moved all discussion (back) here
Let’s keep Asking your input! for the input.
Reading all judgment and thoughts, I have no doubt that you all have ideas for the process to write the policy/document/…
thanks!
Hi Florian, all,
[floeff] floeff https://community.documentfoundation.org/u/floeff
July 20The 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.
Thanks for sharing.
During the meeting we talked about his ideas. And in the following I add what I brought in during the meeting (and possibly some extra).
- asking for policy on interaction/cooperation always is a warning sign
Fully agree. No time to lose, I would say.
- interaction is mostly about culture and trust, less about process, procedures and policies
Sure. Yet processes and procedures should be designed with in mind that they support (growing) the culture that we need.
- 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
It serves a different purpose yes.
- 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?
Nothing specific in mind. I have ideas that I will post on the Input-topic.
And - reading all judgements on the idea alone… I expect others to have clear opinions too on what a ‘policy’ should or should not do/help/provide. Share it!
- you are seeking for open input for board-staff policy, result not
determined yet
Indeed!
- 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
"I don’t consider that at all impossible. However, I expect that is fully depending on a clear, open process with full support, honest engagement, of all involved.
So consider this to be an invitation 
"
Cheers,
Cor
Hi Florian, all,
Florian Effenberger wrote on 20/07/2023 11:52:> Hello,
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.
Thanks for sharing.
During the meeting we talked about his ideas. And in the following I add what I brought in during the meeting (and possibly some extra).
- What is the problem that should be solved with this?
Anyone reading on board-discuss will understand there are problems we need to solve.
I encourage people noticing or being involved, to give input on what guidelines, procedures, … etc they consider useful to prevent or, if things get complicated, resolve.
- 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)
As said during the meeting: the board is actively involved.
- Clarifying the relationship between staff and volunteers, or decision
makers and staff, can become quite emotional very quickly
Sure. Therefore we aim for an open, fair process, where everyone has the honest opportunity to feel heard and being taken serious.
- 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
Sure; so we’ll prevent that happening.
- If you ask for opinions, there will be reactions
We’ll kindly and politely guide the process.
First gathering input. Well, read the resolution - it is quite explicit in this regard.
- when I heard this, there were alarm bells
- Advise to ensure enough resources, to have time to work on that
See above.
- Assume Florian would be quite involved, offer to talk with him about this
See above.
- 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
See the process in the resolution. Members of staff are of course invited.
- This topic is a lot about culture, often unwritten rules and very
difficult to describe how things to work
That sounds like valuable input for the work. Can you pls post that as such?
- There will most likely be strong emotions, be prepared for
See above.
- 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
See above.
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.
I don’t consider that at all impossible. However, I expect that is fully depending on a clear, open process with full support, honest engagement, of all involved.
So consider this to be an invitation
Cheers,
Cor
Hi Thorsten, hi all,
Am 20.07.23 um 17:30 schrieb Thorsten Behrens via The Document Foundation Community:
thb
July 20Hi 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.
although I wasn’t in the AB meetingl but it looks as if were in different AB meeting. Or maybe you are not open for opinions and input which not in line with your own opinion and political (and economic) agenda.
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?
This shows nicely that you didn’t want an open discussion process. Your goal is clear. You want no matter what happens a board-staff-policy to push further on the members of TDF’s staff and shut them up, if they have a different opinion (from yours and the members of your ‘shadow-board’).
Regards,
Andreas
Hi Bjoern, everyone,
LibreOffice is not a product and the Document Foundation is not a entity (like a company) that provides a product
According to Wikipedia, “a product is an object, or system, or service made available for consumer use as of the consumer demand”.
The Document Foundation has always made available, since the beginning, a piece of desktop software targeted at end-users. TDF provides the infrastructure to build and distribute this software, so that regular users can benefit from it. Indeed, TDF’s own statutes say this, right at the start:
activities include the promotion and distribution of a repertoire of digital production and creativity tools
We we can split hairs about the exact definition of “product”, but from all the things we do (and what our statutes define), I think we can say we’re providing something effectively the same as a “product” 
And that’s a good thing IMO! Over the years, talking to many contributors, I’ve noticed that one thing that motivates them, is that we work on LibreOffice, then make the final, polished, finished product/“thing” available to everyone. We’re proud to work on something that we can then recommend to our friends and family.
(And of course, the vast majority of donations to TDF come from end users downloading the software, so I think it’s vitally important that we continue to offer downloads from TDF in the future…)
Cheers,
Mike
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Indeed, but I do not see how a staff policy could solve these problems. The problems that appear from reading on board-discuss are clearly created by the BoD itself and its inability to resolve its internal dissensions, conflicts of interest, its inability to decide for the budget.
It is not by suggesting that imposing codified rules to the staff that you will solve these problems. In other words, the problem is the current BoD, not the staff, and, you the BoD have to change.
Hi Mike, all,
I think we need to reinvestigate some fundamentals for that, wrt to the goals of TDF. That takes time … and some digital ink. I did that here – in the end there is also a concrete proposal for an starting point on how to derive concrete action from those abstract ideas. Its not a turnkey solution yet, but rather a starting point for a discussion.
Best,
Bjoern
Taking the discussion from [VOTE] Reinstate the previous Rules of Procedure over to here:
That process literally says:
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.
How should the community give input if they don’t know about certain legal topics and events that are relevant for this? As the policy topic is now open here for feedback, how can we have a discussion about it? I’m interested to learn about the process the board had in mind.
Thanks,
Florian