Hi there,
I would like to run as candidate for the Board of Directors.
My name is Gabriel Masei and I’m a senior C/C++ developer at 1&1 company,
Mail & Media department, Free Products team, Bucharest - Romania. My main
task is to integrate Collabora Online / LibreOffice Online into our Online Office
products which I’m successfully doing for more than three years. Three years ago
we integrated LibreOffice Online (LOOL) into our Online Office products and later,
a year ago, we migrated to Collabora Online. As far as I know we were/are the
biggest deployer of LOOL/COOL with hundreds of instances in production deployed
through Kubernetes and tens of thousands of documents edited on a daily basis.
During the time of working on this project I contributed, and I’m still contributing,
as developer to COOL/LOOL/LibreOffice Core with focus on Online projects,
although the volume of contribution is by far not so consistent as I would like
because I need to split my work time between my company and community.
Currently I’m contributing to LibreOffice community as a developer, as a TDF
member and as a member of Engineering Steering Committee (ESC).
While reading about some of the current members of TDF I feel somehow
overwhelmed when I learn about their FLOSS experience which, in many cases,
is practically a lifetime experience. This is not the case on my side. I’m relatively
new to FLOSS (for more than 3 years), and, so far, my only experience with FLOSS
is through LibreOffice/Linux. With more than 17 years of experience as developer
of which about 14 years as developer at different companies focused mainly on
Windows platform I was pleasant surprised when I came in contact with FLOSS
and Linux platform and my interest in it grew in time. As an argument for this
I confess that I replaced Microsoft Office on my personal computer with LibreOffice 
and I’m more than satisfied. Although I’m still using Windows on it, for historical
reasons, on my office computer I’m using Linux platform (Ubuntu) and , again,
I’m more than satisfied.
Since 2018 I attended all the LibreOffice conferences where I met a lot of welcoming,
passionate, highly skilled and open-minded people with whom is a pleasure to work and
cooperate and I’m looking forward to continue to expand this experience. Wherever I go
I share this experience and encourage people to get involved into FLOSS, something I
wouldn’t have imagined a few years ago. Also, I’m doing this inside my company by
trying to lobby to the deciders to get more involved into the TDF at as many levels as
possible including development, promotion and donations. In my home country, Romania,
the community is almost non-existent and this also could be a direction of improvement.
My FLOSS experience as developer combined with what I’ve learned about other’s
experience encouraged me to get more involved into FLOSS and one of the ways to do
that is to understand how it works at organizational level and get involved in other ways
than just as developer, and, since my only experience is with LibreOffice, I decided
to stand for TDF BoD as a way to achieve that. I count on your support!
Full Name: Gabriel Masei
Email: gabriel.masei@1and1.ro
Corporate affiliation: 1&1
(Less than) 75 words candidacy statement:
“With 17+ years of experience in software engineering and as a relative newcomer to FLOSS
I’m eager to get more involved in it. One of the ways to do that is by getting involved in TDF
and helping at decision level. By supporting my candidacy you’ll support my efforts of contribution
to and promotion of the principles and goals of the TDF as stated in its Statutes. I count on your support!”
Thank you,
Gabriel Masei
Senior C/C++ Developer, Free Products Development Romania
Phone: +40 31 223 90 62
Mobile: +40 721 934 131
gabriel.masei@1and1.ro
1&1 Internet Development Romania SRL
Sky Tower, 246C Calea Floreasca,
13th Floor, 014476, RO Bucharest