On tone and content in our conversations

Hi Michael, hi all,

it is interesting that you are replying so agitated in a thread where nobody, but Cor and you named your company actually in this context.

But there is this saying: no smoke without a fire.

Am 25.04.23 um 11:37 schrieb Michael Meeks via The Document Foundation Community:

\ 45x45 mmeeks
April 25

Hi Andreas,

On 24/04/2023 21:00, Andreas Mantke via The Document Foundation

would be interesting why you speak about hate of unfair dominance and
manipulation by powers and your love of running a small company
although you currently work in the sales team of a company which
dominates the market.

Unless Cor works for Microsoft (which AFAIK he does not), this claim of market dominance is quite amazing, I’ll assume you mean his work for Collabora:

It is not only the total market share, which is relevant for a situation of unfair dominance and manipulation of power, but also the one in a market segment. This could be e.g. the dominance of developer force for a free OSS product leading to no options for a customer to choose between different contractors.

In my opinion there shouldn’t be barriers for new contractors to join the eco system of LibreOffice/TDF. Every new player in the eco system should be treated equal and fair, especially smaller companies / contractors too.

(…)

So how about dominance of TDF ? TDF is setup to avoid such things, with 1/3rd limits on representation left and right. Sadly in recent times it seems there has been a systematic attempt by a noisy minority to extend this by driving people away (cf. unprecedented and tragic board resignations), -and- then neutering the role of any particularly tough director that remains by creating increasingly expansive and questionable rules to exclude them from vital parts of their statutory role eg. voting on the budget.

The TDF statutes have a general rule to protect the foundation from CoI, not only the 1/3 limit, which you mentioned above.

But if I read your statement above correctly you have no issue with your (potential) customer to decide on your company budget. I have not found a link on your company website yet, where your customer could inform you about their interest to join your budget decision process. But maybe I’m a bit to blind to find that information there.

But as TDF is not a commercial company but a charity it is obvious that such a process is not possible for this entity.

(…)

If instead we draw the market incredibly tightly - say Open Source, Office Productivity Software - then I suspect that LibreOffice from TDF dominates the market.

It looks as if you have an issue with the strength of your brand. But this is not something TDF could take care of.

Regards,
Andreas