Board of Directors Meeting 2025-07-07 - Call Minutes

The Document Foundation - Board of Directors Meeting 2025-07-07
Date: Monday, July 7, 2025
Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa
Notes for the minutes: Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger

In the call:

  • Board - Simon, Mike, Paolo, Sophie, Eliane, Osvaldo, Laszlo
  • Board deputies - none
  • Membership committee - Andreas
  • Membership committee substitutes -
  • Team - Florian, Stephan, Jonathan, Ilmari, Hossein, Cloph
  • Community - Henderson Matsuura

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

  • Why not 7 participants in vote on e.g. the budget or the tax declaration? (Andreas)

    • Have explanation from Simon, but not from Laszlo
    • What is his understanding of role in the board?
    • Budget and tax declarations are duties key for the board?
    • I participated to all board meetings and discussions (Laszlo)
      • Your question is about last vote?
      • Planned to participate as Simon did
      • Unfortunately family issue that week (details not minuted)
      • Questionable things in the budget vote to me, then vote already decided
      • Still have lots of questions on some things, plan to share my ideas
      • Participated in discussion, especially face-to-face meetings, e.g. FOSDEM and the LibreOffice Conference
      • Nobody knows how to sustain development of huge and complicated FLOSS office suite as LibreOffice
  • Questions on board-discuss for several weeks (Andreas)

    • Tax declaration
    • Budget decision
    • Things didn’t happen during one day
    • Middle of the year already, budget needs done beginning of the year, not end of the year
    • More questions don’t lead to an executable budget, had 5-6 months to discuss already
    • Coming up with questions at the end of this period is a problem
    • Agree, but questions on budget items, not on voting (Laszlo)
      • Removing items, adding items, doubling developers, doubling again
      • How to sustain development?
      • Happy to have the LibreOffice Conference with normal budget
    • had a question in February 5 about members excluded not answered yet (Simon)
    • wasn’t MC member at that time (Andreas)
    • no one of MC answered so far (Simon)
    • can and will not give advice how MC has to answer
    • I am still asking for a reply as TDF trustees (Simon)
    • seems that you ignore the discussion on that (Osvaldo)
    • question about ‘expelling a member’ is wrong (Paolo)
      • membership issues has been discussed by then
    • you answered a questions you wanted to answer to (Simon)
    • where do you see the limits for not renewing a trustees membership (Paolo)
      • do you see any issues to not renew in case of severe wrongdoings
      • membership is set to a specific criteria (Simon)
        • so it is a matter of the trustees to decide on
      • MC only decided on renewal or not to do so (Andreas)
        • that’s the role of MC
    • MC exceeded it’s power here (Simon)
      • please go back to my question from Feb 5th
    • your logic, Simon, is not coherent with TDF statutes (Paolo)
    • my question remains (Simon)
    • question is answered (Andreas)
    • how rude (Simon)
      • the questioned is still not answered on board discuss
  • Per diem proposal (Stephan): 10 minutes

    • let me quickly sum up (Florian)
    • nothing to add at this moment (Stephan)
    • couldn’t work out what are the pros/cons (Simon)
    • define who is concerned (Sophie)
      • need to be fine tuned
    • use tax deductions in your respective countries (Ilmari)
    • please see #6 in the proposal (Stephan)
  • AI (Eliane, Osvaldo): 10 minutes

    • brings great opportunities (Eliane)
    • consider this emerging technology (Osvaldo)
      • integrating such tools e.g. in LO
      • small systems trained for specific tools
      • AI could help in phrasing
      • ignoring this technology would be a big failure
      • other point, different approach training open AI
      • requires set of resources with considerable impact on budget and staff
      • already some work made and available on Github
      • need more professional approach
    • participating with many members in Telegram (Eliane)
      • community asking more and more and want more
      • need more discussion in the community
    • get a lot of input complaining about AI in other office suites (Mike)
      • pros and cons widely expressed
      • avoid shitstorm starting based on wrong informations
    • agree with Mike here (Simon)
      • no half thought out things
      • use underlying models instead of developing by your own
      • can’t neglect it
      • but we have to be very careful not to shoot in our both feet
    • had already some kind of AI integrated into LibreOffice, e.g. language tools (Laszlo)
      • expensive and risky
      • grammar checker
      • need more frame work integrated in Python
      • French dev created own tool
      • 5 languages to be supported
      • is about 1 TB to be shared
      • integrate existing tools
      • needs a lot of hard work in core
      • reach the end of AI
      • analysing/generating text in LO is more a third-party matter
    • two parts (Osvaldo)
      • #1 includes tools for daily work
      • #2 train those system on our servers
      • people reluctant to provide personal data
      • therefore have it on LO servers
      • crucial that users trust the servers and safe data harbour
      • users pay and then can use the service
      • we need some servers and staff to maintain
  • Hiring developers (Eliane): 10 minutes

    • placeholder put on budget (Florian)
      • ideally have defined rolls within a month
      • four proposals from Hossein
      • 1# macOS UI, #2 Python, #3, #4
    • IDE integration for #2 (Cloph)
    • We should focus on a Mac OS developer as recommended by Patrick (Paolo)
    • top priority what Patrick does here (Simon)
    • need dev here urgently (Eliane)
    • any objections in general to start first job posting (Florian)
    • prioritise #1 macOS (Simon)
    • let’s start with one or two (Florian)
  • HR topics: (Florian) – 10 minutes

    • Policy to have wages adapted (Simon)
      • principle is to refer to inflation officially communicated
      • perhaps regularly every June
      • compensation/uplift for employees/contractors
    • handle vote via email (Florian)

Pasted in Jitsi chat:

"Policy for an inflation compensation uplift
Once per year, ideally around June
Inflation published by the EC
Based on inflation per country"

Public section ended at 17:10 UTC / 19:10 Berlin time

Trustee/members-only section

  • Nothing for this meeting

Board- and Membership Committee-only section

  • Legal issues: (Florian) - 15 minutes
  • [REDACTED: 34 lines of legal discussion]
  • fiduciary duties, code of ethics, CoI policy
    • [REDACTED: name of lawyer or law firm] can help with this (Florian)
      • plan was to have it before next elections

The next meeting will take place on August 11

The meeting ended at 17:34 UTC / 19:34 Berlin time.

Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Session chair)
Mike Saunders (Keeper of the minutes)