I’m going to make a few concrete suggestions for funded projects before commenting further on @floeff 's post and the discussion here, because I find them important and funding-worthy:
1. A software tendering organizational support specialist
Our tendering is currently frozen; but - let’s ignore that for a moment and go back either 3 years or foward by a few months (?), when tendering is an active thing.
It is very problematic process on both “sides”: Before and after a tender is awarded.
- Users, and developers, need support and guidance in fashioning rough ideas into a reasonable, executable, trackable, mostly-self-contained, tender proposal.
- Bridging is necessary between developers, managers, and users regarding definitions of scope, estimation of necessary time, identifying relevant collaborators within the community, etc.
- This is more of a guess, but - I am wondering whether we are realistically soliciting any tender bids from outside our community, for anything. This may need some level of “pushing” to increase visibility to potential software houses; and also some experience in fashioning tenders which different kinds of entites and companies than the ones we get so far, might consider trying for.
- An “outside” tender bidder, on a tender requiring significant knowledge of project code, would require some “hand-holding”, separately from the technical supervision; and TDF staff, I am sure, are already quite occupied with their work to spend a lot of time on this kind of task.
- Is the BoD good enough in negotiating tender terms? Maybe so, maybe no. But BoD’s change. The TDF director would have some experience here, but - only within the TDF, not elsewhere in the software industry. An experienced professional might be of service in this respect.
- Investigating and drawing conclusions and lessons from tender processes is another important activity which either doesn’t happen much in the TDF, or happens but only verbally and in some BoD members’ minds and memory, or is being kept secret from the trustees like so many other things. A tendering support specialist might produce “tender reports”, hold video sessions or panel discussions at trustee-only conference events or online, regarding completed, abandoned or ongoing tenders.
since hiring someone like that would take some time, and them getting to know the TDF (organizationally and technically) would also take time; and since many of the activities described are relevant even before new tenders are in the pipeline - this is relevant even in our current state of affairs, IMNSHO.
2. A training curriculum: LibreOffice development for C++ developers
LibreOffice, as a software project, is:
- a (n almost completely) monolithic repository of code;
- huge, one of the largest FOSS repositories;
- old - with some code over 25 or maybe even 30 yro;
- not well-documented, or at least, not uniformly well-documented;
- (AFAICT) unevenly maintained and kept up-to-date, code-wise;
- artificially bound to various conventions supporting an extension API which has been static for over a decade;
- … and thus, unable to extensively, deeply, fully adopt modern C++ idioms, conventions and practices (speculating here a bit I suppose)
- a dependency ‘sink’, except for a very limited number of organizations (which is now down by one); so, very few outside coders pushing for internal structural changes (as opposed to user-visible features/beavior)
- has a bespoke and complicated build mechanism
and all of this makes it both difficult and, let’s be honest, rather undesriable to get into, from a developer’s perspective.
We need a massive offset to this situation. A path for individual developerts and groups or software-houses to be able to get into the thick of it without wondering around in the dark a lot, without depending on guidance for a very long time as they begin their journey, with excellent information to guide them - overviews, deep-dives, tutorials, solved exercises; as text, diagrams and videos - in additional to the mentoring which @hossein , @ilmari and others are providing today.
There is, of course, a chicken-and-egg problem: The people who would be able to put such a curriculum and set of materials together are the people who are working on LibreOffice today, more-or-less full time, mostyl at the TDF and at Collabora/Allotropia. They will not drop everything to work on this for the amount of time it takes.
So, this project would need some “bootstrapping” through the hiring of developers who would undergo extensive training, while they, and their trainers, who would need to divert some of their time for this purpose, would
3. A training curriculum for user groups
(writing this now, this post will get edited soon…)
4. A written and oral/video treatment of our legal environment
Over the past several years, affairs within the TDF has been rather stormy, with multiple allegations of misconduct, breach of the statutes, arguments regarding legitimacy of procedures, potential conflicts of interest, obligations of institutions, trustee rights, legitimacy of uses of funds and so on.
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.
Also, some within the TDF believe - a belief that I do not share - that the foundation is in some danger, and may have to face potential sanctions from the German authorities. Increasing our literacy in relevant law would certainly help face such challenges.
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.
So, what am I suggesting in practice:
- 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,
- … to be written at least in English, preferably also with a translation into Castellano and maybe another popular language,
- … covering levels of legal norms from the highest (German constitution, EU-level norms), to the lowest (local case law), and in-between - the Foundations Law, binding precedents or jurisprudence constante of note (since after all [Germany’s is not a common-law system](Continental legal system), well-regard legal opinions etc.
- … covering related law where foundations-specific law is lacking, e.g. other NGOs, law regarding conduct of state institutions amongst themselves or vis-a-vis individuals, applicable parts of civil and criminal procedure etc.
- … with real or made-up concrete legal scenarios.
as well as:
- 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.
This could, in theory, be a joint project with other foundations or NGOs close to what we do (maybe FSF Europe? KDE e.V.?) , and/or a German or multi-lingual / internationally-minded academic institution.