As one of its tasks, the current board is looking into decisions and meeting minutes taken in the past that were not yet published according to our statutes. What follows are previously private minutes from the 2024-06-24 meeting of the current board, which are now made public. Some elements in the minutes might be redacted as there is a need for confidentiality, or as individuals are mentioned in specific contexts.
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.
In-person board meeting
June 24, 2024 in EineWeltHaus Munich
On site:
- Board - Eliane, Italo, Simon, Laszlo
- Deputies - Mike
- Team - Florian, Stephan
Remote:
- Board - Sophie
- Deputies - Paolo
Representation: Paolo for Osvaldo
6 board members present or represented
Quorum: 4
Meeting begins at 10:09 local time (08:09 UTC)
Agenda:
1. Compensation for employees and freelancers, contract [REDACTED]
- [REDACTED: 24 lines of HR discussion]
2. Finalize and approve procurement policy
- think to have one only by end of october (Simon)
- some of [REDACTED: name of lawyer or law firm]'s proposals could have been implemented a long time ago (Paolo)
- some would not be happy w procurement policy (Florian)
- far away from being back to tenders
- run tenders in a proper way (Paolo)
- same access for all potential bidders
- the sooner the better
- show to the authorities the will to improve
- maybe last comments for next board meeting (Florian)
- shift and shift and shift not a good solution
- get it done mid september (Simon)
- hiring new developers (Laszlo)
- need a strong base in LO development
- do not know future of LO
- create level playing field
- e.g. LO or CO online, peer-to-peer thing
- urgent problems w LO code base
- one opinion expressed: think bigger instead of solving specific cod problems
- what is the budget for this area
- last budget hat 800k€ (Florian)
- hiring were planned in before
- only small ecosystem
- hard to achieve finding more people
- share EU money (Laszlo)
- outsource some part of tender money?
- not only give away money (Florian)
- need solve pending things
- TDF do stuff by itself
- finding mistakes blocked the process (Laszlo)
- process slowed down
- contest in the market
- audit failed in part because of not proper procurement (Florian)
- Paolo thought the right thing
- CoI wrt procurement are very clear (Paolo)
- aiming to growing ecosystem, 8, 9, 10, …
- currently only 1.5
- help other organisations
- create level playing fields
- healthy competition needed
- avoid dominance of only one or only a few
- written statement board to validate
- supporting outsourcing (Simon)
- give ESC as an advisory board
- avoid TDF to be seen only as a host of money (Simon)
- seek for working together with several (FOSS) organizations (Paolo)
- share, exchange developement
- maintain LO desktop vs vision new (promissing) ways (Simon)
- thus is problematic keeping procurement inhouse
- stay on middle ground will make us loose
- horribly missed train on LO online (Florian)
- TDF actively hindering to invest in that
- [REDACTED: sensitive statement]
- balance what TDF can do and ecosystem does
- TDF to drive the process
- create a collaborative LO (Simon)
- envision and drive it
- TDF never had a vision
- what big picture/direction TDF to take
- good to have a vision especially now (Paolo)
- starting exploring what we have explored
- desktop is not dead
- look at different devices, tablets, etc.
- what could work for a collaborative platform
- get new knowledge/skills on the ways
- avoid same mistake we have seen w LO online
- face of TDF (Laszlo)
- growing money in the bank
- waiting to spend is a big problem
- 30-40 developers is a huge asset of TDF
- 20% decrease of kowledge base affecting LO future negatively
- public opinion of developers
- use one year income to spend immediately
- connect developers and volunteers
- hundreds of commits vs only small number of fixes
- not fair to speak about only 1.5 ecosystem comp.
- redhat, nisz
- losing users in Brazil to OnlyOffice (Eliane)
- need social media
- unable to promote LO
- very european centric (Sophie)
- adress e.g. refugees
- meet people needs
- did nothing during the corona pandemic in this regard
- have highest downloads, donations ever (Mike)
- privacy aspect is important and valued
- hard to get community in
- get it more ecited and attracted
- desktop no more interesting (Simon)
- no market to exploit
- envisioning the future of TDF is more important
- advertise for our ideals like privacy, ODF, open source, etc. (Florian)
- only we wrt this on the market
- give sth exciting
need to catch up - ecosystem currently is not diverse
- need for growing it
- need to spend money to do
- to sth good w the money people give to us voluntarily
- first time we can breath in the board for a long time
- make use of the people being still enthusiastic
- can’t pay development (Eike)
- can do (Florian)
- at least spent it for tenders
- let’s find here and now what we can do
- [REDACTED] spend 2000 k€ for online (Laszlo)
- e.g. issue fixed after 13! years
- easy hacks
- create code contributors
- not a healthy code contributors community
- need community of ‘free software’
- cf. Italo’s talk about ‘Takers’
- [REDACTED] know very well what’s good for LO
- overlooked strategy for the project (Italo)
- use LO ‘gratis’ but, please contribute
- we being quite defensive, others more ‘agressive’
…/…
- TDF was created and shaped in the light of threats that do not more exist today (Simon)
- adapt TDF to the current situation
- should nag people constantly to join the project
- e.g. sponsors should not get the impression theit money buy them a vote
- in some way we are stuck
- need maintainers (Italo)
- recreate kind of ‘light’ structure
- now having ‘liaison’
- badly need access universities
Motion:
TDF to request [REDACTED: name of lawyer or law firm] to resume preparation of a procurement policy, with a goal of delivery for the LibreOffice Conference in Luxemburg
No opposition, no abstentions
- Lunch break -
Continued: 14:45
3. Trademarks, tenders and related topics
- explaining situation / status quo (Florian)
- break down to three issues (Simon)
- #1 trademark licensing
- #2 tendering
- #3 subsequent issues related of #1/#2
- [REDACTED: 3 lines of legal statements]
- wrt to TM two proposals on the table (Simon)
- [REDACTED: 5 lines of legal statements]
- important to know who created the issue (Florian)
- app store sales (Paolo)
- 200 k€
- [REDACTED] fair base to start negotiation
- income from benefitting a lot from TM
- controversial discussion Paolo vs Simon
- propose to ask involved partys for the numbers (Florian)
- directors closed out from discussion (Laszlo)
- try to keep distance from the problem
- risk of getting paralyzed
- suicide for TDF or forking
- TM protected all of us from the takers
- [REDACTED: name of lawyer or law firm] report not based on all relevant items
- outcome of audit was to ask for more input wrt TM
- get the impression some representing ecosystem vs other representing TDF (Eliane)
- fighting for eternities
- hearing that some want punish [REDACTED: name of company] (Simon)
- [REDACTED: name of company] brought TDF in a very problemativ situation (Florian)
- [REDACTED: two lines of legal statements]
- representing no one (Simon)
- acting only in the interest of TDF
- want to hear legal advice on this topic (Eliane)
- want to construct a possible solution
- rewrite TM license once the issue is solved (Italo)
- [REDACTED: 7 lines of legal discussion]
- changed situation was not followed up in TDF (Italo)
- think all essential items are on the table (Florian)
- not helpful to spend more money, time and endless discussions
- TDF being slow some options already gone
- important to document that TDF did sth
- [REDACTED: 8 lines of legal discussion]
- not low estimate community contribution (Sophie)
- there is more than only code
- [REDACTED: 3 lines of legal discussion]
4. Budget (at 17:10 local time, 15:10 UTC)
- really should finalize budget (Florian)
- at least have a scratch very soon
- CRA ? (Paolo)
- nothing to do here from TDF side (Italo)
- TDF = stewart
- can have a political decison to spending money
- pro bono experience
- standard of security as a reference for OSS
5. [REDACTED: legal topic]
6. Other topics
- State of audit affairs
- expect to need more time
- waiting for the concrete offer
- start would be in late summer
- communicate w the board as it is responsible (Simon)
- audit evaluates what the board did (Paolo)
- supervisory role of the MC
- my reading too (Sophie)
- strongly recommend with previous auditor (Florian)
- CoI
- MC legal topic
- explaining the situation (Paolo)
- missing legal advice (Simon)
- [REDACTED: legal statement]
7. 1800 Munich time: [REDACTED: name of lawyers or law firms]
[not minuted on purpose]