Disclaimer: The following private minutes from the current board are published as is. They have not necessarily been confirmed by the respective session’s chairperson or keeper of the minutes, nor approved by the board.
The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 31 March 2025
Board Meeting Minutes
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa
Notes for the minutes: Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger
In the call:
- Board - Eliane, Sophie, Laszlo, Paolo, Italo, Osvaldo joined at 18:22 Berlin time, Simon joined at 18:36 Berlin time
- Board deputies - Mike
- Membership committee -
- Membership committee substitutes - Andreas, Shinji
- Team - Florian, Stephan,
- Community - MichaelM (Fellow Jitster), Adam Seskunas
Representation: Paolo for Osvaldo (until 18:22)
The Board of Directors at the time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The call is quorate. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
The meeting commences at 16:07 UTC (18:07 Berlin time).
Public section
-
Questions from the community
- refund of [REDACTED: name of company] (Michael Meeks)
- asking for refund so that Collabora can pay for it
- easy to ask for a refund for mediation invoice
- issue is wider than that (Paolo)
- I require just Florian to ask for a refund (Michael Meeks)
- need to evaluate your offer also regarding costs related to (Paolo)
- we are getting a lot of information currently
- want solve issues once for all so it takes time (Sophie)
- how useful to dig for more problems (Michael Meeks)
- how did it come to your idea to contact [REDACTED: name of company] (Paolo)
- actually you are third party to TDF suppliers
- did not disclose any information (Michael Meeks)
- have received only now documents from [REDACTED: name of company] (Italo)
- takes time
- would thank Michael Meeks for solving the problem (Laszlo)
- it is the best option
- I am quite shocked Michael Meeks contacted the supplier (Stephan)
- if supplier disclosed information to you Michael, as a third party, that would be a big problem (Paolo)
- refund of [REDACTED: name of company] (Michael Meeks)
-
Procurement policy
- Board, MC and team: [REDACTED: board-only link]
- Status procurement policy and next steps
- received docs from [REDACTED: name of lawyer or law firm] (Sophie)
- discussed the docs with the team
- we will discuss new proposal later in the call
-
Budget 2025, tenders and role proposals
- Board-only: [REDACTED: board-only link]
- MC and team, redacted: [REDACTED: board-only link]
- Projects proposed so far:
- Extensions for local/remote access of Open Source LLMs/SLMs
- In-person strategy workshop
- Outreachy
- LATAM Conference
- JA community + LibreOffice Asia Conference
- Developer hirings, GUI/macOS focus
- TDF hosted open source LLM (cost unknown)
- Tenders
- Chart axes improvements: Tenders for budget 2024 - The Document Foundation Wiki
- Additions to Writer page breaks: Tenders for budget 2024 - The Document Foundation Wiki
- Attribute style:first-page-number for Draw/Impress: Tenders for budget 2024 - The Document Foundation Wiki
- Improve paragraph tab stops: Tenders for budget 2024 - The Document Foundation Wiki
- Non-graphic background fill: Tenders for budget 2024 - The Document Foundation Wiki
- Two legal items (private part of the call)
- Two HR items (private part of the call)
- have to work for marketing over the next years (Italo)
- two big events (Asia and LATAM) and a lot more smaller ones
- take in consideration travel costs
- need a mechanism to be more precise
- ~18k€ should be enough
- depends on how many events will be organized and respective costs
- help for branding and announcement in Germany staffed by Albanians or in Indonesia, Rania’s company
- did you receive email about Brazilian Road Show? (Eliane)
- yes, but haven’t time to have a closer look (Italo)
- we have money via SPI (Sophie)
- can revise after two years and adjust then (Italo)
- are the minutes from last AB call published? (Michael Meeks)
- not yet, sorry for this (Sophie)
Public section ends at 16:35 UTC / 18:35 Berlin time.
Trustee/members-only section
Nothing for this meeting
Board and MC only section
-
Budget 2025
- Board-only: [REDACTED: board-only link]
- MC and team, redacted: [REDACTED: board-only link]
- Projects not discussed in public:
- [REDACTED: two lines of legal topics]
- [REDACTED: two lines of HR topics]
[Simon joined at 18:36]
-
explaining current status (Florian)
- come to a conclusion even if we execute differently
- suggest to work on the budget to have it ready for the next board meeting in ~4/5 weeks, max. 6 weeks to get it finalized
-
Procurement - (Florian and Italo): 15 minutes
- Anything that is left from the public part
- [REDACTED: 3 lines of legal discussion]
- see an issue w/ the arm length principle (Italo)
- will limit bidders
- possibility vs capacity to tender
- still think some tenders will remain problematic
- suggest to implement policy and then see w/ the first tenders how it goes
- challenge to fill the roles (Florian)
- go try and see
- once we tested the situation then adapt (Paolo)
- could probably get help from AB members (Italo)
- some competences there
- definitely need a repository of resources to help external devs about the LO code
- perhaps a wiki section, writing a book wold be an overkill
- gather information in a place easy to find
- isn’t it true that a lot of devs unemployed (Eliane)
- mentioned in the last meeting there is flexibility with devs (Laszlo)
- possible by that mean to create dev for LO
- around 3-4 companies available, mine included
- need of a few thousands devs for LO
- there is a latency
- very crucial to do out job asap to avoid even bigger gap between LO and e,g, MS, OnlyOffice, etc.
- don’t know about future of LO so it’s a shared effort
- update stats about evolution of dev
- commits frightening
- in Brazil we have lot of devs having their own small company, one-person comps (Eliane)
- I heard about 40 devs in the last meeting
- ecosystem can not save all of them (Laszlo)
- [REDACTED] devs started working for [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]
- support the idea to ask AB (Paolo)
- perhaps any opening with Red Hat, openSUSE, etc.
- interested in finding alternatives
- Linux distributions
- perhaps install LO properly to their customers
- package and ask for funding
- ask inside TDF team for input
- no projects = no funding (millions available)
[REDACTED: 26 lines of legal discussion]
[Osvaldo left at 19:28]
[REDACTED: 16 lines of legal discussion]
-
worried about the future (Eliane)
- we need sth in written that this kind of issues will no more happen
-
we need set conditions (Italo)
- we have to define the rules
- call another lawyer because you don’t like the answer from the former one is just nonsense
- decisions and commitments are done for the project
- it’s not about restructure the whole foundation but solve single ‘bugs’
- documents were ignored e.g. CoI policy (Paolo)
- or misinterpreted when convenient for some
- Have clear documents (fiduciary duties) and execute clearly what is written
-
perhaps useful to have an external ‘supervisory group’ to implement TDF rules (Eliane?)
-
implemented whistleblowing procedure (Paolo)
-
not sure if adding more will solve the problems we faced when forming closed circles (Florian)
-
difficult to stop planned and fault action from only a few (Paolo)
-
if cannot be fixed inside the authorities has to do (Andreas)
-
[REDACTED: 3 lines of legal discussion]
-
Code of Ethics
- document from [REDACTED: name of company]
- Code of ethics and fiduciary duties: [REDACTED: board-only link]
- Deed of agreement: [REDACTED: board-only link]
Next Board meeting meeting is planned for May 12.
The meeting ended at 18:05 UTC / 20:05 Berlin time.