Commitment to our Community – Membership Committee candidacy: Balázs Varga

[bvarga91]

Dear members & Board of Directors of The Document Foundation,

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

I am from Budapest, Hungary, and I speak Hungarian, English and a little French. I have been part of the LibreOffice community since 2017, when I have started to contribute/hacking on LibreOffice as a Software Developer. I attended my first LiboCon in Tirana. Currently, I am a substitute member of the Membership Committee, where I actively participate, especially in the formal tasks at the end of quarters.

Why I am a candidate for the MC again:

I would like to be part of the Membership Committee to ensure that every aspect of the TDF community is represented in the committee, including developers. Given my background, I’m happy to help the work of the committee also at a technical level. Within the MC, I was substitute responsible for voting in a lot applications in Gerrit from 2022 to 2023 and then with the new Proteus system which the MC have started to use since 2023. During this period, I substitute voted on many renewals and applications on Gerrit and on the new Proteus system for voting by the MC members. I fully support the Commitment to our Community.

Full name: Balázs Varga
Email: balazs.varga.extern@allotropia.de
Private Email: balazs.varga991@gmail.com
Affiliation: allotropia software GmbH

My 75 words candidacy statement:
I would like to continue contributing and helping as part of the Membership Committee with my experience within the MC. I intend to keep my responsibilities and support the improvement of our internal processes and our relationship with the members. I will do my best to make our community inclusive and to foster friendly interactions. I am interested in growing our membership base by making sure all contributions are valued and appreciated.

I’ll provide information on all future changes of the above as soon as possible, if there will be any.

Cheers,
Balázs

[EyalRozenberg]

Hello Balazs,

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 the “Commitment to our Community”, which you have adopted, we read:

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.)