Candidacy to the elections of the TDF Board of Directors

[elianedomingos]

Hello all,

I would like to thanks to Sophie for nominating me at Nominations for the elections of the TDF Board of directors. I accept the nomination for the Board election and express my full support for the Pledge for LibreOffice: The Document Foundation Nextcloud

I am Eliane Domingos, 50, part of the LibreOffice Brazilian Community, promoting LibreOffice at events, social media and weekly meetings.

In the last few year I was involved in the organization and management of the Brasilia LATAM meeting, and in creating videos and banners for the Mexico LATAM meeting.

I created and worked in the LibreOffice Magazine, using LibreOffice Draw during it’s 27 editions, available at (wiki)

I was part of the board of directors in 2014-2016, collaborating with TDF’s purpose mission.

My 75 words nomination:
Full name: Eliane Domingos (elianedomingos@libreoffice.org)
Affiliation: none related to LibreOffice, software or IT industry

My name is Eliane Domingos, I am 50 and I live in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil. I am independent. I have been a member of TDF for 11 years. I was in the BoD from 2014-2016 and I am part of Brazilian LibreOffice Community. I am presenting my candidacy for the board, because I believe the foundation needs changes and to represent diversity of our members. I support the Pledge for LibreOffice, for the future of TDF (The Document Foundation Nextcloud).

Best regards,
Eliane Domingos
Brazilian LibreOffice Community

[EyalRozenberg]

Hello Eliana, and actually - nice to meet you, as I don’t think we’ve chatted before.

A few questions for you…

Question 1: For the benefit of newer trustees, can you tell us more about your 2014-2016 BoD term? What activities were you, as a board member, focused on? Are the examples of significant disagreements the board faced during your term, the resolution of which you believe we should learn from today?

Question 2: The LibreOffice magazine looks quite impressive graphically. Can you tell us a little more about this project in the managerial aspect? i.e. what were the goals, what was the target audience, how did you plan to produce it, and did it have a useful effect, looking back?

Question 3: One of the problems I have found with the outgoing board is the violation of the TDF-statutory requirement to publish information (as per §8.3.c of our statutes). Did the BoD, during your first tenure, abide by this obligation? (TBH, I am guessing that it didn’t so there would be a followup question.)

The TDF’s annual amount of donations is ~EUR 1.2 Million (per the 2022 annual report). This, while our number of users is [estimated](LibreOffice: A history of document freedom | Opensource.com Document Foundation estimates that,part of their preferred distribution.) at over 200 Million (as of 2021); and the Thunderbird project, with ~16 Million active monthly users (see here), achieved an income of $6.4 Million USD in 2022. Even if we cut our user estimate by 50%, that’s still 30x less average donations per user for LO relative to Thunderbird. And that’s when Thunderbird is being degraded as a product, with lower release quality, some features removed etc.

Question 4: What do you believe are the reasons for this enormous discrepancy between the two projects?

Question 5: If elected, what would you suggest the board do to improve it?

[elianedomingos]

Hi Eyal,

My pleasure. A small correction to the last letter of my name, is an ‘e’ at the end.

Question 1:
When I was part of the board during this period, we had weekly meetings. There were many issues on the agenda to be decided and we had a lot of harmony and respect. I definitely miss this time, where matters moved forward and didn’t remain stagnant.

I had no specific assignment on this term, other than routine to fulfill. But I think one of the things I would like to see returned to this new Board is for some directors to monitor sectors, for example: a director monitors the marketing sector, a director monitors donations, a director monitors development, a director monitors documentation, a director monitoring the events, a director monitoring the budget, and so on… and I definitely hope that this spirit of love and passion for the project returns.

Question 2:
The magazine project was born from OpenOffice, which here in Brazil was called BrOffice and we continued with LibreOffice. My intention with the magazine was to show that LibreOffice is much more than text, spreadsheet and presentation. LibreOffice Draw is an “ugly duck” that no one pays attention to. The magazine project gave a lot of visibility to this wonderful module that is Draw. The project in Brazil was an immense success. Users were eagerly anticipating the launch of the magazine, a source of great pride for Brazilians. And definitely, this magazine was also a way of promoting LibreOffice. Why did I stop the project? Due to lack of collaboration. Unfortunately, only me and volunteer Vera Cavalcante were producing the magazine and we also have personal lives, work and so, we were no longer able to continue with the project.

Question 3:
This problem did not exist during the period I was part of the Board. When I was part of the Board, it was a productive period, a period in which the directors were dedicated to serving the interests of the LibreOffice project, with due respect and decorum. And I sincerely hope that we can recover this collaborative spirit.

Questions 4 and 5:
I’m a Thunderbird user. I am not aware of this detail of the project. However, based on this information you shared, comparing the two projects, it seems to me that we have a problem in how to promote donations to the LibreOffice project. Here in Brazil, for example, I have a lot of complaints from people who would like to donate to the project, but who don’t want to use a credit card. Once, there was a Brazilian who sent a Brazilian currency bill to Berlin by mail. Maybe it would be interesting if we could have a greater offer of donations, as for example the Mozzila foundation does: https://foundation.mozilla.org/pt-BR/donate/ways-to-give/

Best,
Eliane Domingos