I’m not happythat decisions on this scale are made with 6 days’ notice since the RFC about them. I’ll also note that the Florian’s summary suggests that my suggestions did not even come up (?)
But - I’ll try to hang on to the last italicized sentence and pretend nothing is decided in any way.
So, in the mean time, let me comment on the “projects from the past” and “new projects” which Florian listed.
0. Developer hirings; “Developer for” UI, MacOS, Python, Base, Online, Mobile
Moved this up. We were talking about disbursing a pile of money, not a long-term budgetary commitment - right? So, how do these suggestions fit with that principle? Are you planning on hiring people for a pre-determined amount of time, or in permanent positions?
Anyway, I am against taking such a decision without a longer discussion - involving trustees and developers - about such potential positions. Bake it before you serve it up.
If it’s fixed-term employment, then - I think perhaps a very concrete possibility is hiring someone to work on tabbed UI and the other UI modes, perhaps even resulting in a more generally-usable customizable-ribbon-like UI library. But of course, this too is a half-baked idea.
I’ll also mention I have no idea why we need a “Python developer”. Is that a developer for improving Python support for writing macros/extensions? Or a developer to work on LO code that’s in Python?
1. The P2P LibreOffice project
Simon’s idea got a blog post and also a positive discussion thread here on discourse and also ). Is this the item named “Research and development of collaborative editing features based on open standards”? That’s really underselling it. This is a great idea and a chance to 1-up other office suite providers.
2. MC request: Improvements on the Membership Committee tooling; MC request: TDF welcome kit for the members
I’d probably support this, but - why haven’t we seen the request anywhere? If this has been sent to the BoD only and not disclosed to us, this is yet another violation of the statutory obligation to conduct TDF affairs transparently.
3. 2-4% budget to FLOSS software as devprojects or support
2-4% out of what? The regular expenses? The annual budget? The amount of money we have left?
Anyway, if this is considered, I expect the choice of projects, and the writing of rules for making the choice, not to be carried out by the BoD, as it has proven itself incapable of managing such duties fairly and without strong bias.
4. Update & translate LibreLogo manual, complete LibreLogo unit tests
I remember this is a plugin that Laszlo wrote, right? But - I don’t see why TDF funds should be spent on this.
5. [MC] Carbon compensation; Hardware for members; LibreTranslate Improvement; Integrating Hetzner cloud to Jenkins; JA community; five tenders plus costs for external experts; two legal items; two HR items; LibreOffice Roadshow
What do these mean?
6. 10% project budget for members
You mean, 10% of the sum gets decided not by the BoD, but by a decision of the trustees in general? I’m in favor. The thing is, it’s not a project, it’s a meta-suggestion. Also, I’d increase it to a lot more of the sum we have now.
7. BugZilla release funding
Generally support this, but - I would like to see the report on how our previous tranche of funding was put to use. Did we get any reporting about the use of our funds?
8. [MC] Training on the reform of foundation law changes incl. BoD
I believe this is subsubmed by my wider suggestion regarding making information available and accessible about our German legal environment.
I will say that it should not be assumed that this needs to happen in-person-only.
9. trademark filings
Asking informatively: Why would it be useful for us to file for trademarks? And if it would, why have we not done so yet?
10. In-person strategy workshop 2024-2026
For whom? And what kind of strategy? Anyway, given the state of affairs at the TDF I’m not sure this would work out so well.
11. Outreachy
What about it? Do we pay “per capita” there somehow?
12. Graphic design work for great visuals for website, socials, blog posts and marketing
We just funded that…
13. Bug Bounty Program
Is this realistic? That is, is there a significant number people who know LO well enough to pursue these bounties, but can’t be bothered to do LO work without the monetary incentive?
14. Aptos font replacement
Have we really even put Carlito and Caladea to use in LibreOffice at all? I mean, I’d like a metrically-compatible font, but I can’t say in fairness that it’s not just throwing money away. Moreover, we can just make non-free fonts available anyway, legally. This has been discussed as bug 159950.
15. SBOM
I vaguely remember a talk about this, but I’m not sure if it was in an LOCon or else. Anyway, why would this cost us any significant amount of money? Is this different than, basically, the list of our build dependencies?
16. Extensions for local/remote access of Open Source LLMs/SLMs
I’m not convinced we should be encouraging this stuff in the first place.
17. LATAM Conference, LibreOffice Asia Conference
You mean, funding a conference which would otherwise not happen? Or contributing funding to a conference that would happen anyway?
At any rate, I always feel that it’s not quite fair that the annual conference is always in Europe. I realize I might not be able to attend an annual LibOCon in LATAM, and funding for people to travel there from EMEA is not very realistic, but still. Let’s say
18. TDF hosted open source LLM
I don’t think so.