Board of Directors Meeting 2023-02-20

The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2023-02-20
Meeting Minutes

Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger

In the meeting:
    Board Members - Thorsten, Ayhan, Cor, Gabor, Paolo, Laszlo, Emiliano
    Board Deputy Members - Gabriel
    Membership Committee Members - Marina, Uwe, Gabriele (from 17:15 UTC/18:15 Berlin time on)
    Membership Committee Substitute Members - Shinji
    Community - Deirdre, Andreas
    Team - Olivier, Florian, Sophie

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.

Recurring item: Publication of previous board minutes
  * board-discuss
  * tdf-members
  * wiki page for minutes
  * wiki page for decisions
  * private minutes to the MC

Any updates regarding director affiliations?
* no changes, current affiliations see election page:
   https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html

Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any of the listed agenda items?
* 1.
* 2.
* 3.
* 4.
* 5.
* 6. Thorsten, Gábor, Cor
* 7.

The public meeting commences at 17:03 UTC / 18:03 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

* Any progress on Gabor's proposal wrt. tendering, discussed in Brussels? (Olivier)
   * work in progress, some discussions, updates probably as early as next week (Florian)

2. Vote, Discuss: Review & final decision FSF AB seat (tdf-board, 10 mins)
    * serious accusations around RMS & treatment of women
    * March 2021: situation deteriorates, RMS returns to board:
      https://twitter.com/nixcraft/status/1373905399707955202
    * previous decision: suspend AB seat, until RMS/FSF situation clarifies
    * our blog:
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/03/25/statement-on-rms-and-fsf/
    * number of organisations issue similar statements:
      * sfconservancy/outreachy:
        https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/23/outreachy-fsf/
      * Drupal: similarly anodyne statement like TDF -
https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/statement-from-drupal-association-board-regarding-the-free-software-foundation-fsf
      * EFF:
   https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-richard-stallman-fsf-board

    Discuss: reinstate, or permanently remove FSF?

* Quick summary of situation, reference to blogpost, key people at FSF
   seems not to have changed - defer decision or make temporary
   suspension a permanent one? (Florian)
   * no significant change, the previous people are still around
   * actually change at FSF, new election, suggest to keep temporary suspension a bit longer (Paolo)
   * When is election due? (Thorsten)
   * around March (Paolo)
   * shelve until April then? (Thorsten)
   * want actual positive change to happen, let's see before taking any decision (Paolo)
   * Anyone not happy with shelving this until April? (Thorsten)
     * no one raises hand

3. Discuss: Next in-person BoD meeting (Gabor Kelemen, 5 mins)

    Proposal: Gabor would like to organize the next in-person BoD
    meeting to make progress on various legal/budget/etc. issues
    sometime between April-June in Budapest. Invite interested MC
    members as well, as they have expressed motivation to help; also
    for a bit of transparency. Location would be Budapest, one or the
    other co-working space.

    Questions to discuss: what would be some potentially important
    topics and their deadlines? We can then choose an exact date a bit
    before those.

    Potential result: timely resolution of urgent, important issues
    where external factors put us into time pressure.

* Have another in-person meeting similar as in Berlin (Gabor)
   * happy to organize this in Budapest
   * depends on how urgent are tasks to solve and what are hard deadlines
   * 2nd half of April, mid-May
   * coworking space can host us
   * invite interested MC members, showed interest in Brussels and help us with our problems

- Gabriele Ponzo joints 17:15 UTC/18:15 Berlin time -

* should prepare meeting upfront, have information in time (Cor)
* loves to have a meeting, want to see positive and fast progress on various issues working on, before setting a date (Paolo)
* set tentative date, easier to solve controversial issues in person (Thorsten)
* lets run a Nextcloud poll (Florian)
* lets not block on external deadlines, rather make sure everyone can join (Florian)
* AI Gabor setup a poll with Florian (with weekends that work locally)

4. Discuss: Improving boards minuting (Florian Effenberger, Thorsten
    Behrens, 10 mins)

    Suggesting a set of steps that we can make here:
    1- create audio recording
    2- possibly have them in written form by making use of 'speach to
       text' techn.
    3- someone creates proper minutes from 1(+2); minutes give a broad
       summary of statements, and clear AI's/conclusions/decisions.
    4- these should be available in the
       week after a meeting and to be approved in the next meeting.

* want to improve minutes, costs time, struggle for everyone (Cor)
* clearly state various positions of directors and involved people
* in the old days of TDF, had recorded phone calls (Thorsten)
* not necessary to publish the recording, but supports after-meeting work for minuting
* What about private part of the call that touches confidential topics? (Marina)
* can't put that into cloud services for transcript
* something running on our own servers? (Cor)
* concerned to have not much on the private part, and therefore not improve the current situation (Marina)
* idea is to have entire call recorded (Thorsten)
* minuting is work, needs to be given time - work is the same whether automated transcription or not (Uwe)
* agrees that minuting needs time (Gabriele)
* heard of Cabolo, never saw it in practice, no idea about cost
* suggest to have records as well as minutes (Paolo)
* people might not feel comfortable to join a recorded call (Thorsten)
* less topics and especially less controversial topics in the past (Florian)
* back then, about one hour for post-production of a one hour meeting
* time well spent, localization, involve community (which is a problem these days) etc.
* turn into e-mail vote to record meetings (Thorsten)
* need to ask Guilhem for the technical details (Florian)

5. Status Report: Move board-discuss & tdf-members to Discourse
    (Florian Effenberger, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
    * Status of the migration

    Florian asked Guilhem: "have an up to date migration test at https://communitytest.documentfoundation.org/c/board-discuss which is ready for review. for the final migration i'll need to know how to populate subscribers and their preferences, as per Sophie's questions on https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3567#note-20 (for pt-br)"

The public meeting ends at 17:38 UTC / 18:38 Berlin time.

6. Status Report, Discuss: Improve tendering process (tdf-board, 20 mins)
    Reason for privacy: legal topics

7. 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 18:12 UTC / 19:12 Berlin time.

Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)