Commitment to our Community - MC candidacy Jona Azizaj

Board Discuss
#1

Hello folks,

I am Jona and I would like to stand as a candidate for the membership committee of The Document Foundation.

Together with other members of our Community, I support the Commitment to our Community.

I am from Tirana, Albania, and I speak Albanian (shqip), English and Italian. I have been part of the LibreOffice community since 2016, when I attended my first LibOCon in Brno. While at Open Labs Hackerspace, I organized multiple events, including LibOCon 2018 in Tirana. Additionally, I have previously served on the Membership Committee and am currently part of the Code of Conduct Committee. My main focus areas are mentorship and fostering inclusive, diverse communities.

Full name: Jona Azizaj
Email: jonaazizaj@gmail.com
Affiliation: None / Independent volunteer
My 75 words candidacy statement:
Growing and diversifying the LibreOffice contributor base is a top priority for me, particularly through mentoring and guiding new contributors. I plan to work closely with the Membership Committee members to build a more inclusive and vibrant community, fostering collaboration and shared learning among all members. Additionally, I’m excited to connect with other open-source communities to exchange valuable insights and address common challenges collaboratively and effectively. I fully support the Commitment to our Community: The Document Foundation Nextcloud
I will provide information on all future changes as soon as possible.

I also want to nominate Stéphane Guillou @stragu as a candidate for the membership committee.

Cheers,

Jona

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Commitment to our Community – Membership Committee candidacy: StĂ©phane Guillou
Italian translation of the Commitment to our Community
German translation of the Commitment to our Community
List of candidates for the Membership Committee election
#2

Hello Jona,

Thank you for submitting your candidacy.

I have a few questions for the MC candidates. This is your candidacy thread, so - here I will ask for your perspectives or positions.

Question batch 1: Transparency and information disclosure

Background

At the opening paragraph of your statement, or common elections platform, you write:

we will grow 
 transparency. We have a clear plan how to do this.

Transparency in the TDF is formally mandated, among other ways, via our statutes, e.g.:

§8(3) The Board of Directors shall assure public knowledge through express publication in a commonly used media outlet with regard to 

(c) the processes, discussions and decisions of the foundation, its committees, the Board of Directors and any Executive Directors, including minutes of meetings.

as is well known, we have a severe transparency problem in the TDF, where almost all of that information remains undisclosed to the public, and even to the trustees - in flagrant breach of the bylaws; and with the board simply dismissing its legal obligations.

And while the bylaws place specific responsibility for disclosing information with the BoD, it is also an overall responsibility of the foundation; and for documents with the MC has access to, disclosure to the membership is also its own responsibility in cases when the BoD is known not to dischare its disclosure duties.

I was expecting to see the plan to address the lack of transparency in the TDF, in the body of your platform/statement. However - I did not find any mention of such a plan (other than a point regarding membership criteria).

Previous MC’s, and the current MC, have sadly also refrained from acting to ensure transparency, particularly in the sense of BoD disclosure as per the bylaws, and from disclosing some information they were responsible-by-fallback to disclose.

Concrete questions

1.1 What do you see as the required and desired scope of transparency within the TDF?
1.2 Do you believe BoDs have failed to meet their disclosure requirements, statutory and otherwise?
1.3 Do you believe that the MC has an implicit disclosure obligation when the BoD does not meet its own obligations? If so, please characterize it.
1.4 Do you have a plan for increasing transparency in the TDF? If so, please lay it out, at least in broad strokes.

(I hope to ask another batch of questions at a later time, I think this is enough for now
)

1 Like
#3

Thank you very much to everyone, :tada: faleminderit, grazie, gracias, merci bien and danke to everyone who worked together on the Commitment to our Community and accepted the nominations:

I am glad to see all of you standing for elections! :smiley:

#4

Hi Eyal, :wave:

Thank you for your questions.

You asked the same question to every candidate. We - @andreasma, @stragu, @paolo.dongilli, @marinello and myself worked together on the Commitment to our Community (The Document Foundation Nextcloud). We stand for election to the Membership Committee, so we also worked on a reply together.

We value transparency a lot and we want more of it. Compared to the previous boards, we already see a big improvements. This is great and something we can all build on together!

If we are elected, we will make sure that the decisions of the MC follow clear and published rules. This is especially true for the membership in the board of trustees. For this, we will work on the community bylaws directly at the beginning of the term.

If we are elected, also we will make it public if anyone pushes the membership committee to a certain decision. Nobody should ever be pushed to a decision. Never.

We do not agree that the statutes ask the board to publish each and every document. The statutes carefully balance what has to be published and when. We agree with you that almost certainly in the past terms not everything was published as it should. One example are board minutes, which did not always happen in time. Whether other items were not disclosed we do not know for sure and we don’t want to speculate.

The current board has significantly improved their way to work. Our goal is to support the current board with transparency, for both the board and the membership committee.

The membership committee cannot publish board information the board itself holds back. It can only publish (and with us elected, we will publish) information concerning the membership committee itself. The MC can reach out to the board and remind them of their duties. If we are elected, we will do that, in public.

The Commitment to our Community written by our group has several elements of transparency:

  • Simple English. When something is written in complicated words, it is hard to understand. So the use of Simple English will help transparency.
  • Sharing of knowledge. When information is shared with many people, there is no “exclusivity” anymore. This helps transparency.
  • Community bylaws. In the bylaws we will put transparent membership criteria. This makes clear what qualifies for membership.
  • Community surveys. The result of the anonymous surveys will be made public. This is another step of transparency.
  • MC meetings. We will have a public part of the meeting, and we will publish minutes. Also this is for transparency.

Thanks :slight_smile:

#5

I don’t like the formation of this clique, of sorts, by the five of you as candidates. What kind of message are you sending to the trustees when a candidate refuses to answer a question themselves, and instead recites a common reply written - quite possibly - by someone else?

I’m not sure what that means. You want to write rules which dictate your future decisions about matters you are not yet aware of?

And - I wasn’t asking about the MC’s adherence to more rules, but rather about your perspective regarding how transparent the TDF bodies should be vis-a-vis the trustees (and perhaps the public). Your view on the matter is important, because the BoD seems to think the answer is “almost completely opaque”.

Nobody said that.

Let me make it more concrete with an example. Suppose that the BoD receives a letter from some NGO or commercial company suggesting a collaboration. Do you believe such a letter should be kept secret from the trustees, or disclosed to them? What about the BoD’s reply?

What do you mean by the phrase “holds back”?

I did read the document, but it did not indicate that you would do anything to ensure “the processes, discussions and decisions of the foundation, its committees, the Board of Directors and any Executive Directors” are disclosed. This is why I asked this question - to provide you with the opportunity to clarify whether that was an oversight, or intentional. Which of them is it?

#6

Hi Eyal,

Sorry for my late reply on this.

It’s not unusual for people with similar ideas to share them together. For example, in the board elections, there was the New Era Manifesto supported by one group and a pledge for LibreOffice supported by another. Then there were individual candidates as well. Of course, we are happy to answer questions, as many of the candidates did in the town hall meetings, and I invite the community to view the recordings. :smiley:

Regarding rules: My colleagues and I want to work on the community bylaws that have not yet been established. According to the statutes, these bylaws regulate membership criteria. Admitting new members is one of the tasks of the MC. By putting clear rules in writing about what qualifies and what does not, we create transparency for everyone.

Regarding information: One of the goals is to have a public portion in every MC meeting, with minutes shared afterward. This is something the elected MC members can implement immediately. I am also active in other FLOSS projects, like Fedora. In those projects, not all collaboration proposals are published immediately. Often, there are initial calls with some planning and brainstorming. Only when things become more detailed and concrete are more people involved. So, there is no general answer. We should make public what can be shared, but not everything is immediately for public view.

Board documents: I do not think the MC can publish documents they receive from the board. This is the board’s responsibility. The MC can only “insist” and remind the board, even publicly, so the trustees are aware.

Cheers,
Jona

#7

Hi Jona, all,

I’d love to learn about your experience in the fedora project, Jona. I heard Pranam also has experience in another open source community. Let’s see what wise lessons this can bring to us.
Then let me expand a bit on meetings and criteria.

If I say MC, of course I say ‘membership’. First - if elected - I’d love to learn how the previous MC’s worked with the criteria for membership; how it possibly evolved since I was a member of the MC.
I join the candidates that mentioned they want work on clear rules. It’s an interesting (
) area, looking at what our statues say about possible spots of activities and then demand the MC to weight the significance of the contributions :wink: That’s something important to discuss; in public meetings as well.

Wrt having regular public meetings, I’m not sure yet; the MC can look depending on what’s on ‘the agenda’. In general I do not see the MC as a sort of shadow board; our statues give the MC it’s own tasks. Of course it’s good to know what the Board is working on and inform the Board on the MC’s proceedings.

To me, the MC can certainly support the Board with, work on, growing the community. During the townHall meetings I’ve expressed that, to me, supporting LibreOffice primary means growing development, make more individuals and companies engage. After all, if development stops, everything else will suffer and stop as well
 But people who know me understand that I will work on activities in a smart way, so that at the same time it helps foster diversity and inclusion in our community.
The community, that is our vehicle, not our goal; to keep it healthy, we must also care for people when they feel unhappy. I’m a positive and optimistic person: I do believe we have the capabilities, resources, to organize the education needed to grow a stronger contribution to our beautiful software, in an atmosphere of politeness, friendliness, understanding, and goodwill.

Cheers,
Cor

#8

But they are published after a while. In the TDF, almost nothing gets published, ever. (And that’s ignoring any differences in bylaws/statutes)

But - there is: The statutes set the general answer, and also allow for exceptions: Information which needs to be kept confidential temporarily, can be. The problem is that, at the TDF, we’ve turned this rule upside down, and everything is secret, forever, except what the BoD wants to tell us.

So, when push comes to shove, it seems to be your position that the MC defer to the BoD. I would like to encourage you to reconsider that position - not just about the disclosure of documents, but more generally. As an organization, we need an MC with more “back-bone”, to counter-balance and check the BoD; and given such an MC, it would probably not have to actually “feud” with the BoD, since the counter-pressure would help improve its conduct from the get-go. That’s how I see it, anyway.

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