Minutes from Board of Directors Meeting 2024-12-16

The Document Foundation - Board of Directors Meeting 2024-12-16

Date: Monday, December 16, 2024

Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa

Notes for the minutes: Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger

In the call:

  • Board - Osvaldo, Eliane, Simon, Paolo, Sophie, László
  • Board deputies - Mike
  • Membership committee - Balázs
  • Membership committee substitutes - Shinji, Andreas
  • Team - Florian, MichaelW, Stephan, cloph
  • Community - Thorsten, MichaelM, Justin, Gabor, Dennis

Representation: Mike for Italo

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 7 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 17:05 UTC (18:05 Berlin time).

Public section

Questions from the community (all) - 10 minutes

  • any questions (Eliane)
    • no questions raised

Budget 2025 (Florian) – 10 minutes

  • collect proposals (Florian)
    • initial version for FOSDEM
    • please send proposals @italo or @directors
  • ESC to handle? (Thorsten)
  • procurement policy (Florian)
    • messages collected
  • explain on ESC possible? (Thorsten)
  • will not be present (MichaelW)
    • can go into details this week
  • busy with small details (Florian)
    • early stage
  • should be high prority (Thorsten)

P2P Project (all) – 10 minutes

  • was a suggestion to talk about here (Eliane)
  • agreed in the middle of the year to give it a high priority (Simon)
  • discussed also in team (Florian)
    • Mike, cloph anything to share?
    • if not postpone to FOSDEM
  • only written proposal pasted here in the chat (Simon)

References mentioned in the chat:

  • had discussions in the community
  • can/will have a meeting at FOSDEM (Eliane)
    • need to do sth here
  • unclear how to proceed (Simon)
    • propose call before FOSDEM
  • opinion of team relevant here (Osvaldo)
  • just a start of discussion (Paolo)
    • agreed in the BoD team to start looking at this
    • wait for first feedback to then describe clearly
  • project starts from zero (MichaelM)
    • good to discuss
    • not necessary staff to do things on their own
  • wondering what the plan is (MichaelW)
    • Simon came up w/ a project manager
  • a lot of existing technology can be used (Simon)
    • gathering fragments and make a proposal to go forward
    • budgeting this was agreed
    • let’s have a conference call in January
    • avoid burning down someones existing job

LibOCon 2025 (Italo, Sophie) – 5 minutes

  • didn’t receive sth for the moment
    • but time still remains
  • separate out LibOCon and TDF conference
    • have a TDF conference in 2025
  • planning to propose Budapesst for 2025 (Gabor)
    • started looking around
    • local community actively participating
  • deadline end of February

FOSDEM meeting planning – (Eliane) – 5 minutes

  • 1st and 2nd of February in Brussels as usual (Eliane)
  • we have the booth there (MikeS)
  • monday after FOSDEM will be BoD+MC+team meeting (Forian)
    • then tuesday BoD only

Public section ends at 17:28 UTC / 18:28 Berlin time.

(Trustee/members-only section and Board and MC-only section omitted from this post.)

Next BoD meeting

  • agreed on January 20 2025 / 17:00 UTC

The meeting ends at 18:24 UTC / 19:24 Berlin time.

Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Session chair)

Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)

1 Like

Some of the text is extremely terse, making it difficult to follow…

What kind of proposals, specifically? And - is it directors who send proposals? Trustees? Staff?

Proceed in what sense, and by whom?

It was an initial discussion, yes, but - it seems to have concluded. What kind of feedback are we waiting for?

Did not understand this sentence. @webmink ?

Separation - as in “different halls/buildings in the same site”? “Different days of the same multi-day event” or “completely different dates and site and maybe country”?

Also, what would be the scope of a TDF conference?

I have sent a message to several mailing lists, with plenty of details. You are in one of the mailing lists, so you should have received the message. Several people have already sent their proposals, which means a budget request with a short description of the proposed activities.

1 Like

Hi!

The next step for the P2P project is to document all the proposed contributions by contacting the proposers, then study them to identify common elements and come back with a proposal for a minimum viable prototype. But moves by some members of the board to redirect the budget allocation set aside for this mean it is now unclear who would do the work, which is probably beyond the scope of a volunteer or ad-hoc activity.

I meant that the extra responsibilities involved in reaching out to all the potential contributors and preparing a recommendation for how to proceed are substantial and would significantly detract from existing job responsibilities for a member of staff, which is why I proposed a budget allocation to pay someone to do this work.

This line minutes a fairly large proposal I have made on a few occasions. I envisage TDF would have two completely seperate conference activities:

  • A LibreOffice conference, which would be organised in the community with TDF support and held regionally in multiple locations each year and would involve presentations purely about LibreOffice technology, its development and its applications;
  • A Document Foundation conference or summit, which would be organised centrally by TDF once per year, would include an Annual General Meeting for all the Trustees and would include public sessions about the Foundation, its mission and its activities.

While it is possible the TDF Summit could co-locate with one of the LibreOffice conferences the events would be administered separately so that the value of the LibreOffice conference involved is not impaired.

1 Like

Hi,

This part sounds not too far from the CCC having an annual review of the activities of the Club (German, with French and English translations) each year at its Congress. Is that what you are having on your mind, or something much different?

Best, Bjoern

1 Like

I’ve not attended CCC so couldn’t be sure, but it’s sounds likely. I’d hope that there would also be space for sessions discussing future plans and if the timing was right also hustings for upcoming elections.

1 Like

Translation and recording will be nice!

Can the LibreOffice community make proposals too or only trustees?

The whole community can make proposals.
For development tenders, the wiki page is here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2025
For the marketing and other activities, Italo’s message is on several list archives like this one:
https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/l10n/2024/msg00241.html
And there is always the possibility to make a grand request: