Hello,
me and many others from the team would be very happy to finally see the developer proposal come to life.
We believe that would do a lot of good for TDF, its mission, and the LibreOffice community at large. It's been taking a long time, so if the board is ready to vote and trusts the team to handle the project, my teammates and I would be more than happy to support these efforts.
Florian
Hi Florian,
Hello,
me and many others from the team would be very happy to finally see the developer proposal come to life.
We believe that would do a lot of good for TDF, its mission, and the LibreOffice community at large. It's been taking a long time, so if the board is ready to vote and trusts the team to handle the project, my teammates and I would be more than happy to support these efforts.
I'm very pleased to see that the team supports the efforts that many of us put in this proposal.
All directors also expressed their support for the proposal which, as agreed, has been finalised by both myself and Jan so I'm sure the community is expecting that they follow through with their votes.
Florian
Ciao
Paolo
Hi all,
I have unsubscribed from this mailing list, but it was brought to my attention that Paolo claims that I have signed off the latest version of the Developers proposal.
That is not true. That version is not balanced, and Paolo’s unwillingness to find balance there was one of the main reasons to my resignation.
For many years, TDF was celebrated as an organization that is always able to find balance of many interests. I’m afraid this is not true any more - which is very sad 
Wish you all good luck.
All the best,
Kendy
Hi Kendy, hi all,
Hi all,
I have unsubscribed from this mailing list, but it was brought to my
attention that Paolo claims that I have signed off the latest version
of the Developers proposal.That is not true. That version is not balanced, and Paolo’s
unwillingness to find balance there was one of the main reasons to my
resignation.
I looked into the latest version, of the proposal for the in-house
developer, you and Paolo worked on together (version 3.0)
(https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zfoRygFbBgJZZcj?dir=undefined&openfile=1138204)
and I couldn't find a valid reference for your claim. If I didn't
overlook one of the many comments in the document there was only an
incongruity about the addition of one sentence in the paragraph about
the concerns expressed by commercial contributors. Your and Paolo's
comments in all other paragraphs of the document showed that you agreed
on the text.
Regards,
Andreas
Hi Andreas,
I was actually about to send out an even clearer explanation of what was left to do.
Your comments anyway show that the information is readily available to all to disprove the accusation.
Ciao
Paolo
Hi all,
That is not true. That version is not balanced, and Paolo’s unwillingness to find balance there was one of the main reasons to my resignation.
That's a very interesting statement which doesn't seem to be supported by publicly available facts and evidence.
Last public comments for version 2.9 show that we were making good progress in a very civilised way:
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00993.html
As agreed we had the proposal checked by our legal counsel, fixed very amicably a few more things and up to that point all was fine.
There was only one last sentence left which created some discussions:
"TDF in-house developers will not compete with commercial contributors and will not develop alternative implementations of Open Source projects actively maintained by LibreOffice volunteer or corporate contributors – like Collabora Online, mdds, or cppunit."
I tried in various way to point out that if any third party organisation, being members of the ecosystem or not, want to impose limitations on TDF's employees or other general activities then an employment proposal is not the best place to put that limitation.
There is also the issue that you can't just impose limitations on TDF just like that and by doing it while being affiliated by the interested party of that limitation and specifying the product in questions doesn't really look good either.
You tried several variants of sentences that were trying to achieve the same results and you even received clear legal advice against it.
I've also pointed out that we agreed months ago on the relevant text necessary to handle these exceptions. As from page 1 of the proposal:
"Eventual limitations related to tasks, areas, projects or bugs on which the in-house developers should not work, eg. third parties are already engaged with them, shall be regulated through separate agreements and relevant communications between TDF and the third parties."
It seems like a win-win agreement between TDF and a third party that tackles the specific issues was not what you were looking for.
Between our constructive discussions and your resignations there were only those 2 sentences.
If the above is the reason why you resigned then it's quite sad as, while we had some very frank exchanges of opinions, we generally found ways forward and workable compromises. It is also sad that you came out with that comment as your own emails and comments in the document clearly contradict you.
All the previous versions with comments can be seen here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zfoRygFbBgJZZcj
The latest version is here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB
For many years, TDF was celebrated as an organization that is always able to find balance of many interests.
This developer proposal shows that it has been hard and it took a disproportionate amount of time but at the end the document is quite balanced.
The "many interests" that cannot and should not be included in such a proposal will be discussed and drafted in separate dedicated documents as we agreed months ago.
I’m afraid this is not true any more - which is very sad
I'm afraid that one's belief that some clauses make a document more balanced is a legal minefield for someone else.
If your definition of "balanced" is to add rules and limitations that make some third parties more equal than others then it seems like you skipped meetings that clarified concepts about fiduciary duties and regulations.
Fortunately you had a fellow member of the board that helped you out in seeing these issues even if you didn't seem to have appreciated it.
Seeing the lack of votes from directors that publicly supported the proposal and agreed on the way forward it seems like you email had the effect to get directors to pause their vote while checking if your statement had any connection with reality.
By now directors should have verified and confirmed that what I stated is correct and they'll show their support with their votes.
Ciao
Paolo
Hi all,
Paolo Vecchi wrote:
> We believe that would do a lot of good for TDF, its mission, and the
> LibreOffice community at large. It's been taking a long time, so if the
> board is ready to vote and trusts the team to handle the project, my
> teammates and I would be more than happy to support these efforts.
As pointed out (I believe at considerable length) during the board
call on Monday, November 14, this proposal is not ready to vote on.
All directors also expressed their support for the proposal which, as
agreed, has been finalised by both myself and Jan so I'm sure the community
is expecting that they follow through with their votes.
It is frankly shocking to read this statement. There has been support
for the idea in general, but certainly not for this specific version.
Paolo was very clearly aware of that, even more so, since we've got
the topic with lots of questions on the Monday call agenda.
Best,
-- Thorsten
Hi all,
I have the impression that some live in a different reality or simply don't check things before coming up with statements.
Hi all,
Paolo Vecchi wrote:
We believe that would do a lot of good for TDF, its mission, and the
LibreOffice community at large. It's been taking a long time, so if the
board is ready to vote and trusts the team to handle the project, my
teammates and I would be more than happy to support these efforts.As pointed out (I believe at considerable length) during the board
call on Monday, November 14, this proposal is not ready to vote on.
Monday the 14 you have shown disrespect for the work put on it for several months by several people including Jan.
As agreed at LibOCon we went to the process and the proposal is ready to be voted:
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00993.html
You got a full explanation that you fully ignored.
Your statements look or purposefully misleading or the result of lack of validation of what you say.
All directors also expressed their support for the proposal which, as
agreed, has been finalised by both myself and Jan so I'm sure the community
is expecting that they follow through with their votes.It is frankly shocking to read this statement. There has been support
for the idea in general, but certainly not for this specific version.
It is frankly shocking that we have a chairman so disconnected with reality and that doesn't even check facts before coming out with comments that could influence the voting intentions of other directors.
So you are fully aware that the final version went to our legal counsel, you even popped up with a very peculiar comment to our legal counsel in support of changes that turn out not to me aligned with laws and regulations and as agreed the version that came out of the legal consultation was the version to be voted.
* not ready for vote (Thorsten)
* Kendy resigned because no compromise was reached
It seems you are supporting a false statement without even checking the facts.
If you support that then it means you are supporting the fact that he resigned because I tried to convince him that what he wanted was against laws and regulations.
Legal consultations also confirmed that.
Your email to our legal counsel has shown that you were interested in getting some very problematic sentences into the document and that's not a behaviour an objective and impartial chairman should have.
* stop here and restart, from a clean slate
You had 9 months to provide your input and you imposed Jan so that we could spend months in reviewing a document that Jan wanted to change completely to satisfy the desires of a member of the ecosystem and then we finally worked to to make it more "balanced" (while I was trying to show him that it had to be also legally sound).
* if quick action is required instead, tender out as contracted work?
How about recognising that your understanding of the proposal is way out of date and just vote on it so that we can move on?
Your actions and statements make it look like that you had no intention of having this proposal passing and it makes it look like you intervene on a matter on which you have little understanding about its progress.
Then we also have statements from Cor:
* I'm still missing information (Cor)
Where were you in the past 9 months and what information?
* asked comments from Mike
Then you should read the answers we have been provided before complaining.
You asked 2 questions. One is obvious to all and I've answered again here in an easier way to read it as you didn't understand or missed the legal advice provided:
I tried in various way to point out that if any third party organisation, being members of the ecosystem or not, want to impose limitations on TDF's employees or other general activities then an employment proposal is not the best place to put that limitation.
The second question has been discussed back in April 2021 and it's marginally linked with potentially serious issues raised in tdf-internal for which I'm still waiting your feedback but they are not related to the proposal.
It's years that you keep saying that even if you are fully aware of laws and regulations.
* and I had expected a negative advice on the text on page 1
* properly created agreement on such limitations nightmare
* from legal aspects and organizational wise
* very different from contract on properly tendered project
And here you confirm that you prefer an easy but legally troublesome sentence in an employment proposal than a clear win-win situation for both parties.
It seems like unfortunately we have a chairman and a director that failed to check the information available and prefer to spend board time and money hoping to get an "easy" way to impose limitations to TDF.
That doesn't look good at all. I hope they will realise that very soon and change their behaviours.
Here's the sentence once again:
"Eventual limitations related to tasks, areas, projects or bugs on which the in-house developers should not work, eg. third parties are already engaged with them, shall be regulated through separate agreements and relevant communications between TDF and the third parties."
If third parties do not want to have a clear agreement with TDF then, IMHO, something is wrong.
Paolo was very clearly aware of that, even more so, since we've got
the topic with lots of questions on the Monday call agenda.
Last Monday I've made you explicitly aware that it was my intention to send out the vote as we went through all the stages we agreed.
I've explained you, once again, where we were with the proposal but you simply didn't bother validating the information provided and you carry on with a false narrative.
Andreas demonstrated that it doesn't take long to check things out and it's all public.
You confirmed the agenda even if you had the knowledge that we are ready to vote and the vote was already out anyway.
Your actions once again confirms your total disregard to facts and agreement and I don't think it's a behaviour suitable for a chairman.
Best,
-- Thorsten
Ciao
Paolo
Hi,
All directors also expressed their support for the proposal which, as
I'm sure I did not. I mentioned items that make it questionable and definitely not fit to help our community with developers.
Cor
Hi Cor , hi all,
Hi,
All directors also expressed their support for the proposal which, as
I'm sure I did not. I mentioned items that make it questionable and
definitely not fit to help our community with developers.
it's really hard to understand, why were not able to give constructive
feedback to the work group (Kendy and Paolo) for about 9 long month or
more. The last version of document was finished by them weeks ago. The
check by the legal adviser has been done. A lot of resources from board
and the community has already spent on this task. Such a behavior is an
insult of the community, of your fellows and it is not appropriate to
the function and the duties of a director of a (charity) foundation.
It is really sad to see such an understanding of the duties of a
director in a TDF body.
I expect that you rethink about your duties and take part in the vote
about the in-house developer proposal asap! You explained that you are
in the board, because you represent the community (and not to dodge
decisions).
Regards,
Andreas
Hi all,
a vote was called under the pretense of consent, for a proposal that
did not leave the assigned working group with an approval.
That is in violation of good practice (to say the least), and it was
perfectly ok for directors to leave it on the table (instead of
working through 16 pages of text, without change history, to make an
informed decision).
Best,
-- Thorsten
Dear all,
Hi all,
a vote was called under the pretense of consent, for a proposal that
did not leave the assigned working group with an approval.
The vote has been called on a proposal which followed the agreed at LibOCon and in various email exchanges within the board and with our legal counsel.
That is in violation of good practice (to say the least), and it was
perfectly ok for directors to leave it on the table (instead of
working through 16 pages of text, without change history, to make an
informed decision).
The chairman is still trying to use false information to justify his appalling behaviour.
The notes in the various version of the documents show that what Jan says and what our chairman uses to derail the process is false.
The chairman is also ignoring the deputy chairman confirmation that the process has been followed as agreed.
If the chairman is sure of what he states then he would have no issues in releasing the exchange of emails we had with our legal counsel where he never challenged the steps we should follow and that the sentence that Jan wanted to add was actually against laws and regulations.
Best,
-- Thorsten
Ciao
Paolo