BoD Meeting Minutes 2025-05-12

The Document Foundation - Board of Directors Meeting 2025-05-12

Date: Monday, May 12, 2025

Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa

Notes for the minutes: Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger

In the call:

  • Board - Simon, Mike, Sophie, Osvaldo, László, Paolo, Eliane
  • Board deputies -
  • Membership committee -
  • Membership committee substitutes - Andreas, Shinji
  • Team - Florian, Stephan, Italo, Michael W
  • Community -

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

    • any questions?
    • how about the two concrete proposals? (Michael Meeks)
      • change in the board needed some time (Florian)
      • probably something getting quite urgent
    • renew of licenses, any decision from the board? (Michael Meeks)
      • remember an interesting FOSDEM meeting (Florian)
      • six month license, isn’t it (Michael Meeks)
      • three or six, if I remember correctly (Florian)
  • Budget 2025: (Florian) - 15 minutes

    • one item discussed but never approved so far (Italo)
      • contracting to community in Indonesia and Germany
      • €2,000 per month equally split between the 2 companies
      • branding of LO
      • on the one side Albanian community
      • on the other hand, Indonesian community for visuals
      • given the size and quality shown
      • keep them twice a year
    • close to final draft (Florian)
      • difficult to find the time
      • refer to the one proposed during FOSDEM
    • support the proposal about the brand (Eliane)
      • difficult to understand brands TDF versus LibreOffice
      • will probably be a letter of agreement to sign (Italo)
      • €24,000 per year (€2,000 per month) (Florian)
      • propose email vote (Eliane)
    • one mission is develop LibreOffice and maintain it as free (Eliane)
      • development is not moving forward
      • need for improvement
      • expand developers employed directly by TDF
      • tenders will continue as usual
      • but first solve problems linked
      • put money in the budget for hiring a developer
      • community deserves and expects dev of LO
    • targeting on things to be done (Michael Meeks)
      • Mac store
    • continue this in private part with regard to sums (Florian)
      • Mac store makes sense
      • unlike work can be done by volunteers
    • tired to hear too many complaints about LibreOffice with regard to development (Eliane)
    • extracted from the procurement policy (Sophie)
      • add reserve of €10,000 if external non-affiliated expertise is needed
    • in house expertise (Paolo)
      • but good to have reserve for that

Public section ended at 16:25 / 18:25

B. Trustee/members-only section

  • Nothing for this meeting

C. Board- and Membership Committee-only section

  • Tax: (Florian) - 15 minutes

    • tax declarations
      • most pressing by end of May three tax declarations (Florian)
        • 2022 corporate/income
        • 2023 corporate/income and VAT
    • [REDACTED: 30 lines of sensitive legal details]
  • TM and licenses wrt CO and allotropia (Florian)

    • [REDACTED: 37 lines of sensitive legal details]
  • when can we approve the budget? (Eliane)

    • [illustrating the process] (Florian)
      • one or two days of work needed
      • maybe in the next board meeting we can have some more news on that (Eliane)
      • difficult to find accommodation in Berlin for the face-to-face meeting (Florian)
        • 22 June till 28 June
        • happy to have people to join
    • proposing June 9 (Eliane)
      • June 9 is holiday (Florian)
        • perhaps try another day of the week
    • agree on any day (Paolo)
      • no need to wait for weeks
      • Berlin meeting for everybody?
    • team present the whole week (Florian)
      • maybe two days of joint meetings
    • issues finding the venue (Mike)
      • keep searching…
      • will ask Matthias
    • asked Belval hotels (Paolo)
      • OK for 15
    • can’t participate in person but online (Eliane)
    • also packed this week, can participate online (Simon)
    • adding people will complicate the situation wrt hotel/venue (Florian)
    • can’t confirm this specific week because of projects starting (Paolo)
    • tried hard to somehow find a slot (Florian)
      • maybe October if that had to be postponed
    • Frankfurt? (Paolo)
    • looked into several locations (Florian)
      • €200 per night in several cities
    • lower prices in my area, Düsseldorf (Andreas)
    • Italo has several proposal on screen (Florian)
    • my offer for LUX stands (Paolo)
      • €110 per night, problem is June 24
      • no probs for the venue
  • Legal issues: (Florian) - 20 minutes

    • [REDACTED: 4 lines of sensitive legal details]

The next meeting will take place on June 10

The meeting ended at 17:22 UTC / 19:22 Berlin time.

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

1 Like

Merci Florian pour ce retour très intéressant.

Merci aux administrateurs pour leur implication et leur dynamisme.

Dominique Prieur
France

Thanks a lot for your message and your support!

I am glad we make progress with the budget, as it is a first step towards new and exciting things and is something positive. My hope is we can agree on an essentially final version in tomorrow’s board call (it will be Tuesday 1800 Berlin time, 1600 UTC, feel free to join!), so we can finally move forward.

Thanks again for your support, it is much appreciated! :slightly_smiling_face:

Merci beaucoup pour votre message et votre soutien !

Je suis heureux que nous progressions avec le budget, car c’est un premier pas vers des choses nouvelles et passionnantes, et c’est quelque chose de positif. J’espère que nous pourrons nous mettre d’accord sur une version essentiellement finale lors de la réunion du conseil de demain (ce sera mardi à 18 heures, heure de Berlin, 16 heures UTC, n’hésitez pas à vous joindre à nous), afin que nous puissions enfin aller de l’avant.

Merci encore pour votre soutien, il est très apprécié :slightly_smiling_face: .