in how we can try this
+ if it really is a solution for our problem
+ complexity is a reason to be careful & well thought
+ developers are not interchangable (Michael)
+ "just hire developers" - impossibly naive, developers are very different to each other
+ Paolo's idea to: "hire developers" -> "see what skills they have" -> "use them to do something they have skills for"
+ is really unhelpful
+ yes you can pay a lot to train people in other areas but this is very expensive
+ far better to know roughly what skills you want before you hire people - with those
+ sad about the discussion (Kendy)
+ presented as if something is agreed, a done-deal, all smooth
+ because it was not - consequently it turned into a flame-war
+ grateful for Michael W's patience
+ and turning that into something constructive - thanks for that
+ Not sure about Olivier's proposal to rent in skills (Paolo)
+ doesn't allow TDF to build skills in-house
+ normal to have a trial period for 3-6 months
+ and decide if that person is fit for TDF or not
+ if they are capable of evolving: different platform, etc.
+ have been a developer for 15 years and have experienced that
+ need to finish analyzing the process (Paolo)
+ as for mentor - say yes: TDF needs to grow in-house skills
+ to participate more in development; seems people agree on that
+ then study the process
+ things need to be adjusted when we find candidates
+ this one is good for certain areas, what we should do with these people
+ Proposal: discuss more, decide with strategy workshop? (Lothar)
+ could be interesting (Paolo)
+ a consensus from one side brilliant idea to have it
+ other side seems like its a better idea for the ecosystem to do that
+ Olivier's idea answers one question (Kendy)
+ how to get potential hires up-to-speed
+ hiring experienced sr. developers from ecosystem to train potential hires in some areas - could be a way forward
+ very regrettable (Simon)
+ to frame this as partisan - one side vs. another
+ particularly when one side is "the industry"
+ discussion with Michael W & Emiliano - look at the problem first, and devise a solution that will prolly involved in-house developers
+ rather than hiring developers and then seeing what they can solve
+ recommend breaking this down into problems and solving them in the most appropriate way
+ it would be very likely that solving some of those problems will involve hiring staff
+ thanks to Simon for summary (Cor)
3. Information public part: Status budget 2022, end of proposals, next steps (Florian, all, 5 min)
Rationale: Planing for finalizing and handing over to new board
* December ledgers factored in
* final review/double check of numbers next week
* proposals collected
* all in the ranking sheet, except change in recurring costs
* next step is to decide how to rank
* old and new board, 0-100, taking average
* split in recurring and projects, or big and smaller projects, etc.
* Florian offers strategy workshop, to discuss before finalizing budget
+ updated draft, Dec ledgers factored in (Florian)
+ proposals are collected
+ everything in the ranking sheet
+ old and new BoD members listed in ranking sheet
+ recommend since we can't do all (Michael)
+ I ranked the top chunk of these from ESC, and tweaked a few of the others around a bit
+ don't feel like you have to rank every one
+ please everyone rank, then move on (Florian)
+ suggest over-committing (Michael)
+ since we so frequently fail to tender the budget
+ using the proportion by which we under-tendered last year
+ some tenders didn't come to live freeing budget (Florian)
+ filing budget should be minimal (Florian)
+ and agree internally if something falls out take the next item
+ agreed on a process (Lothar)
+ next question: by when? (Emiliano)
+ inauguration on Feb 21st (Florian)
+ lets have a ranking by this date - time to rank & ask questions
+ happy to support hiring two developers (Michael)
+ if it is open that they can be mentors
+ saying developers - not saying must have a specific task yet (Paolo)
+ "two new members of the team" - Emiliano
Thank you and farewell to the outgoing board members (Florian)
* Daniel
* Franklin
* Lothar
* Michael
* Nicolas
Thanks for your work, service, dedication and time, and hope to see you around and especially to meet you in person soon!
Announcement of future board calls (Florian)
* likely every other Monday
* starting February 21
* 1700-1800 UTC during European winter, 1600-1700 UTC during European summer = 1800-1900 Berlin time all season
* Thanks to Thorsten for coordinating the meeting slot!
* Florian to send calendar invite to board - using Nextcloud (again), check if the invite works and the time is proper
Public meeting ends at 13:47 Berlin time.
Private Part
4. Information & Discussion private part: Follow-up on budget 2022 budget sheet and procedure of decision making (Florian, all, 10 min)
Rationale: Planing for finalizing and handing over to new board
Reason why in private: Legal/contractual/financial items.
5. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (owner of the item, all, 5min)
Rationale: if there is popping up an item after sending the agenda
Reason why in private: Legal/contractual/financial items.
Private meeting ends at 14:01 Berlin time.
Lothar Becker (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)