The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2022-12-12
Meeting Minutes
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Cor Nouws, László Németh, Gábor Kelemen, Emiliano Vavassori
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel Masei
Membership Committee Members - Uwe Altmann, Marina Latini
Membership Committee Substitute Members -
Community -
Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier, Olivier Hallot,
Representation: Gabriel Masei for Ayhan Yalçınsoy
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?
* 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?
* 1.
* 2. Cor, Thorsten, Gabor
* 3.
* 4. Thorsten, Gabor
* 5.
* 6. Cor, Thorsten, Paolo, Gabor
* 7.
* 8.
* 9.
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
* no question raised
2. Status Report: Hiring TDF developers (Florian Effenberger, 5 mins)
* next steps & progress
* a bit unclear (Florian)
* publish this year
* perhaps get input during/after FOSDEM
* go quickly (Thorsten)
* get the word out
* still issues with interests in the vote (Paolo)
* shelve (Thorsten)
* discuss how to fix on Wednesday (Marina)
* perhaps argue abstentions (Thorsten)
* but not the whole vote
* have a look at the process (Cor)
* shelving for a little while (Thorsten)
* no immediate hurry
* get to the bottom of CoI in general (Paolo)
* annoying discussion (Thorsten)
* like to move on
* solution on the table (Marina)
* shared interest that we want devs (Thorsten)
3. 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
* very little to say (Cor)
* urgent thing to fix
* work to do for us
* need to make progress (Thorsten)
* improve at next, next meeting
4. Status Report: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian
Effenberger, 5 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions
* current status & timeline
* upgrade cycles - no easy way to get recurring purchases/donations
* for the moment, don't cut users off of updates?
* numbers shared in the last meeting (Florian)
* some forth and back
* seems work fine
* discussion w MS, but not a blocker
* issue not solved yet
* didn't hear back from MS yet
* going to escalate (Thorsten)
* internal ping pong (Florian)
* Italo might have a contact there (Thorsten)
* perhaps Simon
* want not to solve by itself
* will try a contact (Marina)
* other option to make some noise (Thorsten)
* but try other options first
* can not sit and wait
* see next week
* issue with updates
* no immediate need
* get donation page in face of the people
* any experience you can share as you have been working with the Microsoft store? (Paolo)
* perhaps ways, political ways
* some fraction would purchase again (Thorsten)
* spend mor time now?
* perhaps re-visit in 3 months
* in app purchase need engineering
* how long valid?
* first need in app fuctionality
* disable features?
* sth to look at the options
* implementing and maintaining over the time
* generate donation/income from providing the sw
* stores getting more important (esp. for Apple users) than direct dl
* re-visit in 3 months
5. Discuss: Board Quiet Time - XMas/New Year's Eve (Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
Proposing a well deserved break for the board, as well as ED and Stephan.
So a vacation and overall quiet time from say Dec 19 to Jan 5?
Of course with an exception: if some TDF-crucial-stuff pops up
(decided by ED+chair/deputy), that can get attention during the
vacation.
* x-mas break, switch off emails (Thorsten)
* available via matrix
* pls respect quiet time
* important things to discuss in private (Paolo)
* decide about ~2 topics before x-mas (Cor)
* have two more calls (Thorsten)
* prepare via email
* sometimes better to go slow
* important call on wednesday (Marina)
* focus on that
* wednesday two slots, pls join both if possible (Florian)
* maybe not available for both (Thorsten)
* unanimous: silent week cw52
6. Status Report, Discuss: Atticization of Online (tdf-board, 20 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
* in any case, make clear from https://git.libreoffice.org/online and
https://github.com/LibreOffice/online that this is not maintained
anymore
* shelve for today (Thorsten)
* since Milan now news
* to reactivate required needs must be fulfilled
* consider first CoI (Paolo)
* will stop us from to do the right thing (Thorsten)
* best way to heal the bad experience is to put it to rest
* keep in mind what happend during the last two years (Paolo)
* tension around (Thorsten)
* no one reall happy w situation
* disclaimer needed (Emiliano)
* about status of the project
* not the time now
* focus on more important things
* use boilerplate from attic proposal (Thorsten)
* figure out w Guilhem how to proceed w repo
* remove files
* Thorsten, Cor, Gabor having an interest (Paolo)
* working for eg. vendor
* quorum requirements (Thorsten)
* interest per se no problem, CoI is
* expect all can vote
* eg. one +1 others to abstain
* removing of files is not problematic (Emiliano)
* is free sw
* declare interest and take you out (Paolo)
* shelve discussion to some later stage (Thorsten)
* leave decision as is (Paolo)
* carve out not controversial (Thorsten)
* should delay all of it a bit (Marina)
* hesitate to overburden wednesday meeting (Thorsten)
* shelving is not the right way
* looking forward to discussion of interest, PI, CoI (Cor)
* not possible within 3 remaining minutes
* agree on that (Paolo)
* propably no quorum here
* not of the opinion to take it (Emiliano)
* let's give us the time to evaluate
* see next board meetings (Thorsten)
* will come up again and again
* need clear decision
* at least let's promote the project (Paolo)
* hasn't be done till now
* definitely need to discuss further
The public meeting ends at 17:59 UTC / 18:59 Berlin time.
Private Part
7. Status Report: HR item (Florian Effenberger, Stephan
Ficht, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
8. Discuss: Legal working group setup (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Reason for privacy: HR, tax and legal topics.
9. 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 18:27 UTC / 19:27 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)