It’s not so easy. People prefer different channels. Some like e-mail,
other social media, other prefer messengers. We try to bridge channels
when possibe (e.g. Matrix and Telegram), but in the end, with a big
community and lots of users, there is a large amount of mails that is
hard to follow-up. It’s easier when it’s on one channel, but even that
quite tough…
I doubt it’s just about channel preferences;
but to go with concrete examples, what’s your take on these :
(not to rewind the whole story, but to ponder what (would) make TDF immune from such a … silences ?)
That question sort of distracts from the main topic of this thread.
There are many topics where I also would have loved to get feedback from the wider community, e.g. the removal of Emiliano as a former deputy chairperson, the CoI against Paolo, the forced moderation of board-discuss, the open letter regarding LibreOffice Online, the published minutes and decisions, the legal review of an MC decision, various verbal public attacks against community members by some, and many, many more.
The topic you mention, however, has been explained and legally assessed, so there is little I can add. It is also not me who can decide anything here.
The irony of it: The person you refer to was involved in a staff policy. From what I understand, that would have required members of staff to not challenge the board’s decisions in public (and we are aware of an “interesting” situation even when challenging certain topics in private, too). While thankfully this board has a much different approach, I have to assume it would be in the person’s interest if I stay “neutral” on this topic - unless once again, double standards would be applied in our community.
@floeff, I mentionned 2 topics, sharing links to them so that potential readers know what the topics are,
and explicitely mentionned " not to rewind the whole story ", which I could rephrase as “not to distract from the OP here”.
To move forward, it would be nice to exchange concrete info rather vaguely mentionning stuff only people with decade long practice of Sun/OO/LO structures can understand.
So, to rephrase my remark about staying silent :
- how can we clarify (write down somewhere like statutes or inlaws or elsewhere) that the board ultimately decides the results of MC election ?
- how can we prevent MC (as an entity, or its members) not to answer to a board member ?
and in general, what shared process(es) can be put in place to avoid these more or less convenient silences ?
§ 12 II of our statutes say that the election shall be prepared and supervised by the board of directors. This is what happened.
The question was a “trustee question”, not a question from the board. Shall, in your view, trustees who are board members get a preferential treatment?
I think it is good practice to not discuss details about individual membership applications in public. Imagine someone applying, not being qualified enough, and that was debated in public - that would be odd for that person.
sounds like a big stretch with “removed a candidate after he got elected”, but again not to rewind the story : how do you keep track of such Jurisprudenz ? (was there any precedent ?)
and do you prevent such case to happen ?
silence is just no treatment at all, and keeping this limbo all over the place is not a good look. from bugzilla UNCONFIRMED, ghost redmine, desert IRC, to outdated wiki/web pages,
it should be adressed structurally to move forward.
The best way to prevent similar situations would be for members of TDF’s bodies to avoid creating serious legal issues for TDF.
The reasons that made it impossible to get that candidate seated have been explained extensively.
Would adding a challenging phase, to remove candidates that shouldn’t have put forward their candidacy, before the voting phase solve your concerns and allow all of us to move forward?
okay. what do you recommend for that ?
I guess.
at least it will show it’s not just BAU.
again what form could that concretely take ?
are where is that to be consolidated ? statutes ?
There’s nothing structural about those. Those are just a matter of priorities and ordinary, often boring and thankless, work. In the original post by Florian, he called for criticism to be constructive and to not forget to give positive feedback. Your remark ignores these points. Surely you understand there is an endless amount of the type of janitorial work you refer to. I have seen you constantly cherry-picking examples from this endless pool, seemingly framing them as some sort of humiliating examples of neglect.
If you truly want to move the project forward, do you really think mocking and humiliating fellow contributors is the most effective way to go about it?
I believe that the majority of this board has shown that it shouldn’t have been treated as BAU and took an exceptional decision to deal with the issue in the best possible way.
Before reiterating my ideas and the proposals I’ve made in the past I would be very interested in knowing what is your take on it.
well, if it’s available somewhere, please just link here, and let’s see how to make it searchable for future interested readers.
I’ve personally no idea what would be realistic, reasonable, useful …;
(I’m still trying to understand why Bylaws are outdated)
just, limbo is no good look at all;
oh good then.
maybe one day priorities would be shared.
and I’m not gonna follow your outrageous style; and I dont pretend to know anything “most effective”.
just ask yourself why this topic is about “unblock”, and what our fellow users, new comers, contributors, think about the non reponses they constanly face.
and to follow your metaphor, would be nice to improve the way our fellow users are made aware of janitorial tasks, so that they don’t get too much caught in the way.

Can we please tone down this discussion? Otherwise this thread will go havoc.
Like these?
- From the machine room of TDF: A1 confirmations
- From the machine room of TDF: artist social security (KSK)
- From the machine room of TDF: federal bank AWV Z4 filings
- TDF Budgeting How-To (version 20250708-01)
- TDF Board Onboarding How-To (version 20250709-01)
- Training materials on how to run TDF
- Proposal for changes to travel refund accounting process
- The administration of a nonprofit organisation
- A look behind some administrative scenes at TDF

sure, at some point. (then how would they be comprehensovely linked to the wiki? maybe you could tag them “howto”?)
as previously said, I’m far from there yet. (is the ByLaws question adressed in there? is there a howto for the 2026 report?)
the ones I’m able to point so far are more directly user related.
If by shared you mean made public, that doesn’t make any sense as they vary per role, season and initiative. If you mean shared as in collective, I have to make it very clear that your priorities of fast response times and reviewing outdated content align with mine. I am doing a lot of janitorial work all the time and by now I must have fixed a couple of dozen issues pointed out by you. But not everyone shares those priorities and that’s OK. You and I have many ways to get other people involved in the ideas that we come up with, but mocking and humiliation is a very counterproductive way to choose.
I actually did something similar.
See here: Topics tagged training
Whether to use the wiki, the forum or something different is a technical question. We seem to move more and more to Discourse, where we also publish all the minutes and all the decisions.
Which 2026 report do you refer to, the planned budget? This we discussed in the previous board call and we’ll collect budget proposals currently. @italovignoli sent an e-mail to various mailing list to that effect just these days.
We have many topics in our project, some are more user-facing, some are less user-facing. I guess this is also what explains Ilmari’s concern (which I share). We cannot be everywhere, immediately, at the same time. The project is too big, and there is too much cooking in parallel. This is in general a good sign, but TDF is mainly about enabling people to do things. Doing all ourselves, 24/7/365, is quite impossible.
The links I shared is just areas that concern mostly me, I am sure others have similar long lists for their area of the project, be it infra, release management and others. Don’t forget also the less technical roles, e.g. marketing, also here the todo list is possibly quite big.
We’ve been suffering in this project from bad treating of each other for quite a while, and “lost in translation” and “e-mails don’t have mimics” add something too. We need to be careful how we treat one another. People are stretched thin, exhausted, stressed, and we need to come much more back to “safe waters”.
Good advice. Many in the community think that invalidating the MC election results after the election, and after the period to contest it finished - was a totally disproportionate action that has also been shown to be arbitrary. I expect that this could create a serious legal issue for TDF if challenged - there were much simpler ways to resolve the stated concerns. Thankfully Cor is a reasonable person, a founder of the project, with a very long history of contributing positively to LibreOffice and appears not to have pursued this option.
Sadly my encouragement at the time to the board-selected MC which excludes Cor:
Seems to have been ignored - with some quite amazing non-renewals by the MC of long term contributors in good standing - apparently on the basis that they don’t like or agree with their political positions, and with no sight of due process.
As @fpy points out there is a lot of silence from the board, and more from the MC. There are still a good number of un-answered questions from the community around just this sad story, with sadly an ongoing lack of engagement on many other topics in the community that need resolution.
I would suggest that unblocking the situation is more than re-stating one’s own opinion or political position, but a genuine, deep listening, engagement with others - and the forging of wise and durable compromises by the board.
Hi Michael,
it would be great if you checked your statements before making them public as you keep trying to create narratives that have little to no connections with reality. That doesn’t help in unblocking the situation and move forward together.
If you expect that it means that once again you haven’t read the clear and extensive explanations and/or the evidence that your former contractor decided to make public.
It is then unclear to me why you started this post by re-stating opinions and political positions that do not take in consideration the well documented facts that are available also to you.
Of course and naturally starting from a common understanding of the facts.
“Compromises” are in my opinion the wrong approach when talking about legal entities that must act following laws and regulations of their respective jurisdictions.
Due to past experiences I would consider a wise approach to have clear and unambiguous written agreements vetted by the respective legal teams so that there would be less room for surprises down the line.