Please excuse the delay. I failed to send the minutes in time.
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-06-27
Meeting Minutes
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Caolán McNamara, László Németh, Jan Holešovský, Cor Nouws, Emiliano Vavassori, Paolo Vecchi,
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei, Gábor Kelemen
Membership Committee Members -
Membership Committee Substitute Members -
Team - Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, Sophie Gautier, Guilhem Moulin
Community - Michael Weghorn, Aron Budea, Michael Meeks
Representation: none
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.
Any updates regarding director affiliations & statements of conflicts of interest for agenda items:
* no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
The public meeting commences at 16:02 UTC / 18:02 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask
questions to the board and about TDF
+ no question(s)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
2. Vote, Discuss: ESC proposal to atticize LOOL (tdf-board, Thorsten
Behrens, 10 mins)
As documented at
<https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html>
"ESC meeting minutes: 2022-06-09", and per the policies at
<https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic>, the ESC
proposes to atticize LOOL
(<https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/admin/repos/online,general> and
whatever accompanying infrastructure).
Of the 22 ESC members, 15 were present at the 2022-06-09 virtual
meeting, of which 9 voted in favor of the proposal, 6 abstained,
and none voted against it.
+ discussion during last weekend (Florian)
+ when designed, thought of naturally aged parts of the project - LOOL was not naturally aged (Emiliano)
+ repo seems closed, logically to got to attic (Kendy)
+ ESC agreed to be a medium size project (3 active developers) to de-atticize), not a small or large size project.
+ good to have workflow for de-atticization (Michael)
+ wait for LibOCon to discuss
+ atticization doesn't change anything relative to status quo (which is frozen since 1.5 years) (Thorsten)
+ agree talking this through at the conference would be good (Florian)
+ motion to vote on - should we do it today? (Thorsten)
+ some movement over the weekend, but still nothing livable (Caolán)
+ Franklin's proposal, gave also proposal some time ago (Paolo)
+ proposal to open temporarily (Paolo)
+ company project in Taiwan (Paolo)
+ need time to evaluate proposals (Paolo)
+ propose not to vote today (Paolo)
+ no contributions in 2 years (Gabriel)
+ close to what Caolán said
+ the de-attizitation shows if the project is viable & enough people to resurrect it (Gabriel)
+ some mails about the process over the weekend (László)
+ MPL license, so it's possible to support by companies (László)
+ TDF task to support all live projects (László)
+ better to support existing forks like COOL (László)
+ ESC voted, but there was no warning (Paolo)
+ more time needed (Paolo)
+ good to see activity, would love to hear all out (Thorsten)
+ would give the new initiatives more time (Gábor)
+ postpone voting, talk at the conference (Gábor)
+ no big preference, talking is very important (Cor)
+ ESC proposal gives a clear process, also to de-atticize (Cor)
+ encouraging that people getting involved recently (Cor)
+ let's see how that materializes over the next period
+ not want to vote today (Emiliano)
+ not vote today + let's wait for the conference (Emiliano)
+ ESC was clear - atticize this now (Thorsten)
+ OTOH - see the point that ongoing discussion created interest
+ don't want to discourage that (Thorsten)
+ could decide today, but delay the atticization in 3 months
+ if 3 people committing does not materialize => immediate attic
(Thorsten)
+ respect the developers (Paolo)
+ but the Board should have acted earlier (Paolo)
+ don't see rush
+ was offer from other
+ will have clear idea at the conference (Paolo)
+ long-time problems with the repository (Cor)
+ looks not fair to say that the BoD was too slow etc in informing
+ situation is clear and discussion for more than a year
+ so maybe better to vote now (Cor)
+ not sure if it's going to fly - this concept of taking commits from another project (Caolán)
+ whatever is the decision, it needs to be clear to the community (Sophie)
+ that people know they can work on it
+ supporting that (Cor)
+ proposes a compromise (Thorsten)
+ leave at the current frozen state
+ and if in 3 months not active enough, as is demanded in the (de-)atticization procedures, automatic atticize the repos (Thorsten)
+ propose not to have automatism (Stephan)
+ but have the discussion, and then decide (Stephan)
+ danger of constant re-opening the discussion (Thorsten)
+ hope this is a compromise (Thorsten)
+ the ESC recommendation is clear (Thorsten)
+ support not to have an automatism (Paolo)
+ 3 months can be short (Paolo)
+ strategic point of view should be considered too (Paolo)
+ vote today ( Kendy)
+ no fundamental difference between the ways (atticize now, or auto-atticization if interest doesn't last) (Kendy)
+ agree (Thorsten)
+ more about giving it a chance (Thorsten)
+ state of propoals (Michael)
+ suggest if the un-freezing is conditional to the de-atticization rules, OK with this (Michael)
+ yes, keep the status quo (Thorsten)
+ not to label "attic" - so that we don't discourage people (Thorsten)
+ and discuss (Thorsten)
vote proposal:
+ board agrees to quickly finalizing text of the motion
+ then proceed with an email vote ASAP
+ the de-atticization in the vote proposal presented should be more clearly defined (Michael, Emiliano)
+ AI thorsten send draft proposal, then call for email vote
===
* summary: needs more discussion, do that in a short mail-round
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): poor
* next step(s):
3. Vote, Discuss: LibreOffice Scholarship (tdf-board, Stephan Ficht, 5 mins)
Options to discuss (and vote on):
- renew existing stipend (TUM, Technical University of
Munich) for one more year at 1.800 €; decide no later than mid/end
of July; payment due Sept 1st
- do it ourselves; finance, promote and supervise a student independently
- drop stipend, given that it was meant to be a one-off gesture to honor KJ
- perhaps other ideas?
+ given we're over time - shelve / divert to email? (Thorsten)
+ OK to shift (Stephan)
+ AI Stephan report on progress via email, call for a vote if ready
===
* summary: opposing points of view
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): poor
* next step(s): shifted to next BoD meeting on July 11th
4. Vote, Discuss: Merged developer proposal (tdf-board, Jan Holesovsky, 10 mins)
* should the merged proposal be deemed ready
<https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/960049>
* have a last round of discussion
* if conclusive - vote & budget for it
+ board has ultimate deciding power (Kendy)
+ seems we are pretty close to agree on the proposal (Kendy)
+ parts integrated which should not be there (Paolo)
+ keep document clean
+ some changes suggested by Paolo, some by Kendy (Thorsten)
+ text is open for editing to everyone (Thorsten)
+ don't agree that ESC has to show that it is not biased (Michael)
+ offended by the idea; it was appointed by Board (Michael)
+ ESC our most effective and collegial body (Michael)
+ CoI policy missing (Paolo)
+ need processes to follow (Paolo)
+ procedural thing, not an attack (Paolo)
+ would be helpful to have a diff between the proposals (Emiliano)
+ we all agree we should hire, right? (Caolán)
+ yes (Kendy, Paolo, ...)
+ next steps: AI Kendy and Paolo ironing out remaining differences, then vote once done / latest next board call (Thorsten)
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
5. Status Report: LibreOffice conference planning (Florian Effenberger, 4 mins)
+ switching to Milan (Florian)
+ Italo to send an update ASAP
+ Sophie asks to reply to her email wrt the need of accomodation
+ board expresses gratitude to conference organizer team for managing this challenging situation well
===
* summary: go with Milan
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full): full
* next step(s):
The public meeting ends at 17:02 UTC / 19:02 Berlin time.
Private part
6. Status Report: Reporting from the oversight groups (Thorsten Behrens, 10 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
First quarter for the new board is up, so let's hear reports from
the various oversight groups.
Shelved to email reporting, due to lack of time
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
7. Status Report: HR topic (Florian Effenberger, Stephan Ficht, 4 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
8. Status Report: Hiring web developer (Florian Effenberger, 4 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
9. Vote, Discuss: AB topic (Florian Effenberger, 4 mins)
Reason for privacy: contract negotiation.
Shelved, due to lack of time. Florian briefly reports...
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
10. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 4 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after
sending the agenda
-none-
===
* summary:
* status of consent (none, poor, mostly, full):
* next step(s):
The private meeting ends at 17:52 UTC / 19:52 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)