Please excuse the delay.
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-11-28
Meeting Minutes
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, László Németh, Paolo Vecchi, Gábor Kelemen, Cor Nouws,
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei
Membership Committee Members - Marina Latini, Uwe Altmann, Gabriele Ponzo
Membership Committee Substitute Members -
Community - "Jeremy", "Jelüde"
Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Guilhem Moulin, Ilmari Lauhakangas, Olivier Hallot, Christian Lohmaier,
Representation: Gabriel Masei for Emiliano Vavassori
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 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?
* no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
* Lázsló affiliation changed (dropping NISZ, now his own company)
Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any of the listed agenda items?
* 2. Thorsten, Gabor, Cor
* 4. Paolo, Thorsten, Gabor, Cor, Laszlo
* 6. Thorsten, Gabor, Laszlo
The public meeting commences at 17:06 UTC / 18:06 Berlin time.
AGENDA:
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
* none
2. Status Report, Discuss: Hiring TDF developers (tdf-board, 5 mins)
* are there new ideas how to reach compromise?
* are there new proposals in the works?
* what else do people suggest to move this forward?
* vote that didn't pass (Thorsten)
* sth coming up
* lively debates
* any more proposal? no further proposals apparently
* had a look on Cor's proposal (Marina)
* explicitly especially on LO core
* what about other (sub-)modules?
* eg. translations, dictionaries, etc.
* sure it is not meant to forget that (Cor)
* maybe add it to the proposal, if not too much wording
* or in a pre-vote text to clarify
* it is maybe relevant for a11y, CTL too
* ok for basic things eg. dictionary (Laszlo)
* maybe it's also core
* was not meant exclusive (Thorsten)
* e.g. if lode, or dev-tools need a commit, that's certainly fine?
* to Cor: who is behind the 'new' proposal (Marina)
* I did write a short proposal (Cor)
* built on an idea from months ago
* picked that up some weeks ago
* but obviously including all input from all people working on the old proposal
* then over the weeks all BoD members apart from Paolo and Kendy have been contacted
* why excluding Paolo? (Marina)
* Kendy not in the loop
* as explained in a recent mail, it is very hard in the board to be effective with our time
* so doing some work in a small group can help
* which is quite common, to prepare/contact various people etc.
* and the proposal is the same: TDF can hire devs, so let's do it
* again why Paolo excluded? (Marina)
* No one is excluded, this is a draft and people can comment (Thorsten)
* can only postpone other questions (Marina)
* lets try pls discussing the actual proposal (Thorsten)
* impress is excluded? (Marina)
* only underloved applications there (Thorsten)
* Draw is sharing a lot of code with Impress too (Cor)
* Paolo not informed about the proposal (Gabriele)
* read a lot of emails about behavior
* fame is damaged by this kind of behavior
* want to know about
* obvious a need to be discussed (Thorsten)
* perhaps in private call
* no need to finish today
* interesting to understand why I am excluded (Paolo)
* stating falses
* new proposal is total bullshit
* Cor and other BoD members never had a look at legal advice
* here not the place to discuss this (Throsten)
* MC to investigate this (Paolo)
* you are lying (Thorsten)
* lied about my agreement with the old proposal as well
* legal advise say don't do that (Paolo)
* I did of course read legal advice on the old proposal (Cor)
* that was on different content and different wording..
* constructive proposal (Thorsten)
* Gabor: in which way were you involved? (Stephan)
* got proposal from Cor; had a call where I gave my opinion (Gabor)
3. Vote, Discuss: Move board-discuss & tdf-members to Discourse
(Florian Effenberger, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
* discuss remaining question
* decide on moving ahead or not
Materials:
* test instance https://communitytest.documentfoundation.org/c/board-discuss/194
* import options and shortcomings, see
https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3567#note-15 to #note-19.
* tineline for possible migration?
* what is the timeline here? (Thorsten)
* can move archives on short notice (Guilhem)
* import subscriptions
* two things here
* board-discuss
* memberlist a bit more effort need
* mc tooling not productive yet
* what about members who have not got their accounts? (Uwe)
* call for a vote (Thorsten)
* motion: move board-discuss to discourse
* unanimous consent
4. Status Report, Discuss: Atticization of Online (tdf-board, 5 mins)
* ESC provided evaluation
* discussed briefly on the dev list:
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-October/089485.html
* conclusion seems to be: not enough activity to keep out of the
attic for the moment
Paolo leaves 17:42 UTC/18:42 Berlin
* hotness of the item (Thorsten)
* shelve it?
* skipped
5. Status Report: Strategy 2022 Items - Status (Thorsten Behrens, Cor
Nouws, Gabriel Masei, Gabor Kelemen, 5 mins)
Regular reporting about status of the Strategic items in
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/1129829
* shared with Gabor last week (Cor)
* still not presentable, will work on it soon (Gabor)
* how to structure that? (Thorsten)
* where to reach many members?
* learning by doing internal a good place (Cor)
* people breaching internal
* board should make public the 10% of budget (Uwe)
* but internal discussion
* not a lot of money
* collect ideas
* don't think there will be a lot of proposals
* private or public? (Thorsten)
* vote is not binding, board is responsible for all (Uwe)
6. Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* upgrade cycles - how many updates will users get?
* shared numbers last week (Florian)
* MS store: ~110 purchase now (cloph)
* a lot back and forth w MS
* it's a desaster (Thorsten)
* at least we are live
* running again in the same error (cloph)
* Apple in comparison without major probs
* some headache w Ventura
* reduced Apple staff actually
* regarding updates (Thorsten)
* year of upgrade not doable
* reduce pricing as time passes (cloph)
* need to purchase a new one after a while (Thorsten)
* stores don't like having diff. versions at the same time (cloph)
* best solution from my POV reduce price with the time
* problem of review writing
* stick with one version (Thorsten)
* provide updates until *we* decide to make a cut (cloph)
* have to check what user have paid for
* finally get mandatory updates (Thorsten)
* users stay not stucked w old versions
* try sth outside of mainstream
* board to deliberate
* app bundle reference / story: https://blog.kaleidoscope.app/2022/03/11/app-bundles/
The public meeting ends at 18:01 UTC / 19:01 Berlin time.
Private Part
7. Vote, Status Report: HR item #1 (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
8. Status Report: HR item #2 (Florian Effenberger, Stephan
Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
Cor leaves at 18:08 UTC / 19:08 Berlin time
Florian leaves at 18:15 UTC / 19:15 Berlin time
Stephan leaves at 18:16 UTC / 19:16 Berlin time
9. Discuss: Legal working group setup (tdf-board, 20 mins)
Continue discussion from last board call
* skipped
10. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after
sending the agenda
The private meeting ends at 18:16 UTC / 19:16 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)