[DECISION] TDF to publish LibreOffice in app stores

Board Discuss
#1

Hello,

TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores, especially Apple and Microsoft. TDF will work to prepare LibreOffice for the app stores as soon as possible with the aim of having it published at the latest by the 1st of July, the day after the trademark licences have come to an end.

TDF will engage with the ecosystem for them to offer help with this.

I ask conflicted members to declare their abstention explicitly.

This vote runs 72 hours from now.

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.

A total of 5 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 3 votes.

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 2 abstain, 0 disapprovals.
Decision: The proposal has been accepted.

One deputy explicitly declared to abstain.

Florian

LibreOffice in Apps stores
#2

Can you tell us who “attended” the “meeting” please as only 5 votes were recorded so 2 must have been absent.

Thanks

Simon

On Sat, Jun 4, 2022 at 9:57 AM Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org> wrote:

Hello,

Paolo Vecchi wrote on 31.05.22 at 21:03:

TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores, especially Apple and
Microsoft. TDF will work to prepare LibreOffice for the app stores as
soon as possible with the aim of having it published at the latest by
the 1st of July, the day after the trademark licences have come to an end.

TDF will engage with the ecosystem for them to offer help with this.

I ask conflicted members to declare their abstention explicitly.

This vote runs 72 hours from now.

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.

A total of 5 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 3 votes.

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 2 abstain, 0 disapprovals.
Decision: The proposal has been accepted.

One deputy explicitly declared to abstain.

Florian

–
Florian Effenberger, Executive Director (Geschäftsführer)
Tel: +49 30 5557992-50 | Mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

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#3

Hello Simon,

Can you tell us who "attended" the "meeting" please as only 5 votes were recorded so 2 must have been absent.

that's something for the board to decide, how they want to handle this - happy to update the vote template if the board is fine with that.

All board members are on this list, so we can gather some feedback.

Florian

#4

Hi *,

Florian Effenberger wrote:

> Can you tell us who "attended" the "meeting" please as only 5 votes were
> recorded so 2 must have been absent.

that's something for the board to decide, how they want to handle this -
happy to update the vote template if the board is fine with that.

I would support the proposal (independent of the vote at hand).

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

#5

Yeah, I'm content to see that information presented by default.

#6

+1

Paolo

#7

Hello,

Caolán McNamara píše v St 08. 06. 2022 v 15:45 +0100:

> happy to update the vote template if the board is fine with that.
>
> All board members are on this list, so we can gather some feedback.

Yeah, I'm content to see that information presented by default.

Works for me too.

All the best,
Kendy

#8

Good idea, it works for me.

Ayhan YALÇINSOY, Deputy Member of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

#9

Hi all,

Can you tell us who "attended" the "meeting" please as only 5 votes were recorded so 2 must have been absent.

that's something for the board to decide, how they want to handle this - happy to update the vote template if the board is fine with that.

I'm supporting the motion.

Regards,

#10

Hello,

Hello Simon,

Can you tell us who "attended" the "meeting" please as only 5 votes were recorded so 2 must have been absent.

that's something for the board to decide, how they want to handle this
- happy to update the vote template if the board is fine with that.

All board members are on this list, so we can gather some feedback.

I'm fine with that.

Best regards,
László

#11

Hi there,

TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores, especially Apple and
Microsoft. TDF will work to prepare LibreOffice for the app stores
as soon as possible

  As this era ends, I'd like to say how pleased we are at
Collabora to have been able to lead here - to have fronted the
significant initial investment needed to get LibreOffice into the Mac
sandbox, and app-store and to have got it done.

  We made it easier for a large number of users to get
LibreOffice. Later on we charged for the convenience and re-invested
that into improving the Mac version up-stream, and also are pleased to
have donated a significant sum to TDF. We've also explored the
market-demand-curve for convenience, updated the board from time to
time & will of course complete that (as time permits) when the
situation settles.

  I'd like to thank many for their great work here: Tor
Lillqvist in particular, but also Tomaz Vajngerl, Lubos Lunak, Andras
Timar & Miklos Vajna.

  It is also important to give credit and thanks to CIB &
Allotropia for their work on getting a high quality LibreOffice into
the Windows app-store to make it more accessible to people too. I'm
not sure that I have the exact list right here but I'd like to call
out Marina Latini, Vasily Melenchuk, Samuel Mehrbrodt and Thorsten
Behrens for making the goodness happen.

  Looking back at this app-store journey, we have a debt of
gratitude particularly to Simon Phipps, Nicholas Christener, Uwe
Altmann and Marina Latini for their hard work around building better
ways to structure the app-store provision. There are many views on
that - but it is unarguable that they put in a lot of hard work and
love to try to improve LibreOffice which is much appreciated.

  I'd like also to give credit to the PortableApps team for
making LibreOffice available in their app-store. They have done great
work promoting us from early in the LibreOffice project:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/portable-versions/

TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores ...

  Which leads us to other app-stores. Traditionally packaging
has been a great provider of diversity and excellence around
contribution to LibreOffice - starting IIRC with Frederic Crozat's
amazing work to make OpenOffice.org into the first Mandrake Linux
packages waaay back in the day - which much of our Linux packaging is
ultimately built on.

  Anyhow - it was wonderful to have lots of work from Stephan
Bergman and Caolan McNamara at RedHat with help from Robert McQueen at
Endless to get LibreOffice into: https://flathub.org/ "Flathub - An
app store and build service for Linux". As always getting LibreOffice
into a different kind of sand-box sounds trivial, and yet often takes
quite some work.

  Then of course we have the team started by Bjoern Michaelsen
who massaged LibreOffice into the nattily named "Snap Store" -
https://snapcraft.io "the app store for Linux with an audience of
millions." thanks for making that happen Bjoern! And thanks too to
Olivier Tilloy, Heather Ellsworth, Rico Tzschichholz, Marcus Tomlinson
for their patient tending and improvement of the snap app!

  I should mention William Gathoye for his great work making
LibreOffice available in Chocolatey - though at some stage I start to
get fuzzy as to what is, and is not an app-store. Going wider we've
been blessed by many sympathizers mutually promoting LibreOffice and
their brands in software catalogs left and right.

  Anyhow. Lots of good work, much of it already working and
build-able on without immediate bit-rot I hope.

  If the TDF board want to have a bigger packaging team, so be
it. Hopefully it will not negatively impact those who previously did
the work.

  I am somewhat curious as to the budget impact here, and the
real scope of "app-store". In particularly how much time is this
expected to take away from areas such as CTL/RTL, CJK as well as other
things that we are hoping to address with targeted developers ?

  I'm also curious if the plan is for TDF to sell LibreOffice
(in app-stores or elsewhere) and to become a for-pay vendor. Presumably
there is no need to decide immediately on that but I look forward to
the conclusions and rationale over the next month.

  Apologies to those that my memory inevitably missed out, and
go LibreOffice!

  All the best,

    Michael.

#12

Hi all,

always the same not appropriate behavior: capture a thread with a new
subject.

Hi there,

TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores, especially Apple and
Microsoft. TDF will work to prepare LibreOffice for the app stores
as soon as possible

As this era ends, I'd like to say how pleased we are at
Collabora to have been able to lead here - to have fronted the
significant initial investment needed to get LibreOffice into the Mac
sandbox, and app-store and to have got it done.

We made it easier for a large number of users to get
LibreOffice. Later on we charged for the convenience and re-invested
that into improving the Mac version up-stream, and also are pleased to

this means that Collabora used money from the app store:

a) to decide itself how and where to improve the source code for the Mac
version (independent from TDF [board / community])

b) to grow its staff and portray itself as the biggest service provider
for the office suite.

The whole email looks like a laudatory for lifework, but this is only
framing. It should soften the real message and the frustration.

(...)

If the TDF board want to have a bigger packaging team, so be
it. Hopefully it will not negatively impact those who previously did
the work.

I am somewhat curious as to the budget impact here, and the
real scope of "app-store". In particularly how much time is this
expected to take away from areas such as CTL/RTL, CJK as well as other
things that we are hoping to address with targeted developers ?

It looks like that there is no expectation that TDF in-house developers
and staff will be able to work on source code beyond app-store needs.
And the real message is: bad board decision, let the situation as it is now.

And in the end it is a hidden complain about the removal of a source of
income for companies.

But the whole process with the app-store management was based on trust
between TDF and the companies. And since the process about LOOL and the
fork this trust was broken.

It should be obvious now that such decisions could lead to 'unexpected' 
(for the doer) consequences in other areas.

Regards,
Andreas

#13

Seriously, Andreas, can you give us a break from the constant negativity? Michael changed the subject line so as not to hijack the thread and posted a very welcome and on-topic message with thanks, as well as signalling the end of a topic. His message was positive, inclusive of his critics and in no way deserves your continued defamatory insinuations. Please withdraw.

Sincerely,

Simon

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 4:53 PM Andreas Mantke <maand@gmx.de> wrote:

Hi all,

always the same not appropriate behavior: capture a thread with a new
subject.

Am 10.06.22 um 11:51 schrieb Michael Meeks:

Hi there,

Paolo Vecchi wrote on 31.05.22 at 21:03:

TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores, especially Apple and
Microsoft. TDF will work to prepare LibreOffice for the app stores
as soon as possible

As this era ends, I’d like to say how pleased we are at
Collabora to have been able to lead here - to have fronted the
significant initial investment needed to get LibreOffice into the Mac
sandbox, and app-store and to have got it done.

We made it easier for a large number of users to get
LibreOffice. Later on we charged for the convenience and re-invested
that into improving the Mac version up-stream, and also are pleased to

this means that Collabora used money from the app store:

a) to decide itself how and where to improve the source code for the Mac
version (independent from TDF [board / community])

b) to grow its staff and portray itself as the biggest service provider
for the office suite.

The whole email looks like a laudatory for lifework, but this is only
framing. It should soften the real message and the frustration.

(…)

If the TDF board want to have a bigger packaging team, so be
it. Hopefully it will not negatively impact those who previously did
the work.

I am somewhat curious as to the budget impact here, and the
real scope of “app-store”. In particularly how much time is this
expected to take away from areas such as CTL/RTL, CJK as well as other
things that we are hoping to address with targeted developers ?
It looks like that there is no expectation that TDF in-house developers
and staff will be able to work on source code beyond app-store needs.
And the real message is: bad board decision, let the situation as it is now.

And in the end it is a hidden complain about the removal of a source of
income for companies.

But the whole process with the app-store management was based on trust
between TDF and the companies. And since the process about LOOL and the
fork this trust was broken.

It should be obvious now that such decisions could lead to ‘unexpected’
(for the doer) consequences in other areas.

Regards,
Andreas

–

Free Software Advocate

Plone add-on developer

My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog

–

#14

Hi Andreas,

Please, could you be positive from time to time ?
Your mails are very tiring.

Best regards
JBF

#15

Hi Michael,

Thank you to all the companies that contribute to the development of LibreOffice. I sincerely hope that each of them will be able to continue to develop a profitable economic activity around our favorite office suite and that new companies will come to expand its ecosystem.

Best regards
JBF

#16

Hi Michael,

Thanks for this great summary of the broad activity up to this point. You and I have had our differences over the last 22 years in the project, but you have been an inspiration for your rational but fierce advocacy of software freedom, your willingness to have your mind changed (like you did about contributor agreements!) and most of all for your willingness to take significant personal risks in pursuit of your beliefs.

I’m looking forward to the Board’s detailed plan to take on the important role of navigating the bureaucracy of the various app stores and the challenges of maintaining packages for them. I know you and Thorsten have both worked hard at this - hopefully their plan will build on your experiences.

Cheers

Simon

#17

I'm fine with it.

Best,
Gabriel

#18

2022. 06. 08. 11:44 keltezéssel, Florian Effenberger írta:

Hello Simon,

Can you tell us who "attended" the "meeting" please as only 5 votes were recorded so 2 must have been absent.

that's something for the board to decide, how they want to handle this - happy to update the vote template if the board is fine with that.

All board members are on this list, so we can gather some feedback.

Florian

Hi Florian

I'm also fine with this.

All the best

#19

Hello,

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 2 abstain, 0 disapprovals.
Decision: The proposal has been accepted.

One deputy explicitly declared to abstain.

Participants to the vote were (in alphabetical order):

Caolán, Emiliano, Gábor, Kendy, Paolo, Thorsten

Florian

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