Budget 2025 planning

Hello Eyal,

some further thoughts. All are my personal thoughts, not the board’s.

  1. A software tendering organizational support specialist

In the past, the majority of tenders came from the ESC. I don’t know if user-proposed tenders were routed through the ESC, but in any case, the process was not really massively communicated to the public. On the other hand, we sometimes had “wish for a pony”, quite unspecified, without a rough budget estimate. Fair enough, it is not trivial (and might cost money actually) to make such an estimate, and it depends in which country we are contracting, but for budgeting, we need at least a ballpark number. Whether a tender costs 20.000 € or 50.000 € does make a difference obviously.

The development of the tender texts was much more public in the end than in the beginning, which is a tradition we should continue.

Having bidders out of the community is a challenge. For nearly all LibreOffice-related tenders we had two bidders, and one of them won if the tender was awarded. We published tenders externally, but the bidder base seems small. While it was already problematic in the past, having only one potential bidder makes tendering actually pointless currently, so growing the bidder base is a key element to restart tendering.

The idea with the “hand-holding” is something we have added to the last tenders in 2021/2022. I am not aware this offer was used a lot. We have some resources for it, but obviously not if the plan is (as it was in the 2023 budget) to have a tender every one and a half weeks. That doesn’t scale at all. Also, of course the team needs to have some experience in the specific tender field to help out.

or is being kept secret from the trustees like so many other things

If you find it, please share it with me, because I would like to have it as well. :wink:

Seriously: No, there was not much documented from what I recall, for a variety of reasons. I am not aware of anything (beyond contractual details for obvious reasons) that exists and has not been shared with the trustees. Given I really would have needed more supporters and volunteers back then, I would have published what I have, to enable more people to support.

Florian

Hello Eyal,

also here, all thoughts are my personal ones, they are not an official board reply.

Also, organs within the TDF have consulted law firms many times, about many matters; with many of these consultations - so it seems - resulting from weakness in the individual and collective perception of applicable and binding law.

I would say that the understanding how to deal with legal advice (and in result, what to ask and when, if and how to follow it etc.) differs.

Finally, there is an inherent bias in favor of German-speaking trustees and employees with respect to access to German legal knowledge - and few trustees outside Germans, Austrians and perhaps some Dutch and French are able to read and speak German. And - German law is all in German… so, I would say we non-Germans should be made better informed of such matters.

Here I’d distinguish between two things. In most, if not any country, where you can setup an entity, there is one (or several) primary languages used. I doubt you can file your taxes in the UK in a binding French-only version, or in the US create a company in a binding Italian-only version and so on.

Getting advice is a bit more flexible, but usually you are also limited to e.g. German and English. Law firms which give you binding answers in a multiple of languages are rare and expensive, and also they often rely on translation tools.

We work a lot with translations, mostly with DeepL and some manual review, and translate legal statements, but also documents like tax declarations, or the budget. The budget actually I prepare in English and German in parallel, to finalize the binding German finding. It is quite some remarkable amount of work that goes into this.

I would argue we do whatever we can to make people participate and include anyone, but a translation in dozens of languages like the European Union is doing would not scale, also because we need people to review.

Additionally, for board, MC and team we offer paid DeepL accounts if there is a need, so everyone can translate the documents in their native language if they want. We can do the same for people who speak several languages and will provide translations for local communities.

A hefty written documents, targeting people with at least some relevant legal/organizational background from other legal systems and countries, i.e. not complete “newbies” who have never read legal documents anywhere,

I prepared some summary of the situation. I will see what can be re-used and in which venue (in public is a bit more tough that amongst members). When it comes to current matters and very up to date developments, the problem is that some current members are involved in the situation, so we might be limited what can be shared.

A sequence of lectures, each focusing on some aspect of the “life” of an organization such as the TDF, each discussing binding and applicable law and some of its implications.

I have a variety of articles and presentations around this published on my personal website. Some are in German only (DeepL should do the job), but they could serve as a start if you want my point of view.

There’s some more that could be done - I’ll think about what is reasonably achievable (in the current, busy circumstances).

Florian

If if has been the case that we had a maximum of two bidders for tenders, it was a broken process to begin with. It could not have been effectively competitive, there was too much potential for collusion, even without the presence of employees, owners and officers of the companies within TDF institutions.

And if that’s the case, then that proposal of mine is only relevant if we believe we have any realistic expectation of getting other bidders.

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HI y’all,

That is not true. For as far as I remember, even during the first tenders TDF ran, all TDF staff reported to @floeff - not to any individual directors, or even the entire board. That firewalling was setup IIRC during the 2nd board term of TDF, and resulted in shielded, private places for the team (mailing list, matrix channel etc) that the board (nor anybody else) never had access to. Annual reviews & compensation discussions were also handled by @floeff - to prevent that from being used as a lever.

Hello,

If if has been the case that we had a maximum of two bidders for tenders, it was a broken process to begin with. It could not have been effectively competitive, there was too much potential for collusion, even without the presence of employees, owners and officers of the companies within TDF institutions.

You are getting to the ground of the problems. We had about 800.000 € in tenders planned for one year (about half existing projects from the past, about half newly built). Statistically, we had about one tender every one and a half weeks and not even the staff to deal with such a huge amount.

Only very rarely we had bids that were not from the two companies represented in the board at that time. You even see this in some of the votes published here around 2021/2022, subject is like „award tender XYZ to ABC“. Probably between 5% and 10% of bids maybe, from what I remember, were from others. As such, if a tender was awarded, most of the time it was awarded to one of those companies.

The companies had a partnership agreement on some matters, and from some time on, it was disclosed there was some financing of development too, the exact wording is in the board minutes, I don’t recall it from the top of my head.

And in addition, at least some of those later tender contracts provided by the companies were problematic as well.

And if that’s the case, then that proposal of mine is only relevant if we believe we have any realistic expectation of getting other bidders.

Right now, the amount of potential bidders has just become smaller, not larger, so I am not overly optimistic at this time… this is clearly something to work on.

That is not true. For as far as I remember, even during the first tenders TDF ran, all TDF staff reported to @floeff - not to any individual directors, or even the entire board. That firewalling was setup IIRC during the 2nd board term of TDF, and resulted in shielded, private places for the team (mailing list, matrix channel etc) that the board (nor anybody else) never had access to. Annual reviews & compensation discussions were also handled by @floeff - to prevent that from being used as a lever.

Staff matters were also discussed with me in „one on one calls“, staffed by the conflicted directors.

It shields the team if things get routed through me. It doesn’t shield me, and in particular, it doesn’t shield the process at all.

Of course more bidders is better. According to Winheller, it is not per see an issue if there is one bidder when tenders are public.

Of course more bidders is better. According to Winheller, it is not per
see an issue if there is one bidder when tenders are public.

It is quite pointless to work on a tendering policy and spend lots of
work and time to write and assess tenders, when the realistic
expectation is that there is always only one bidder, and as such only
one winner, and therefore zero comparison with other offers.

It adds quite some costs and administrative burden, probably on either
side, for essentially no advantage in return.

Hi @floeff ,

whether the process needed improvements is beside my point (in fact, the legal analysis concluded it did need extra shielding, which the new policies included) - but I would appreciate it if you would refrain from exaggerations or outright falsehoods in a discussion such as this one. For the tenders that I participated in, it was AFAIK always either a group of independent volunteer experts, or staff members and not you, who did the technical and commercial evaluations.

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Hi @floeff ,

Perhaps. Then again in 2022 when we started this, the landscape was a different one (there were even TDF project goals to expand the ecosystem). Sadly of course, since more than 3 years not a single tender in that area was issued, so it’s not a surprise there’s now no thriving ecosystem of companies for TDF tenders.

In my personal opinion, the current (still draft?) tender policy is also fundamentally un-workable. I would not bid for any tender under that policy, and would strongly advise in particular single entrepeneurs / small companies to very carefully assess whether it’s worth the risk. Effectively, TDF has managed to sterilize that market.

Yeah I guess, see above. Then again, with the current setup (board & ecosystem), is there a reason not to treat development work similarly to other areas (design stuff and BZ comes to mind), and go with a lightweight process now?

Best, Thorsten

I don’t think it’s feasible that TDF could now just directly award contracts to the unique company left in the ecosystem, in the current problematic situation. We need higher standards and more competition, not less.

A quick summary of what was discussed yesterday:

We’ll factor in individual event requests, like LibreOffice Roadshow or LATAM conference, into the marketing and community budgets. They will contain 30.000,00 € respectively 25.000,00 €.

Pre-2025 projects that will be kept:

  • MC request: Improvements on the Membership Committee tooling (10.908,54 €)
  • 2-4% budget to FLOSS software as devprojects or support (lowered to 5.000,00 €)
  • BZ release funding (5.967,77 €)
  • [REDACTED] trademark filing (5.000,00 €)
  • LibreTranslate Improvement of localizations and translations for worldwide involvement of volunteers (5.000 €)
  • Outreachy (35.000 €)
  • Graphic design work for great visuals for website, socials, blog posts and marketing (25.000 €, recently confirmed again on board-discuss)
  • LibreOffice SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) – CRA conformance (price TBD)

Pre-2025 projects that will be dissolved:

  • MC request: TDF welcome kit for the members → open for many years, unlikely to happen in 2025
  • Update & translate LibreLogo manual, complete LibreLogo unit tests → open for many years, unlikely to happen in 2025
  • [MC] Carbon compensation → open for many years, unlikely to happen in 2025
  • 10% project budget for members → if there is a need we will fund it individually, but hard to come up with a concrete demand and therefore sum for worldwide shipping, customs etc.
  • Hardware for members → if there is a need we will fund it individually, but hard to come up with a concrete demand and therefore sum for worldwide shipping, customs etc.
  • [MC] Training on the reform of foundation law changes incl. BoD → important, but unlikely we have a chance to find a suitable slot in 2025 that is not during LibOCon
  • Research and development of collaborative editing features based on open standards
  • In-person strategy workshop 2024-2026 → important, but unlikely we have a chance to find a suitable slot in 2025 that is not during LibOCon
  • Legal consultations → overspent, so will be dissolved and we spent as needed, hard to forecast
  • Integrating Hetzner cloud to Jenkins
  • Bug Bounty Program → unlikely to happen in 2025
  • Aptos font replacement → unlikely to happen in 2025

New projects proposed for 2025 and beyond:

  • [REDACTED: trademark registration] (1.149,54 €)
  • Claim on [REDACTED: third-party domain name] (6.009,50 €)
  • Developer for User Interface and macOS
  • Developer for Python
  • Developer for Online and Mobile
  • Developer for Base

In particular given the new ecosystem situation and the feedback received, currently there are no tenders in the budget.

Above is the status of the discussion and close to final, but not finally approved yet.

Related to the budget, but not changing it: the Certification Committee could use the Membership Committee tool to manage certification renewals, new certifications, and certification expirations. I think we could just install a second instance, and use it without modifications, as the task is simpler, and the tool would help in keeping track of renewals in a straightforward way (today they are manually managed with a Calc spreadsheet, and although we have made the process easier by grouping renewals it is still a nightmare).

Hi Italo,

I looked at Professional Support | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft and find only a realatively small number of people which are listed as certified members there.
Are this all certified members or are some of those not listed on that website?

Regards,
Andreas

Cor, don’t be ridiculous. One bidder means that there is no tender. It means a wholly different process, vis-a-vis the public and the trustees; and other regulation, legal precedent and possibly legislation applying. And, arguably, there can’t really be tendering with just two potential bidders.

(That does not mean the TDF could not have contracts for doing development work with Collabora.)

Given the clarification, you should probably drop the phrase saying that company owners were the direct managers of TDF employees other than yourself, as that statement is quite a serious accusation.

There were several voices requesting a Mac developer as well, including me.

Given the clarification, you should probably drop the phrase saying that company owners were the direct managers of TDF employees other than yourself, as that statement is quite a serious accusation.

The rules of procedure listed also company owners as responsible for staff oversight. Staff matters were discussed with them, often before they were discussed with the full board. That makes them explicitly responsible for staff, in comparison to other board members who did not held that oversight role.

There were several voices requesting a Mac developer as well, including me.

That‘s the line item with user interface and macOS. It is based on the recommendation Patrick Luby gave us: ‚Fortunately, I don’t think finding a “macOS expert” is what you need.‘

We can rephrase it, of course.

Thanks, that would help as I read that as a UI developer.