So, when are the votes for the BoD which should happen in 2025?
maybe it would help, if you’d read the statutes more carefully.
I did read them carefully. §10(3) of our statutes says:
The details of the induction and exclusion from the Board of Trustees shall be regulated by a community by-law[s] from the Board of Directors. Modification of the by-law[s] may only be decided by the Board of Directors and also requires a vote of approval from the members of the Board of Trustee[s] before entering into force.
It looks as if you have overlooked the work ‘modification’ (in the binding German version: ‘Änderungen’) in the second sentence.
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This means that the second sentence of that paragraph applies only to modifications of Community Bylaws.
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There have to be at least a first version of the Community Bylaws.
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The second sentence don’t apply to the first version of the Community Bylaws.
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Because the Community Bylaws, approved by the Board of Directors, was the first edition of this document, it didn’t need an approval by the members of the Board of Trustees.
Thus your statement are wrong. The Community Bylaws in their first version are in place since they are approved and published by the BoD.
What are you talking about, @andreasma ? The initial community bylaws were adopted by the BoD shortly after the formation of the foundation in 2010 (with a procedure for objections from the trustees/members, before coming into effect). The bylaws have been on the wiki since forever.
Also, even if that had not been the case, introduction of new bylaws after 15 years and 60 cycles of BoT induction would still require BoT approval - as the current state of affairs, by definition of the statutes, is the prevailing “community bylaws”. If bylaws had not been set explicitly, then the custom constitutes the bylaws in effect.
What a sad state our foundation is in, when our oversight body is committed to trying to justify and excuse the autocratic behavior and statute violations of a ruling clique, rather than actually holding it in check.
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We can’t really have valid elections anyway until people are recognized back as BoT members. Elections right now based on contra-statutory/illegal explusions from the constituency would be invalid anyway.
We have now well and truly descended into organizational hell of illegality and illegitimacy:
- Unelected Board of Directors
- Membership Committe whose composition was tampered with though elections manipulation
- Board of Trustees whose composition has been tampered with through invalid explusions
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There is literally nothing correct about this sentence. To start with, TDF has been incorporated in February 2012, not in 2010.
Well, the TDF was founded before its legal incorporation was completed, as our history page remind us. If we were to start our consideration at the date of incorporation, that simply means we had initial community bylaws from the get-go. This would actually make sense given the wording of the statutes, which assumes the community bylaws always exist and do not discuss the possibility of bylaws-less BoT composition.
But hey, if you can try to scrounge up some excuse for another power grab - changing the guidelines against the will of the trustees, and tearing up our community - then why not go for it right?
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No, Eyal. What you write is wrong. Even if you present it here vocally, it does not match the history. Even the wiki page you seem to refer to says: “Contents of this page are outdated with the creation of the legal entity, and are solely kept for historic reasons.”
Hi @EyalRozenberg,
it seems like unfortunately you are not doing a minimum of research and validation before coming here to post your opinions.
Looking through this forum you’ll find that most are fully aware that no bylaws have been ever voted in and that the bootstrap provision was still considered valid also by those that wanted to have the bylaws voted in by the board “around FOSDEM (2024)” before the current board was seated.
As the board vote didn’t happen in 2024 it allowed this board to review long standing governance issues that afflicted TDF for way too long which also led to the legal issues that hopefully will be settled with the company and the individuals responsible for the misuse of funds during a planned mediation.
It seems like you haven’t yet grasped the seriousness of the things that some people did so you do not probably understand the need of having included in the Community Bylaws, Code of Ethics and Fiduciary Duties and Conflict of Interest Policy provisions aimed at avoiding the repeats of these behaviours.
Of course also the provision to remove members affiliated with a company with which TDF has a specific range of legal disputes has been checked for legal validity so your opinion doesn’t override the opinion of lawyers that actually know what they are talking about.
Behind the scenes the board had also to deal with 6 former members that challenged all sort of things, using their employer’s lawyer (specialised in Intellectual Property laws), with incorrect statements and assumption in an attempt to invalidate the adoption of the bylaws.
TDF had yet again to spend time and donors money to get one of our lawyers, actually specialised on the matter, to reply to the former members which, like you, didn’t seem to have thoroughly evaluated the situation.
It would have been great if their employer’s lawyer validated the instructions he received so that he could have told them that their assumptions were incorrect and there was no point in sending that letter.
It would also have been great if the former members told their employer that that there was no point in mounting that challenge as he decided that they should focus on something else and without contributions to LibreOffice their membership would have expired anyway.
Obviously, if the former members are not bound to limiting clauses in their contracts they keep contributing to LibreOffice in their own time, once the legal matters with the company they are affiliated with have been settled they can apply again for membership. The situation will be different for those that deliberately chose not to comply with the relevant clause of the Bylaws as requested by the MC with their communication dated 26/02/2026.
Then, as you carry on complaining about the removal of a candidate for the MC, we have to assume that you are totally OK with having in TDF’s supervisory body a person that has been found of having misused funds as confirmed by audits. In my opinion, even without counting on the legal advice received which validates the removal, your position is questionable also from an ethical point of view.
I hope my comments helped you in catching up with the actual situation and that your future comments will benefit from more thorough research and validations before you post them.
You can say “you’re wrong” again as much you like, but it is what it is.
One might also ask how come an officer of the TDF would try to justify going above the heads of the trustees with such a move. But - I’ve seen how you and our current BoD act, and your continued disregard for the trustees, the statutes, basic legal principles and of course the welfare of this community, so I won’t bother.
even without counting on the legal advice received
You keep talking about your vaunted legal advice, but people routinely breaking the statutes, and not the laws, claiming to hold secret legal indulegence are just further mockery of our community, which you continue to trample as a usurping junta.
As a member of this community, my welfare is not improved in any way by getting to read the hyperbolic accusations you’re throwing at the (remarkably patient) people trying to sort out TDF’s legal troubles.
If you want to make a legal argument in good faith, maybe try not phrasing it in the most inflammatory way possible?
They’re not “trying to sort out” legal issues, they are busy creating legal issues, which are getting progressively worse. Think of the cul-de-sac they have put us in:
- We are ruled by an unelected Board of Directors (and Florian).
- We can’t even hold proper elections, because the composition of our Board of Trustees has been tampered with, through some individual and some collective expulsions, which the BoT never approved, via an abuse of our annual membership renewal mechanism. The mechanism is intended to verify that trustees are indeed LibreOffice contributors; instead, it’s been used to settle political scores.
- We have a compromised MC, after its composition was manipulated through illegal and contra-statutory elections tampering by the (now unelected) Board of Directors.
and this legal limbo in the foundation is in addition to tearing our community in half and driving away most of our veteran developers.
Now, you might say that this sounds inflammatory. And - I suppose it does, but that’s because there’s a fire burning, and it’s important to illustrate that fact.
I’m wondering if you are coming up with these statements because you couldn’t be asked to validate your assumptions or if you know that what you are stating is wrong and for some reasons you want carry on trying to mislead the community in this forum and in others eg. LWN.
The legal issues are sorted in the sense that we do have all the documents, legal statements and audits showing who has done what and you can read a brief summary of it in the email that members received the 10th of February.
These matters will soon be settled either with a mediation or, failing to reach an agreement on suitable compensation for damages, by the unavoidable next legal steps where all the gory details will be publicly available.
Hopefully the mediation will be successful so we can close this chapter and move on to focus on more productive things for TDF, LibreOffice and the community with the reassurance that the new Bylaws, Code of Ethics and Fiduciary Duties and the Conflict of Interest Policy will reduce to a minimum the risk of having people creating damages to TDF and the community.
In the meantime it would be great if you stopped coming up with accusations that a minimum amount of research prove to be false.
Thanks a lot Tuomas for the supportive words!
It is sad so much energy and time is wasted with these heated discussions. Being unhappy and disagreeing with decisions is one thing. However, such undue personal attacks and wrong statements render any factual interaction hard.
This board and me made many things public, shared many previously unpublished minutes and decisions, and went above and beyond to solve the legal situation, and support the community and the project at the same time.
I would love to see community members engaging in constructive discussions, not being vocal. It reminds me of that infamous session in Budapest, when literally no one from the crowd shared the strong statements, but things just went on and on. This was noted by many attendees, and seems a pattern I see also here.
Eyal, you have no supporters in your approach, or only very few. You do not speak on behalf of the community. The „we“ is „I“.
With your description of „junta“ and other terms, you not only make a fool out of yourself, but also wrongfully attack people who try to do something good for our community. Even worse, your words are an insult to anyone who has to live in an actual tyranny or dictatorship. You discredit yourself by using these comparisons.
I really would love to see you using your energy in a positive, constructive way. Pleae let me know how we can achieve this together.
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While Eyal’s choice of words may be unfortunate, his point deserves more consideration than it is currently receiving. I understand why others may be hesitant to speak up, as those with contrary views are often treated poorly in this forum.
The view that the bylaws are valid can indeed be supported by logical arguments that seem legally defensible. However, it can also be argued - as Eyal does - that the statutes were not followed and that the bylaws are invalid. I find that line of argument more persuasive (which is why I opposed adoption of the bylaws) and fear that the Foundation is open to legal challenge on the matter - which might prove successful.
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indeed …
Election Update Please
Moving forward: How we can unblock the situation together - #2 by fpy
support proper process and evaluations, instead of (too often) escaping in preferences, legacy, channels …
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Which answer is missing? The cheque question has been answered, if I remember correctly?
This is the infamous Budapest meeting I was refering to, but their are neither recordings nor minutes, so I don’t know if I can answer any questions about it.
I spent myself countless days to publish minutes and decisions, shared internal knowledge, wrote onboarding howtos and even translated some of these, all of which you can see in this forum. Isn’t that exactly part of proper process and evaluations?
I’m a bit lost what you ask for. 
As one of the organizers: i requested recordings by TDF and stuff like additional microphones… The recording was done by my old mbp but we had never the possibilty to test the recording, hence the sound was not captured… The mintues would have been created based on the recording as you might know that a live typing is not optimal…
Just to be clear: thanks for the organizers and there willing to help: although the university didn’t provide anything although promosing, they organized some self made speaker-bass-box and we got some bluetooth mic by @arnaud.versini (all untested). Except the recording did work very well.
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