The Document Foundation - Board of Directors Meeting 2025-06-10
Date: Monday, June 10, 2025
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa
Notes for the minutes: Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger
In the call:
- Board - Eliane, Mike, Sophie, Simon, Osvaldo, Paolo, László
- Board deputies - none
- Membership committee - Andreas Mantke
- Membership committee substitutes -
- Team - Florian, Stephan, Jonathan, Heiko, Olivier, Cloph, Ilmari, Hossein, Xisco
- Community - Régis, Dhantel, Michael Meeks
Representation: none
The Board of Directors at the 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 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 call is quorate. 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 commenced at 16:05 UTC / 18:05 Berlin time
Public section
Community Q&A: 10 minutes
- is it possible to be a part-time Board member? (Andreas)
- voluntary duty but ‘the whole time’ (Paolo)
- read the issue on board discuss (Simon)
- processing emails on Tuesday and Thursday (Simon)
- expectation during elections was two hours per week (Simon)
- only five directors participating in tax votes (Andreas)
- have no clue why only five participated
- attended the meetings, majority was clear, only 72hrs windows (Simon)
- nothing has been left aside, believe this is an dead-end and we should put our efforts on important things (Simon)
*** Budget 2025: 10 minutes**
-
giving update (Florian)
- list of projects to continue
- list of existing projects
- list of projects to dissolve
- sharing screen with line items
- must plan in ~1.8 million€
- given the difficult situation suggest not plan in the free reserves
- keep MC request open
- dissolve 2-4% FLOSS
-
support other projects too (Paolo)
- tools we are using, e.g. Matrix, CiviCRM, etc.
- maybe ~5k
-
Jitsi doesn’t take donations (Ilmari)
-
maybe Framasoft? (Paolo)
-
support primarly the software we use (Simon)
- suggesting matrix (UK)
-
dissolve welcome kit for members (Florian)
-
dissolve LibreLogo
-
dissolve carbon compensation
-
discussion about the 10% project for members (Stephan)
- was an outcome from the Milan conference
-
Bugzilla?
-
dissolve training
-
keep trademark registration
-
keep LibreTranslate
-
dissolve strategy workshop
-
not create a separate Legal budget
-
keep Outreachy
-
dissolve Hetzner > Jenkins
-
keep graphic design work
-
dissolve bug bounty programme
-
dissolve Aptos font
-
LibreOffice SBOM
- waiting to see working group coming w proposals (Paolo)
- prelimarily meeting tomorrow
-
start working on the project
-
improve CRA conformance for LO
-
CRA coming in effect end 2026 (Simon)
- LO is not affected
- premature wrt complaints
- no beneficial owner
- suggest not spending so much money here
-
budget is here (Paolo)
- looking at who is using LO
- question will come up if LO is conform
- yes, we start early but is necessary to have all processes ready
- evaluate properly
-
make sense to go further (Hossein)
- have better libraries LO depend on
- support underlying lib-developers
-
Michael Meeks is working on SBOM already (Simon)
- TDF will not have a duty as a steward here
- too much costs
-
from my analysis we are more manufacturer than steward (Paolo)
-
I’d reduce this line item budget (Simon)
-
more clarity expected after tomorrow’s meeting (Paolo)
- in favour (Eliane, Sophie)
- so keep it open for the moment (Florian)
-
spend ~378k for new projects (Florian)
- move Latin American and Japanese conferences to community and marketing budgets (Sophie)
- SPI comes in to play a role here
- dev hiring, depends on country where hiring
- discuss late, separate topic
- we should create projects (Paolo)
- to be released than as Open Source
- structure properly
- remove TDF hosted open source LLM
- remove chart improvements, additions to Writer page breaks, Attribute styles, improve graphics, non-graphic background fill
- trademark registration
- two HR topics - discuss in smaller group
- remove LO Roadshow
- regarding procurement policy, stimulate other organizations to be involved (Paolo)
- competing in a friendly way
- remove extensions local/remote access of Open Source LLMs/SLMs
- providing infrastructure had no cost next to it (Simon)
- range we can spend 300-400k (Florian)
- discuss concrete number in private part
- proposals are for several areas where LO need support (Hossein)
- details in the three proposals
- more devs should be hired (Eliane)
- to fit the real needs of our users
- strengthens the projects
- hear from our great team here
- thanks to Hossein for your participation
- budget is limited wrt hiring (Ilmari)
- UI is very important for our users
- budget is our limit (Paolo)
- ideas to fund them
- in generally supportive (MichaelM)
- risk of destroying
- online piece is very important for me
- feel a bit disturbed
- remember online ‘move’ (Florian)
- serve public being our target mission (Simon)
- invest in Mac
- Android
- not sure it is focused on our target
- think of our users first (Cloph)
- bring it on tablets (iPad), mobile
- being able to use online for documents
- not agree that we do in TDF would not be in the best interest of TDF / LO (Olivier)
- what public we are speaking about
- business is addressed by company/-ies
- understand who and why one is installing LO
- reasonable not to put all on shoulders of one dev (Heiko)
- broad target (Florian)
- focus on the one or the other
- public brainstorming and think on various options
- provide things beyond desktop
- quite easy to spend but risk of harming TDF (MichaelM)
- producing free binaries would a risk
- be aware of self destruction
- how to engage with existing devs
- what is TDF going to do
- public sectors chose LO (Paolo)
- buy support from companies
- different type of markets/customers
- United Nations participating in open source conference in autumn
- opportunity to promote LibreOffice around the world esp. developing countries
- not helpful to speak about risks when doing this or that
- better to cooperate
- look into the good things that can happen wrt online with internal devs (Hossein)
- e.g. better collaboration
- technical understanding of that is going on to make tenders meaningful
- devs can do feature work very well (Michael)
- the fundamental q. is how TDF goes to the market with our (CB) work
- potential downsides in demonetizing
- should we go into details? (Paolo)
- confident that TDF will pay the bills (MichaelM)
- tenders are not fully interesting
- you seem not to value all regions TDF is working on (Sophie)
- risks of being disruptive (MichaelM)
- you were against TDF hiring devs (Sophie)
- I was in favour (MichaelM)
- open source translate to work together (Florian)
- all contributed in different areas to make shine the project
- don’t understand why this feeling of competition
- sad to see the ‘against’
- new developers proposals are new ‘fresh air’ (Paolo)
- finally the team is free to express ideas and try things
- we have been blocked for such a long time
- we couldn’t even write a new manifesto as people feared of complaints from someone saying that we were competing with their commercial interests
- thinking of ‘competing against ecosystem’ is wrong
- TDF creates opportunities for the ecosystem
- feel the danger MichaelM is talking about (Laszlo)
- most volunteer devs work outside TDF
- can’t imagine succesful outcome from TDF devs
- suggest to finalize budget with what we have at hand currently (Florian)
- go with 4 devs beforehand
- discuss it on board matrix channel
- move Latin American and Japanese conferences to community and marketing budgets (Sophie)
-
Hiring developers: 10 minutes
(skipped)
- LibreOffice website: (Eliane) - 5 minutes
(skipped)
- AI: (Osvaldo) - 5 minutes
(skipped)
- Event LibreOffice Road Show Brazil: (Eliane) - 5 minutes
(skipped)
Public section ended at 17:52 UTC / 19:52 Berlin time
Trustee/members-only section
- Nothing for this meeting
Board- and Membership Committee-only section
-
Legal issues: (Florian) - 15 minutes
- did not hear back from [REDACTED: name of two suppliers] (Florian)
- probably no money to expect from them
-
[REDACTED: 17 lines of pending legal topic]
- contradictory facts (Laszlo)
- dangerous to follow what Paolo suggests
- Paolo was shy dissimulating his name
- story is not complete here
- we need all information
- Thorsten wanted to save TDF
- my opinion was not shared w auditor
- contradictory facts (Laszlo)
-
you’re getting in all wrong (Paolo)
- our opinions don’t matter, but evidences matter
- [REDACTED: 3 lines of pending legal topic]
-
can we provide dissenting opinion (Laszlo)
-
[REDACTED: 3 lines of pending legal topic]
-
damage for TDF, risk of NFP status, etc. (Florian)
- we tried to find an amicable solution but only earned silence from their side
- not doing anything is no option either
-
Conflict of Interest Policy: (Paolo) - 5 minutes
- had a lot of discussion what Director should do / should not do (Paolo)
- got clear advice from several lawyers
- from lessons learned we should improve the policy
- had a lot of discussion what Director should do / should not do (Paolo)
-
Fiduciary Duties and Code of Ethics: (Paolo) - 5 minutes
- kind of mystery for some former board members (Paolo)
- some very clear and obvious rule to respect
- get opinion from MikeSch
- had a look to the documents produced from Paolo (Simon)
- Carlo should have a look here
- use simple language so that everybody can understand easily (Paolo)
- Carlo / MikeSch to do the final review
- leave it MikeSch’s discretion if Vielwerth should have a look too
- kind of mystery for some former board members (Paolo)
The next meeting will take place on July 7
The meeting ended at 18:25 UTC / 20:25 Berlin time.
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Session chair)
Mike Saunders (Keeper of the minutes)