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 2024-10-08 BoD+MC+team in-person 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.
TDF in-person meeting Board-MC-Team
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Belval University, Luxemburg
- Present: Christian Lohmaier, Jona Azizaj, Xisco Fauli, Eliane Domingos, Florian Effenberger, Michael Weghorn, Italo Vignoli, Shinji Enoki, Guilhem Moulin, Olivier Hallot, Jonathan Clark, László Nemeth, Andreas Mantke, Stephan Ficht, Gabriele Ponzi, Sophie Gautier, Mike Saunders, Osvaldo Gervasi, Paolo Vecchi (joined at 10:20), Juan José (initially remotely, then joined at 11:10)
- Remote: Simon Phipps, Pranam Lashkari, Ilmari Lauhakangas, Hossein Nourikah, Juan José (present in person from 11:10 on), Marco Marinello
The meeting started at 10:30 Luxembourg time (08:30 UTC)
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The first topic was [REDACTED: legal topic]. Florian provided a brief summary.
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Florian thanked to Paolo for for organizing the conference.
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Florian also provided a brief summary of the Membership Committee situation, before moving on to the situation at TDF, particularly issues regarding the audit, trademark, tenders and trademark licenses being granted at no cost.
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Florian said [REDACTED: legal statement]
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Then he said that TDF urgently needs a procurement policy to restart tendering, and [REDACTED: name of lawyer or law firm] working on a draft.
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Florian talked about unpaid invoices regarding tendering: documents showing clearly who acted badly, and a restart of tendering expected for next year. [REDACTED: legal statement] Paolo proposed to act proactively regarding the authorities, and clearly fix the issues.
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[REDACTED: legal statements]
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Paolo said that we have to show that we are working to fix issues, get legal advise, plan the steps, then act clearly. Florian said an auditor has been contracted and started, and will finish in November. It could take longer as maybe arising questions have to be answered.
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[REDACTED: legal statement]
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Florian said that there are currently more than €1 million in free reserves, and Paolo said it is important to follow rules and regulations.
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Florian added that mistakes can happen but [REDACTED: legal statement]
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Florian said that TDF is making progress and we are working hard to get back to tendering. László said the big picture is more complex, the main focus is development, so in extremis would not mean end of LibreOffice development. He said there are a lot of social problems and we need an expert to facilitate solutions. He said his focus is a positive view of future development, and all in the community want to solve problems. [REDACTED: legal statement] is not a single issue but part part of the overall situation, and the biggest pro is (dedication to) development. There is a lot of interpretation of legal advice.
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Italo said there are different main issues, firstly a result of what happened in the past, where it was decided to use a procurement policy not suited for non-profit foundation. The legal opinion came in 2020, and was written in legal terms and thus difficult to understand to full extent by non-lawyers. He worked on a cleaned version of a huge German document, and it turns out that Boards exceeded power of representation which was detrimental for a non-profit. First is to clean the past and second stick with the rules for future, and put in place some more regulations to have clear guidelines - for example, for elections and tenders. The technical term is: excess of power of representation, per se not related to Conflict of Interest, but CoI could add more problems regarding excess of power of representation. So more transparency is needed.
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Florian said that legal advice was provided [REDACTED: legal statement]
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Olivier replied to László and said he respects a lot the quality and expertise of the developers, but there is a bubble where we don’t listen to users, and the importance of the non-developer community is very high. There is a lack of communication between developers and non-developers.
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László said he values very much any input.
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Paolo said that the CoI is an indicator that something is going wrong, and instructing lawyers in the way to get a specific outcome is problematic.
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Sophie said it is difficult to be involved in the past and solve all these issues and aiming at the same time to work on the future of TDF.
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Stephan said TDF should not put too much time into the past, and Eliane replied that we have to understand what was going on. Sophie said we need more transparency while Osvaldo said the Board needs support in this difficult situation, and people have to understand that not everything can be disclosed.
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László said the so-called “untouchable” people are valuable connectors, while Stephan said the wrong approach is to leave those gathering behind TDF and its community and project.
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Florian talked about, not follow blindly narratives, while László mentioned taking into consideration the legal situation. Gabriele added that in the past a person had never been rejected from membership, but for the first time a person was rejected and the Membership Committee’s decision was contested, which could be intimidating for those MC members now in charge.
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Olivier said that we have to understand clearly that we are in a big mess and respectful behaviour would facilitate solving issues but not a toxic, aggressive, and arrogant attitude - technical excellence being no excuse for misbehaviour.
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Paolo says he gives all his respect and recognition for their excellence but then people started acting in their own commercial interest, and he (Paolo) had to suffer from false information spread, some of which were intentionally to push people out.
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Eliane said she is very sorry for the lost of valuable trustees in the past, and Florian talked about calling out people acting in a toxic way, not allowing a trade-in of code for bad behaviour. He said TDF needs to fix legal issues but urgently culture of behaviour too.
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Hossein said it makes sense to put effort in finding solutions, as the risk of losing non-profit status is a big issue, while Guilhem added that maybe the Code of Conflict policy can act proactively. Sophie said that the problem is we’re running out of people, while Andreas added that not providing a welcoming environment puts at risk the existence of TDF, which should be fixed as soon as possible during the current MC term.
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Elaine said we need to dedicate time for the project, and it is not acceptable to get messages in private to convince her to act in a certain direction. She said TDF can’t continue in the way it was for the last few years.
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Guilhem asked if there is a follow-up evaluating the reasons why people quit the project or stop being a TDF Member, and Gabriele answered that yes, we evaluate the reason if/when given. Sophie asked if the MC is aware of people excluded from, for instance, Ask, which prevents people from logging in/registering again.
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[Lunch break was from 13:05 to 15:25]
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Stephan raised the topic of think about how to increase participation from trustees, and Olivier mentioned the Liaisons - to which Sophie responded that they need to be promoted more, also with the help and support of the MC. Olivier talked about having weekly meetings with the Brazilian community.
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Mike talked about a misunderstanding from some community members about the conference, their assumption being that bylaws mean the conference can only be held in Europe, which isn’t true.
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Andreas said there are different groups of trustees, some of which “specialize”, for example in development, documentation, translations etc. He added that trustees have an important role regarding the right to vote for the Board and MC.
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Improve communication (Hossein)
- after initial becoming a member there is no more further explanation 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
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interesting q. from Eliane (Stephan)
- how (interested) people are approached to become a Trustee
- is there a process?
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make people proud to be a member (Olivier)
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having some benefits for members (Gabriele)
- e.g. discount on hardware
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distributed remaining t-shirts (Olivier)
- were asked to take a selfie
- was a great success
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socializing is an important point (Guilhem)
- e.g. 1 week conf. of Debian
- sometimes is because of prestige coming with the membership
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some trustees asked for more involvment about the software (MikeS)
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suggestions proposed getting vanished is a frustrating experience (Olivier)
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invite people to a conf. and pay for travel/acccommodation (Juan José)
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be aware of potential taxwise probs (Florian)
- TDF not being a ‘travel agency’
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want to ask: Do you think that the project is organizing as it should do? (Italo)
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TDF to take a proactive steps to originate potential members (Xisco)
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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’
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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
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I introduce the membership topic to mentees (Ilmari)
- opportunity to ask questions
- challenge is having contributed for 6 months before becoming trustee
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LO ambassadors still alive or abandoned because of Covid? (Simon)
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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
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e.g. OpenSUSEConf. offers opportunity (Sophie)
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wrt. LO Ambassador and universities in India lot of people are interested (Pranam)
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in Mexico students are mostly linked w/ a company helping to become graduate (Juan José)
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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
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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’
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lot information to be share (László)
The in-person meeting ended at 18:25 Luxembourg time (16:25 UTC)