TDF in-person meeting Board-MC-Team
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Belval University, Luxemburg
Present:
Christian, Jona, Xisco, Eliane, Florian, MichaelW, Italo, Shinji, Guilhem, Olivier, Jonathan, László, Andreas, Stephan, Gabriele, Sophie, MikeS, Osvaldo, Paolo (joined at 10:20), Juan José (initially remotly, then joined at 11:10)
remote: Simon, Pranam, Ilmari, Hossein, Juan José (present in person from 11:10 on), Marco Marinello
meeting starts at 10:30 Luxembourg time / UTC 08:30
Thanks to Paolo for organizing LibOCon20024
MC situation
- brief summary (Florian)
current TDF situation
- brief summary (Florian)
- issues wrt audit, trademark, tenders
- trademark licenses granted at no cost
- urgently needed procurement policy to restart tendering
- Carlo Piana working on a draft
- restart tendering expected for next year
- progress w/ the current board
- propose to act proactively wrt. authorities (Paolo)
- clearly fix the issues
- we have to show that we are working to fix the issues (Paolo)
- get legal advise, plan the steps, then act clearly
- auditor has been contracted (Florian)
- now is contracted and started, will finish in November
- could take longer as maybe arising questions have to be answered
- currently more than 1 million of free reserves
- important to follow rules and regulations (Paolo)
- TDF is doing progress (Florian)
- we are working hard to get back to tendering
- big picture is more complex (László)
- main focus is development
- so in extremis would not mean end of LibreOffice development
- a lot of social problems
- need an expert to facilitate solutions
- my focus is a positive view of future development
- all community want to solve problems
- loosing non-profit status is not a single issue part part of the overall situation
- biggest pro is (dedication to) development
- a lot of interpretation of legal advise
- due different main issues (Italo)
- first: result of what happened in the past
- decided to use a procurement policy not suited for non-profit foundation
- legal opinion came in in 2020
- was written in legal terms and thus difficult to understand to full extent by non-lawyers
- worked on a cleaned version of a huge German document
- turns out that boards exceeded power of representation being detrimental for a non-profit
- first: clean the past
- second: stick w/ the rules for future
- put in place some more regulations to have clear guidelines
- e.g. for elections, tenders
- technical term is: excess of power of representation
- per se not related to Conflict of Interest
- but CoI could add more problems wrt excess of power of representation
- need to work together
- need of an easy to understand communication
- thus more transparency is needed
- in reply to László respect a lot quality and expertise of the developers (Olivier)
- in my view there is a bubble
- we don’t listen to users
- importance of non-developer community is very high
- lack of communication between devs and non-devs
- value very much any input (László)
- CoI is an indicator that sth. is going wrong (Paolo)
- instructing lawyers in the way to get a specific outcome is problematic
- difficult to be involved in the past and solve all these issues and aiming at the same time working on the future of TDF (Sophie)
- not put too much time on the past (Stephan)
- it’s sure this has to been cleaned up
- we have to understand what was going on (Eliane)
- need more transparency (Sophie)
- ask for support in this difficult situation (Osvaldo)
- ask for giving us trust
- one has to understand that not all can be disclosed
- tree jumped in front of Neumann’s car (László)
- so called ‘untouchable’ people are valuable connectors
- wrong approach those to leave gathering behind TDF and its community and project (Stephan)
- not follow blindly narratives (Florian)
- take in consideration the legal situation (László)
- in the past had never rejected a person from membership (Gabriele)
- community has been created as a friendly one
- avoiding drastic measures
- for the first time a person has been rejected and the MC’s decision was contested
- could be scaring for those MC members now in charge
- wording has to be precise
- we have to understand clearly that we are in a big mess (Olivier)
- respectful behavior would facilitate solving issues but not a toxic, aggressive, arrogant attitude
- but excellence is no excuse for misbehaviour
- give all my respect and recognition for their excellence (Paolo)
- but then people started acting in their own commercial interest
- personally I had to suffer from false information spread
- some were intentionally to push out people
- am very sorry for the lost of valuable trustees in the past (Eliane)
- call out people acting in a toxic way (Florian)
- don’t allow trade in code for bad behaviour
- TDF to fix legal issues but urgently culture of behaviour too
…/…
- makes sense to put effort in finding solutions (Hossein)
- maybe CoC policy can act proctively (Guilhem)
- problem is we’re running out of people (Sophie)
- not providing a welcoming environment puts at risk the existing of TDF (Andreas)
- should fix it asap during the current MC term
- need to dedicate time for the project (Eliane)
- not acceptable to get messages in private to convince me to act in a certain direction
- in my view TDF can’t continue in the way it was for the around last years
- is there a follow-up evaluating the reasons why people quit (Guilhem)
- yes, we evaluate the reason if/when given (Gabriele)
- mostly even trying to get one back
- does MC is aware of people e.g. excluded from Ask? (Sophie)
- to prevent people from login/register again
lunch break from 13:05 to 15:25
- think about how to increase participation from trustees (Stephan)
- we have this ‘liaison’ thing (Oliver)
- need to be pushed more (Sophie)
- also with the help/support of MC
- having weekly meeting w/ Brazilian community (Olivier)
- maybe misunderstandings about kind of bylaws having conf. only in Europe (what isn’t true) (MikeS)
- different groups of trustees (Andreas)
- some kind of ‘specializing’, e.g. dev, documentation, translation, etc.
- trustees have an important role wrt right to vote board and MC
- don’t think lack of information is an issue here (Hossein)
- after initial becoming a member there is no more further explanantion how and where to start to get more involved
- takes a long time to get familiar with the processes
- improve familiarizing with TDF and its bodies
- need probably improving communication there
- currently can even be very scaring for (new) trustees
- find ways for a more motivating communication in that regard
- interesting q. from Eliane (Stephan)
- how (interested) people are approached to become a Trustee
- is there a process?
- make people proud to be a member (Olivier)
- having some benefits for members (Gabriele)
- e.g. discount on hardware
- distributed remaining t-shirts (Olivier)
- were asked to take a selfie
- was a great success
- socializing is an important point (Guilhem)
- e.g. 1 week conf. of Debian
- sometimes is because of prestige coming with the membership
- some trustees asked for more involvment about the software (MikeS)
- suggestions proposed getting vanished is a frustrating experience (Olivier)
- invite people to a conf. and pay for travel/acccommodation (Juan José)
- TDF not being a ‘travel agency’ (Florian)
- want to ask: Do you think that the project is organizing as it should do? (Italo)
- TDF to take a proactive steps to originate potential members (Xisco)
- LibreOffice business card (László)
- be more scientific
- Italo started a book/newspaper already
- encourage publishing in scientific papers
- more sharing with a huge ‘scientific/academic world’
- improve conversation wrt collaborate/corporate with universities (Hossein)
- more push/effort needed in this promising looking area
- not forget mobile and pad platform
- have contents in multiple language be in human or AI translations
- sensible invest in localised content
- I introduce the membership topic to mentees (Ilmari)
- opportunity to ask questions
- challenge is having contributed for 6 months before becoming trustee
- LO ambassadors still alive or abandoned because of Covid? (Simon)
- often companies are still in (Italo)
- giant companies investing here
- our market niche 30 billion dollars
- we have serious issues to enter in specific areas
- e.g. OpenSUSEConf. offers opportunity (Sophie)
- wrt. LO Ambassador and universities in India lot of people are interested (Pranam)
- in Mexico students are mostly linked w a company helping to become graduate (Juan José)
- about prestige being a trustee (Olivier)
- TDF to have a plan for trustees and also for marketing
- work together to get a solid branding
- using the already good branding
- others invested much better in branding, e.g. OnlyOffice
- improve market strategy to be more present in industry
- need of a broader plan for the future
- from my experience very low interest from the students for FLOSS (Osvaldo)
- there were attempts in the past but unfortunately the few students left
- young generation is such customized to everything work ‘out of the box’
- lot information to be share (László)
…/…
need of TDF logo
revamp appearance of blogpostings
make more shining TDF / LibreOffice
donations
- summary (Italo)
in person meeting ends at 18:25 Luxembourg time / UTC 16:25