[DECISION] Creating of Staff-Board-Policy

[cornouws]

Dear reader,

The following decision, which was taken in private on 2023-07-04, is now made public in accordance with our statutes.

Noticing that

• for a longer time, there are thoughts about something as a staff
  policy;
• the topic is surrounded by a variety of thoughts and emotions;
• there are undeniably issues and tensions in the community that
  could benefit from (also) guidelines, policies, rules, …;

Finding that

• it is needed work on a result that really benefits the community and TDF;

Decides

• to start a carefully crafted process to that end;
• allowing input and involvement from all sides, focusing on positive
  input and intentions;
• and that is looking as follows:

1. Gathering input (4 weeks)

   • What experiences, wishes, hopes, goals are there, that should
     benefit from guidelines, rules, procedures inthe to be written
     policy?
   • Input is asked from members of staff, MC, Board of Directors, Board
     of Trusties, Advisory Board, and the community.
   • People are asked to state - if relevant to them - whichitems
     are more or less urgent or important in theirview.
   • Of course input based on experiences, existing policiesetc is
     welcome as well.
   • We expect all ideas to be brought in with positive intention, and
     shaped/written as such. Questions for clarification are fine.
     Discussion if certain input is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, is not asked
     for in this phase.
   • People who want to provide anonymous input with e.g. experiences,
     are advised to find another community member that wan write
     something as an example, case, or whatever.

2. Writing of the draft (2 months)

   • Boards work, that can of course seek assistance.

3. Gathering feedback (2 weeks)

   • Everyone involved.

4. Writing the almost final version (3 weeks)

5. Last check: feedback from those who engaged in phase 3 (1 weeks)

6. Vote (1 weeks)

The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4.

6 Board of Directors members and one deputy member have participated in the vote. The vote is quorate.
A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 3 votes.

Result of vote: 4 approvals, 0 abstain, 2 disapprovals.
One deputy member supported the vote.

Decision: The proposal has been accepted.

All the best,
Cor

[cornouws]

Dear people,

As stated in the resolution, your input is highly appreciated.
Please see this topic on Board-Discuss.

[stragu]

(reply moved to Asking your input! - #2 by stragu)

[drodriguez]

What I see behind this is another attempt to control the staff as if it were a private entity. Applaud when indicated and express no opinion at all.

[PaoloVecchi]

That’s the same concern I raised and I asked Cor, which is the promoter of this vote, to avoid going out with something this generic and undefined which leads nowhere.

I asked instead to focus on the “staff protection” policy as described in a set of recommendations related to the new tendering process, which hasn’t yet been published or shared with members of staff, which should start as a board policy to protect the staff from undue influence and implement the arm’s length principle that helps creating a level playing field which is necessary to welcome more corporate contributors.

Hopefully one day the rest of the board will consider the Fiduciary Duties, Board Members Agreement and Code of Ethics that would fix many of the issues that have been present in the board for many years.

[thb]

Moderation remark: productive input & questions on the policy should be moved to the Asking your input! topic, please.

(edited after stragu moved his post, to make sense again)

[thb]

Hi Paolo,

@PaoloVecchi

I asked instead to focus on the “staff protection” policy as described in a set of recommendations related to the new tendering process, which hasn’t yet been published or shared with members of staff, which should start as a board policy to protect the staff from undue influence and implement the arm’s length principle that helps creating a level playing field which is necessary to welcome more corporate contributors.

That’s indeed an important part of what should be a piece of the policy. But please acknowledge, that other people might have additional (reciprocal) expectations, and don’t dismiss them as ‘leading nowhere’ a priori.

Thanks, Thorsten

[stragu]

Moved to Asking your input! - #2 by stragu

[EyalRozenberg]

Cor, can you please write which board members supported and which opposed?

[stragu]

(Moved from the Decision post.)
(To be transparent: I am a TDF staff member since November 2022.)

Quoting from the original post:

@cornouws

for a longer time, there are thoughts about something as a staff
policy;

If find this quite vague. Is the Board of Directors (BoD) able to clarify:

1. A more precise time-frame than “for a longer time”
2. A more precise part of the community this originates from than “there are thoughts”. BoD exclusively? Members? Volunteers? Ecosystem? All? Others?
3. Does the board want to collaboratively shape a “Staff policy” (as quoted in the decision) or a “Staff-Board policy” (as in the title of the decision)? It matters as it defines which group members or whose actions the policy applies to. Or is it a “framework document”, as imprecise as that is?

Furthermore, so contributions to this discussion can be as useful and targeted as possible, can I ask:

4. What exactly is this policy trying to fix? Something more precise than:

@cornouws

there are undeniably issues and tensions in the community

5. As this policy apparently focuses on staff and BoD (according to the decision post), is the quote about just this part of the “community”, or the community at large?

6. We have a Code of Conduct (CoC): The Document Foundation Code of Conduct — The Document Foundation
   I understand we don’t need to duplicate anything already outlined there as staff and BoD both need to abide to it. Contributors to this discussion need to be familiar with it to not discuss what is already covered there.

Finally, regarding:

@cornouws

What experiences, wishes, hopes, goals are there, that should
benefit from guidelines, rules, procedures inthe to be written
policy?

I feel like the scope as stated above is so wide-ranging that the community might not have any idea where to start (on top of not knowing what issue(s) the policy is trying to resolve).

Thank you!

(And for nitpicking: there are quite a few typos in the Decision post, enough to affect readability. Would be great to fix those.)

[htietze]

I work for the users. Most of them care about the project and have no idea of the structure and the community behind. Members are a (unfortunately small) subgroup of the users being active in the project, caring about the future. Most of them have never involved in discussions-- and probably don’t want to. The staff facilitates users to become a member, aiming to grow the community and supporting the development in all facets. The board is the legal entity taking the responsibility for decisions and steering the project (not the product). Going back to my first statement: I do not need a policy to interact with the board. And I hope the users are happy with my work and interaction and do not ask for a policy as well.

Some of the rules are pretty clear: thou shalt not speak about HR and legal topics. And to repeat Thorsten: it’s always a good idea to stay positive and forward-looking. But people have bad days, are not native speakers, and may misunderstand comments. It should be replied on the actual situation if a statement is inappropriate rather than defining a policy. To muzzle people is definitely not correct.

The term “policy” triggers the comparison with SMBs or larger companies. And I rather assume a problem with trust, as you can see in the response to this question (one can see it as a path to resolve problems as well as an attempt to control the staff). Don’t see another way out of the dilemma than restricting the board to members without any affiliation and business interests. Would be a huge loss for the project, on the one hand. But I could imagine to strengthen the position of the ESC in order to provide the technical expertise.

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion. I’m open to critics and discussion and willing to accept alternative views. My personal “policy”: I might be wrong.

PS: Would have been good to clarify and narrow the goal of this discussion first, as commented by Stephane.

[cornouws]

Hi Stéphane,

[stragu] stragu https://community.documentfoundation.org/u/stragu
July 19

(Moved from the Decision post )

Ah - thanks.

On the other hand, explaining on how to understand the process, maybe fits better below the resolution. Let me proceed here: it is clear we can move if that works better.

(To be transparent: I am a TDF staff member since November 2022.)

Both appreciated!

Quoting from the original post:

[DECISION] Creating of Staff-Board-Policy
for a longer time, there are thoughts about something as a staff policy;

If find this quite vague. Is the Board of Directors (BoD) able to clarify:

A clear yes: clarifying what you ask in the three questions is possible.
However the wording is quite vague on purpose. The resolution does not to spell all that out; it might easily lead to debate right away on various statements. The idea is first to gather all ideas, wishes. Freely.
And only then, with hopefully all clear, have the debate
Hence the urge to only ask questions for clarification in phase 1. (And of course it is possible to phrase strong criticism as a question, but that will show.)

Furthermore, so contributions to this discussion can be as useful and targeted as possible, can I ask:

4. What exactly is this policy trying to fix? Something more precise than:

[DECISION] Creating of Staff-Board-Policy
there are undeniably issues and tensions in the community

That statement is to recognize that we as board are aware that for various people this topic is clearly not a popular one.
And that is not cheap talk, it means: yes, we are aware of that. And therefore we want to have a careful, clear process, allowing maximum participation, by being respectful, listening, aiming to grow understanding.

As this policy apparently focuses on staff and BoD (according to the decision post), is the quote about just this part of the “community”, or the community /at large/?

Board and staff have a special relation because of roles,
responsibilities etc. So the first.

We have a Code of Conduct (CoC): The Document Foundation Code of
Conduct
I understand we don’t need to duplicate anything already outlined there as staff and BoD both need to abide to it. Contributors to this discussion need to be familiar with it to not discuss what is already covered there.

See above.
CoC is generally important for all parts of the community but definitely not targeted at the specifics of the board-staff relation.

Finally, regarding:

[DECISION] Creating of Staff-Board-Policy
What experiences, wishes, hopes, goals are there, that should benefit from guidelines, rules, procedures in the to be written policy?

I feel like the scope as stated above is so wide-ranging that the community might not have any idea where to start (on top of not knowing what issue(s) the policy is trying to resolve).

I understand that question ~similar to what Heiko asks (“clarify and
narrow the goal of this discussion”).

Maybe an example helps.
I expect the policy to guide directors in their communication with staff. Is that so hard then? No of course not in general. But occasionally, yes.
If you want to have contact on <aaa, bbb>, make sure that you do <x…>.
Or in case of special topics <c…> do or try <y…>…
And in case of doubt, contact <zz…>.
And of course the other way round. Or how we talk about the others work as well. And what we can do to solve issues, or how to learn from them etc.
But that’s only examples. This topic is about everyone’s input!

I think it is good to spell out as well, that having rights, comes at the price of having responsibilities. Well, maybe not when we talk about ‘human rights’, but if we talk about rights of e.g. staff, yes. there
are responsibilities of staff and also responsibilities of directors.

And let us assume that is even more nuanced, or more complicated, because of the nature of our community, staff being also members… An extra reason to have something written down that helps us.

Thank you!

You’re welcome.

(And for nitpicking: there are quite a few typos in the Decision post,
enough to affect readability. Would be great to fix those.)

Sorry for that.
If you have (off list?) specific items, I’m happy to look at these.

Greetings,
Cor

[cornouws]

Hi Heiko,

[htietze] htietze https://community.documentfoundation.org/u/htietze
July 19

I work for the users. Most of them care about the project and have no idea of the structure and the community behind. Members are a (unfortunately small) subgroup of the users being active in the project, caring about the future. Most of them have never involved in discussions-- and probably don’t want to.

Correct. This process is about those that do care and are involved.

… The staff facilitates users to become a member, aiming to grow the community and supporting the
development in all facets. The board is the legal entity taking the responsibility for decisions and steering the project (not the product).

Correct. And responsibility does not come for free. It links to both the legal and social background TDF is working in, and towards the trustees that put their trust in people to represent their will and ideas

Going back to my first statement: I do not need a policy to interact with the board.

In general: fully clear. It definitely is not my expectation that a policy must be consulted often. Nor do I hope that it is needed

However, I’m also considering that the to be produced ‘policy’ also has to be useful to support (growing a) culture of understanding and communication.

And I hope the users are happy with my work and interaction and do not ask for a policy as well.

That is clearly out of scope of this effort, yes

Some of the rules are pretty clear: thou shalt not speak about HR and legal topics. And to repeat Thorsten: it’s always a good idea to stay positive and forward-looking. But people have bad days, are not native speakers, and may misunderstand comments.

Indeed. Then depending on the situation, sometimes it may be needed to do something. So e.g. we could make sure that there is a well prepared stage/place for people to communicate in these cases.

speakers, and may misunderstand comments. It should be replied on the actual situation if a statement is inappropriate rather than defining a policy. To muzzle people is definitely not correct.

To me, that seems to be a suggestion
May I ask you to put that in a separate comment, possibly with other specific ideas?

The term “policy” triggers the comparison with SMBs or larger companies.

In the end, it may be called something else then ‘board-staff-policy’?
Really depends on the outcome, I think.

And I rather assume a problem with trust, as you can see in the response to this question (one can see it as a path to resolve problems as well as an attempt to control the staff).
Don’t see another way out of the dilemma than restricting the board to members without any affiliation and business interests. Would be a huge loss for the project, on the one hand. But I could imagine to strengthen the position of the ESC in order to provide the technical expertise.

You know I’m an optimistic person that believes in growing our habits and capabilities to do good things, despite and thanks to different ideas and backgrounds. But that does not come as a given, without dedicated effort and understanding that we need to somehow work on it.
(To spell out my believe in life itself)

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion. I’m open to critics and discussion and willing to accept alternative views. My personal “policy”: I might be wrong.

Love that.
One of my favorite statements: “I seldom make mistakes, at least not more than 15 a day”

PS: Would have been good to clarify and narrow the goal of this discussion first, as commented by Stephane.

Hope my reply sufficiently helps.

Cheers,
Cor

[Sweetshark]

Hi all,

I’ll have a longer answer hopefully on the weekend with some ideas and proposals on this topic.

However, when Heiko writes:

I work for the users.

I have some minor nitpick:

I think that creates an unhelpful framing for TDFs staff: LibreOffice is not a product and the Document Foundation is not a entity (like a company) that provides a product. As such, TDFs staff doesnt work for the users, but rather along the lines of “committing to an open and transparent peer-reviewed software development process where technical excellence is valued”. Does that make a difference here?

Yes, although in the case of UX it might be a subtile one. It means that building a product with excellent UX is not the primary goal – instead, creating a process and peers that are able to produce that is the goal. This means that enabling and broadening the number of peers who can contribute to the project should be the focus instead of trying to build a better product for “users”(*).

For UX, this might be somewhat mood, because the community of possible contributors is so small, that direct product improvements are sometimes the only way to move forward. But that should be a secondary goal after enabling peers (volunteers and other contributors alike) and their technical excellence. Beyond UX, this is even more important as it has impact on priorities there.

So much for my nitpick. I’ll add some more generic thoughts hopefully on the next weekend.

Best,

Bjoern

(*) put in quotes here, as it is really hard to get a grep on who the “users” as a group and their desires are. Everyone can claim to be a “user” or even a “possible future user, if you just fix my pet bug”.

[EyalRozenberg]

(copying my message from TDF-internal, which was written before I read the messages on this thread, sorry!)

I find this initiative to be somewhat problematic.

First, this is an initiative of the board, not - if I understand correctly - a joint initiative of the board and the staff. It is also intended to be a document which the board will draft and adopt, thus imposing it on staff.

This kind of action would seem to agree more with a situation in which staff members exceed the bounds of their legitimate activities, disrespect the board and the trustees, counter adopted board decisions etc. Is this the situation the board wants to address? If so, we have not heard the state of affairs in the TDF described this way; if not - why should this not be a joint initiative, to be adopted after staff approval as well?

This question becomes even more poignant when we peer inside the board. This was not a unanimous decision; rather, it seems to have been “factional”: 4 board members support, 2 members oppose including Paolo; and I am guessing - correct me if I’m wrong - that we are seeing the same factional divide of Thorsten, Cor and perhaps others on one hand, and Paolo and Emiliano on the other hand. This means that the “coalition” faction could not convince the “opposition” faction that this initiative is merited.

Finally, and even though I have personally avoided getting into the “meeting about the staff” discussion thread (for reasons) - it is a leader of the coalition faction who has been criticized for inappropriate conduct in that context. With this being the case, I would expect the process of regulating board-staff relations to be supported by sufficient “buy-in” from both board factions and from staff, for it to be pushed forward.

[cornouws]

Hi Eyal,

[EyalRozenberg] EyalRozenberg
https://community.documentfoundation.org/u/eyalrozenberg
July 19

(copying my message from TDF-internal, which was written before I read the messages on this thread, sorry!)

( the messages here are definitely interesting wrt your questions ).

I find this initiative to be somewhat problematic.
First, this is an initiative of the board, not - if I understand correctly - a joint initiative of the board and the staff.

Correct.

It is also intended to be a document which the board will draft and adopt, thus imposing it on staff.

It is the boards responsibility to take care for a good environment etc for the staff. And if you read the resolution and answers to questions, the only conclusion is that the intention is to allow full involvement
from also members of staff in creating the document.

This kind of action would seem to agree more with a situation in which …

This are questions that I suggest not to discuss at the moment. You can find abundant examples also on public fora/lists, of tension, although that is fragmented, possibly one-sided.

Therefore goal of the resolution is have a process that is open, respectful. And to work on improving, starting with gathering what you think that a board-staff-relation document should include. Or not. And
what others find on that.
From your questions, it is clear that you have clear ideas. Please do write those as clear as possible and send them in.
Then in a later phase, let’s have the discussion.

This question becomes even more poignant when we peer inside the board.

The board seeks consensus usually. Failing that, the conclusion is that the information and arguments that people have, do not convince the others. Nothing more, nothing less.

Finally, and even though I have personally avoided getting into the “meeting about the staff” discussion thread (for reasons) - it is a leader of the coalition faction who has been criticized for
inappropriate conduct in that context. With this being the case, I would expect the process of regulating board-staff relations to be supported by sufficient “buy-in” from /both/ board factions and from staff, for it to be pushed forward.

I don’t agree with some of your descriptions in the above.
Apart from that: please do let the process ‘speak’, the input of people, their ability to listen and engage.

Cheers,
Cor

[floeff]

The decision also mentions to get feedback from the Advisory Boad. Find below feedback from Matthias Kirschner, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), which he gave during yesterday’s Advisory Board call. I share it here with his explicit consent, as he is not subscribed to the mailing list himself.

• What is the problem that should be solved with this?
• From my experience, you need enough resources to work on such a topic.
• Advise not to do that if you do not have enough time from the ED (e.g. a time when the ED is involved in fundraising or other larger topics)
• Clarifying the relationship between staff and volunteers, or decision makers and staff, can become quite emotional very quickly
• If then you don’t have enough resources to take this into consideration, and make sure all sides feel they are heard, you can hurt community quite a lot
• If you ask for opinions, there will be reactions
• when I heard this, there were alarm bells
• Advise to ensure enough resources, to have time to work on that
• Assume Florian would be quite involved, offer to talk with him about this
• Be careful with this, on staff side has lots of influence on their jobs, currently looks like “let’s have a round of feature requests” but less how to do things
• This topic is a lot about culture, often unwritten rules and very difficult to describe how things to work
• There will most likely be strong emotions, be prepared for
• you need time available, lots of work popping up for your ED, ensure time is available, people must be sure you take them seriously in this discussion

During the call, Matthias also supported the idea that the outcome of the discussion could be there is no need for such a policy actually and things could be achieved in a better way.

[floeff]

The decision also mentions to get feedback from the Advisory Boad. Find below feedback from Cornelius Schumacher (KDE), which he gave during yesterday’s Advisory Board call. I share it here with his explicit consent, as he is not subscribed to the mailing list himself.

• asking for policy on interaction/cooperation always is a warning sign
• interaction is mostly about culture and trust, less about process, procedures and policies
• you have CoC and CoI policy in place, which every organization has, that’s the basics
• this sounds like you look for much more than that
• an example of a policy in mind you try to model here? what is the trigger for creating this kind of policy? how do you envision the end result? anything you try to mimic there?
• you are seeking for open input for board-staff policy, result not determined yet
• make sure not having such a policy is a possible option as outcome of the input generation phase
• could turn out there’s no need for such a policy, but better ways to accommodate the needs

[PaoloVecchi]

I do share Matthias and Cornelius views which, even without having had the opportunity to follow the discussion within the board, very quickly spotted some of the obvious issues.

The objections raised are spot on, were easily predictable and should have been taken in consideration well before sending out the vote. Unfortunately only 2 directors felt that a different approach was needed.

I did question the logic of going out with this proposal as well, as it means everything and nothing and distract the board and the community from dealing with other issues and clearer goals which are also overdue.

I hope the board will not wait for the process described in this vote to finish before starting to act on the concerns I raised and the actual resolution of the issues involving the staff which start from the board itself:

[DECISION] Creating of Staff-Board-Policy

That’s the same concern I raised and I asked Cor, which is the promoter of this vote, to avoid going out with something this generic and undefined which leads nowhere. I asked instead to focus on the “staff protection” policy as described in a set of recommendations related to the new tendering process, which hasn’t yet been published or shared with members of staff, which should start as a board policy to protect the staff from undue influence and implement the arm’s length principle that help…

[thb]

Hi Paolo,

my reading (and also my impression in the call yesterday) was more a cautioning, plus suggestions for best practices, on how to approach this topic.

One question:

@PaoloVecchi

I hope the board will not wait for the process described in this vote to finish before starting to act on the concerns I raised and the actual resolution of the issues involving the staff which start from the board itself:

Would you also see a ‘no policy’ as a legitimate outcome of the ‘staff protection policy’ discussion?

Best, Thorsten