The Document Foundation - Board of Directors Meeting 2026-05-11 - Call Minutes
Date: Monday, May 11, 2026
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa
Notes for the minutes: Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger
In the call:
Board - Eliane, Sophie, Simon, Paolo, Laszlo, Mike
Board deputies - none
Membership committee - none
Membership committee substitutes - none
Team - Florian, Stephan, Jonathan, Ilmari, Michael, Vissarion, Neil, cloph,
Community - Edward Olson, Tuomas Hietala
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 6 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
A. Public section
-
Budget 2026 (Florian, 10 minutes)
- screen sharing (Florian)
- proposal to agree on something and send to accountant
- small change with regard to legal budget
- some left over
- fill up with four more developer roles
- international hiring can be expensive
- agreeing: Paolo, Eliane, Sophie
- screen sharing (Florian)
-
Update on developer hirings (Florian, 10 minutes)
- ongoing talks (Florian)
- QA, online/mobile
- plan to finalise the conversation
- then see how to handle it - tendering?
- polish before sharing in public
-
will the closing down of Bitergia affect the dashboard budget item? (Simon)
- self-maintained dashboard, Proteus is another tool not maintained by them (Florian)
- relationship with Linux Foundaation Chaoss project (Simon)
- Chaos is taking over (Paolo)
- doing consulting work (Ilmari)
- project we use? (Paolo)
- if they call for help (Ilmari)
- person isn’t there any more (Florian)
- 5k for funding other projects in the budget
-
TDF team talks at LibOCon (Mike, 5 minutes)
- would be good if team members to propose talks (Mike)
- for marketing purposes, eg. Olivier
- please submit talks
- it is necessary (Eliane)
- people need to know who is behind TDF
- would be good if team members to propose talks (Mike)
-
Web/Mobile Development Planning (Jonathan, 5 minutes)
- approaching consensus on development strategy (Jonathan)
- base as much code as possible on the desktop version
- with regards to Microsoft Office, this will help our goals
- approaching consensus on development strategy (Jonathan)
-
Summary of the ESC for April 2026 (Jonathan, 5 minutes)
- we know that there are minutes (Eliane)
- it is about sharing here
- business as usual from my point of view (Jonathan)
- some people joining, some leaving, also as usual
- with the new release, some people are popping up (Florian)
- we know that there are minutes (Eliane)
-
In-person meeting of the TDF Team in Munich (Sophie, 2 minutes)
- June 29 to July 4 (Sophie)
- meetings at EineWeltHaus coworking space nearby
- good to have in-person meetings (Eliane)
- June 29 to July 4 (Sophie)
-
Community Q&A: 10 minutes
- When will the Board election be held? No-one from Membership Committee is there to answer (Simon)
The public section ended at 16:24 UTC / 18:24 Berlin time
B. Trustee/members-only section
- Nothing for this meeting
C. Board- and Membership Committee-only section
-
Capital investment (Stephan, Florian, 10 minutes)
- not making progress (Florian)
- second pair of eyes missing
- so, current plan doesn’t work out
- several options possible
- very low priority
- Would usually be a matter for a Board Committee (Simon)
- transactions infrequent enough to be handled at Board meetings - accepting recommendation of a committee
- this Board should not take this on
- defer to the new Board but recommend they appoint a Committee to be responsible
- next steps with Stephan’s proposal need execution (Eliane)
- Discussion of managing workloads and professionalising donor management (especially regarding info@ list)
- It’s common in other charities to have a member of staff whose job is all about managing donors and donations (Simon)
- not making progress (Florian)
-
Proposal: Ask Stephan to have LB-BW/BW-Bank transfer our funds (approx. 780k €) to our main Volksbank Pur Konto, and close the accounts at LB-BW/BW-Bank.
- Unanimous approval
-
Legal topics (all, 20 minutes)
- [REDACTED: 84 lines of legal discussion]
The next meeting will take place on Monday, June 15
The meeting ended at 17:50 UTC / 19:50 Berlin time.
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Session chair)
Mike Saunders (Keeper of the minutes)