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.
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. 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.
18. TDF hosted open source LLM
I don’t think so.
Some topics are excellent for a workshop…
To clarify, it is a UI developer, it’s just that the macOS stuff, as confirmed by Patrick, is usually about UI and thus should be included in the role.
Yes, we got reporting about it and I kept track of the code commits while they happened. You have personally received a report about this yesterday. To quote from that with some links for clarity: “Everything on that list except for the 5.1/5.3 → harmony migration has been done over the last two years or so, and at this point, this PR is handling the bulk of that migration code, which means as soon as this lands, we’re racing towards the finish line.”
The “what” is about funding it. The “how” is by planning for four interns. The final sum might be lower in case we can’t find enough capable interns.
This is about security issues. We already ran a program like this with external funding in 2022.
I think this is something @marinello can answer, whether it’s feasible or not. Might be it’s too much overhead, but I don’t know enough details to judge this.
A while ago, the team began to collect all tenders TDF did in the past. Based on this spreadsheet, in the period from 2020 to 2022, a total of 11 tenders are listed, amongst them one not LibreOffice-related. Out of the ten remaining tenders, there is only one where a company not represented in the board bid. Net sum listed is 293.347,70 €, so TDF cost then likely is 19% more, 349.083,763 €.
From 2014 to 2019, there were 19 tenders. Three of them were not LibreOffice-related (but not awarded per the spreadsheet either). From the remaining 16 tenders, one seems an unawarded one we tried again, 5 had bidders that were not from companies with members in the board. One of these 5 tenders was awarded with a bigger share to a company represented in the board, with a smaller share to another company. Another one was awarded not to the third-party bidder, but to one of the companies with members in the board. The total net sum listed for all the 2014-2019 tenders is 289.916,00 €, so TDF cost then likely is 19% higher and equals to 345.000,04 €.
I’ve changed the macOS developer line item now to “Developer for macOS with a focus on User Interface” to make it more clear hopefully.
Mine was just an idea based on what I know of the Membership Committee tool. Of course, if any adaptation is needed, we will continue with the manual tool.
I’ve replied to some of your proposals, and for #4, as written, I will look into providing some more details. For the other proposals, at this time of the year and stage of the budget, it is tough to add something that neither has someone who drives it, nor a concrete budget sum. We urgently need to finalize the budget now.
Several months ago, I think @italovignoli reached out the various projects asking for budget proposals, it’s not that everything happened in just 6 days. That would be ambitious.
If there is a great, actionable idea that comes up after the budget is done, we can always look into it and make it happen, but I would not propose to further delay the budget, otherwise we’ll never finish it.
That depends on how the project is structured and how the candidates apply. Some tasks fit short-term, project-based roles, other fit long-term roles. The developer hiring is in discussion and not finalized, so can’t make a binding answer to that. However, I understand our goal is to retain competence in house, which advocates a bit against too short-term commitments.
See the PDF in this thread.
That’s the proposal for a tax office-compatible description if the item, yes.
That project has been ongoing work for a longer time, probably even predates your membership at TDF: Tender to implement the new TDF Membership Committee’s web-based tooling (#202105-01) - The Document Foundation Blog
The budget we spend, although the description is by now a bit outdated maybe.
Will you send a candidacy for coordinating this and let the members vote on it? Information on experience in German tax regulations as well as the insurance coverage sum would be helpful too.
We remove this item indeed.
- Carbon compensation is just that, we compensate for our travels and running infrastructure.
- Hardware for members is hardware members can use, e.g. for QA and development. In the past we bought e.g. HiDPI screens for people working on 4K elements.
- On LibreTranslate, @sophi can give some details.
- We run our hardware on Hetzner cloud, and as I understand, the plan was to connect our Jenkins instance to their cloud API to monitor, create and remove machines on the fly.
- The Japanese community sent budget requests, which we’ve merged into the community and marketing budgets.
- Five tenders were proposed (I think by @htietze or @x1sc0) and we considered those, but withdrew them, so did we withdrew the cost for external experts to independently assess these tenders.
- Two legal items are things that cannot be disclosed yet. One is about a domain name, another one about registering one trademark.
- Two HR items are items concerning freelancers or employees.
- For the LibreOffice roadshow, I think @elianedomingos can give some detials.
Well, it’s mid-June, the year is halfway over, we’ve seen not many proposals yet, so increasing it does not make much sense, because it’s unlikely we will actually spend the money in 2025.
Remotely is even more demanding due to the timezones, but even organizing a virtual meeting for like 20-30 people is nearly impossible at the moment.
We actually do have trademarks in the foundation assets, but over the course of time, new ideas and therefore ideas for registering trademarks come to mind.
Was intended for board, MC and team, and it’s removed from the budget, as indeed hard to conduct right now.
That’s why it is in the budget actually.
@italovignoli proposed this. I proposed to remove it for now, because I think it’s unlikely to happen in 2025.
We don’t have enough insight on it, so we might need an external consultancy on it if we are to implement it.
That’s why it has been removed from the budget.
These are conferences organized by our community, so they are less likely to happen if we don’t fund them. It’s not a third-party conference that happens anyways.
Neither does the board, this is why the budget item was removed.
I’ve shared the updated budget draft with the accountant to have a look as well. We can always add further changes, but this way we can work a bit in parallel (and spot possible errors early on).
Thank you for your comment.
LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025 is scheduled for December in Tokyo.
Our local team is currently consulting with potential venues, and we’ll likely be able to hold the conference on December 13–14. We expect to have a definite answer by early July. Since we are planning to use a company’s seminar room free of charge, the dates may change if they have other scheduling needs.
I basically requested two rooms. One will be used for the Gnome Asia Summit.
I am about to start preparing for the CFP call. As soon as the venue is decided, we will start the CFP call.
As for the budget, the actual expenses are expected to vary. In particular, since most of the cost will be for travel, it will depend on how many speaker slots we have and where the speakers are coming from.
The purpose is to add LibreTranslate to Weblate, this is something requested for a long time by some translators:
For references:
- as a first step we will use their API (with a request to get more translations per minute)
- then we will have to prepare our files
- then we will have to train our own models
Any help with this process is welcome!
like when ?
in what form ?
→ Issues - Native Language - The Document Foundation Redmine
to wiki.documentfoundation.org wouldn’t hurt as well
I agree that it would be of great help also for the wiki, provided there is still a review of the translation.
As for when it was requested, see the issue you pointed and Olivier opened. At that time we didn’t want to use Google, but now that LibreTranslate is there and seems functional, we should give it a try.
Either on preparing the files or train our own models. Would you be interested to participate?
What I see from the 2022-10-17 Board minutes:
Indeed, it is quite sad that it is apparently to be buried.
At the time it was considered important to get members of TDF more involved.
A missed opportunity so far.