Budget 2025 planning

So, did the current BoD increase the reserves to this amount? It’s not a round number. Can you elaborate a bit, or post a link (perhaps by editing the initial post)?

I don’t believe we necessarily have to plan to spend the entire sum in 2025. We could decide on some actions or activities which take several years, and would be funded from this sum, without relying on future income (that might go to the “regular” expenses + tenders as in previous years). I’m not saying that’s necessarily better, just that this is an option.

Hello Thorsten,

good to see the donation income growth & improving cash buffers! Is there space for community discussion, on the various budget items?

Yes, there certainly is. The next board call will be (due to the public holiday on Monday) on Tuesday, June 10, at 1800 Berlin time (1600 UTC). We plan to have a close-to-final budget after the call, ready to be sent to the accountant to work on the final version.

If so: the CRA preparation appears urgent, in part because right now, the standardization around it takes shape.

I’ve been talking to Paolo about this, who will likely drive this from the board’s side. I would assume the CRA budget proposal stays in as of today indeed. Happy to talk about it in the call next week if there’s further details, or in this thread, of course.

Beyond that: referencing ‘past issues’ as an explanation for the ongoing stasis begins to feel a bit odd, after almost 3/4th of the current board term is over.

What keeps the current board busy is the period from 2022 on, during which you were the chairperson of the board. I honestly don’t think it’s appropriate to criticize this board for their work on fixing past issues. What this board is dealing with goes back as late as to the very last days of the previous board, e.g. with an invoice that is literally dated to the very second day this board was in charge and forwarded by a former board member three days later.

Perhaps you and the remaining board could accept the help & offers for solutions that were extended?

You seem to suggest this board (and surprisingly me, who is not even a voting member, so you are pointing at the wrong person here) is refusing your proposals. That is not true, and for the details, I think it is much more sensible to discuss it in private conversation with the board, and not on a public mailing list.

Or avoid losing quite a number of motivated & capable directors along the way (who could have helped shouldering the work)?

From what I recall, one board member stepped down for very personal, non LibreOffice-realated reasons. I will not draw them into a narrative here. Another board member seems to have had reasons regarding the issues TDF is facing. I will not go into details of what was shared with me privately here.

Both points seem to fall entirely within the responsibility of the current board

I don’t think it is appropriate to point fingers at the current board. Blaming them does them very wrong. They cannot use use their board term for creating and shaping new and exciting things, because they have to deal with issues from the past, created not by them.

just as effectively planning around fixed dates of the year (annual report, taxes & audit) appears to be a responsibility of an executive director.

I am glad that this is the area that is repeatedly confirmed by everyone including auditors to be in excellent shape at TDF and without any problems, indeed. It’s also noteworthy that it was not the executive director who produced an invalid budget that didn’t even fulfil formal requirements, nor did he vote one only on the very last day of the spending year…

The free reserves, so to speak, are “budget-transparent”. As we don’t have to plan them in, they are not included in the budget. We only plan in what we have to spend. The free reserves are used as reserves indeed.

The original post that had “491,000.00 € emergency spending and reserves” is at [DECISION] - Approve 2023 annual budget and reserves

Yes, indeed. Technically, recurring costs, like salaries, infrastructure hosting, insurances, membership fees etc. can only be planned for one year. Projects can be built for a longer time, so at least new projects can also go beyond 2025.

If the previous board hadn’t left us so many problems to deal with, perhaps we’d be further on now.

A tiny bit of humbleness would be good.

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Hi @mikesaunders ,

Perhaps. None of the massive challenges the last board was facing, were created by it. All of it were due to actions from years before. Still, I don’t recall anyone from that term constantly blaming previous boards for our travails.

And it’s not that some current board members where not intimately aware of what challenges they were facing, even ahead of the election. Still, promises were made - but not a single one of them has been achieved yet. So when you talk about humbleness, and what serving in a leadership role means after making such promises - perhaps some self-reflection is in order? :wink:

Cheers, Thorsten

Hi @thb ,

It is truly outrageous to see you publicly pointing fingers at the current Board, when the majority of the problems we are now dealing with are a direct consequence of the disastrous decisions of the past boards you were a part of.

During the time you were chair, the board not only ignored fundamental legal advice, but also insisted on running a non-profit foundation at your own discretion. — completely disregarding the legal obligations imposed by German law.

The result was the paralysis of tender processes for LibreOffice development and the triggering of a serious institutional crisis that compromised the stability and credibility of The Document Foundation.

To now speak of “stagnation” or suggest that “offers of help were declined” is not only dishonest — it is a cynical attempt to rewrite history and wash your hands of the chaos you yourself caused.

This all is an embarrassment to the LibreOffice community that, twice, placed its trust in you through democratic vote. And beyond that, what happened at TDF is a disservice to the Free and Open Source Software movement, which should be grounded in responsibility, ethics, and transparency — values clearly absent during the past boards term.

The current Board is not failing, my dear. This Board is working hard, seriously and lawfully, to correct the mistakes you left behind. If there is delay or overload, it is because we are rebuilding from the wreckage of an incompetent, authoritarian, and unlawful period of time.

The current Board deserves respect.

Enough is enough!

Best,


Eliane Domingos, Chair of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Winterfeldtstraße 52, 10781 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: Imprint | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

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Talk is cheap, @elianedomingos - which one of your many promises have you kept?

Cheers, Thorsten

Hi Thorsten,

I’m pleased to see that the new owner of allotropia acted swiftly on some of the issues you created and that you could have fixed a long time ago.

True that many other issues could have been solved 3 years ago but now that you are not in a decision making position on these matters I’m confident that we’ll be able to finally make progress quite quickly.

oops. indeed … https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-allotropia-merge/

(less and less potential tenders :expressionless: )

I think this thread makes it very obvious where the issues are and why
solving them takes so long, despite an enormous effort from the current
board and more than 100.000 € in legal fees during the last years which
could have been much better used for our software and community.

To me it feels this board is hindered from doing the good things they
intended, by having to deal with massive problems from the past. While
some of them might have been known before the elections, just recently,
during its current term, this board discovered many more issues from the
2022-2024 period, one dating back to the second
day in office. Several issues were created during this 2022-2024 period,
and not only years before. We‘ve yet to see what other things happened
this board is not yet aware of, amongst other items because Paolo and
Emiliano have been wrongfully excluded from discussions and also the
executive director has been informed of some things just after the fact.

One of the great achievements of this board is the publication of many
minutes and decisions from the past, which were wrongfully not published
before. They should help everyone to understand the situation even
better.

I don’t know what the reason for this discussion is. However, I can
assure everyone that all here at TDF are working hard to fix the
problems from the past and provide a welcoming, warm, inviting
environment for all contributors, be they volunteer or corporate. Board,
team and membership committee go above and beyond, and mails as we see
here will not demotivate, distract or scare them in doing the right
thing for TDF.

So let me thank everyone for all your work, dedication and enthusiasm,
and I am sorry if you experience undue attacks and blame. As there is no
actual argument made, I will focus on the budget and the annual report
now.

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When I have stepped down from the BoD, I have also decided to refrain from expressing my thoughts about BoD activities (otherwise, I shouldn’t have stepped down, if I had time and energies to express my thoughts). I have started to read this thread because I am interested in the budget, because there are items related to marketing and community where I am involved either because I am handling the expense on behalf of the BoD (like the visual agencies, or the organization of the events) or because I have an oversight function (as in the case of marketing and community budgets).

I didn’t expect the discussion to re-start the finger pointing exercise we have seen for the last N years (I refuse to write a number, as to me, it seems forever). Every person who has been involved in the BoD, or in other formal or informal bodies such as the MC, the team and the ESC, since the project’s foundation, has done good and bad things - i.e. taken good and bad decisions - as every other human being in the planet (and possibly in the universe).

During these N years, everyone has been accused of doing or having done bad things. While this is true, as we have all done bad things (either in the form of bad decisions or in the form of bad communication), no one likes to be accused in public especially when the accusation is not related to the discussion as in the case of this thread about the budget.

So, please remember that we have all been treated unfairly, which means that if we are looking for some kind of revenge we can probably continue with the finger pointing strategy for another N years, without getting anywhere.

Can we get back to a civilized discussion about the budget, focusing on the opportunity represented by the budget in terms of growth? I am sure that there are different opinions worth being heard, as they can contribute to put together a more adequate budget for the project. Collective intelligence has the potential to improve any discussion, but also to destroy any project if not managed properly.

Please choose the first option, and forget the second one.

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The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is already on the table, together with the Software Bill of Material (SBOM), thanks to Paolo.

Sophie

My understanding is that Andras is doing a chunk of work[1] on SBOM for
Collabora, currently and is wrestling nobly with the quite considerable
swathe of detail there :slight_smile: It would probably be helpful to have some
feedback from Cloph too perhaps on how best to integrate that.

HTH,

	Michael.

[1] - https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/183178

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.

Hello Eyal,

thanks for your feedback regarding the budget! Let me reply only to a few points for now, I might add more at a later time.

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.

The tendering situation just got more complicated given the recent announcement from the ecosystem. There is likely now one bidder less, which - based on past experience - leaves then only one bidder for the vast majority of LibreOffice-related tenders, when we actually need more bidders, not less. That will be an additional challenge now.

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.

That was a huge problem in the past at least. Those TDF employees who had to deal with tenders had to discuss with the companies, whose owners happened to be their direct managers at TDF, to whom they had to report - it’s obvious how problematic that is. The situation is different now maybe, but having such situation again needs to be prevented effectively for the future. Having a professional solves that in parts, but it needs more.

Florian

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.