[private MINUTES] 2025-02-03 BoD+MC+team in-person

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 2025-02-03 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.

Joint meeting 2025-02-03
Board - MC - Team joint meeting
at ICAB, Brussels

Participants

On site

  • Board - Eliane, Paolo, Osvaldo, László, Sophie, MikeS
  • MC - Pranam, Andreas, Marco, Stéphane
  • Team - Florian, Heiko, MichaelW, Jonathan, Olivier, Cloph, Xisco, Stephan

Simon sends regrets, might join later today

Remotely

  • Board - Italo
  • MC - Balazs, Shinji
  • Team - Guilhem, Hossein, Ilmari

meeting starts at 10:34 Berlin time / 09:34 UTC

  • welcome to all, glad to have you all here (Eliane)
  • brief on current TDF situation (Florian)
    • audit 2022
    • audit 2023
  • [REDACTED: 3 lines of legal statements]
  • evidence that TDF is in a very severe situation for real (Eliane)
    • need to fix the problems
  • q. about any given deadlines as MC might also be responsible wrt their supervisory role? (Andreas)
  • two deadlines (Florian)
    • [REDACTED: 2 lines of legal statements]
  • we are not chasing people but following rules to clean up problems (Eliane)
  • [REDACTED: 2 lines of legal statements] (Florian)
  • reporting about a similar case in Brazil (Eliane, Olivier)
    • sad outcome wrt not correct handling of false information spread
  • in the meanwhile TDF situation is known at least among FOSS community (Florian)
  • how to inform other/all trustees about the situation (cloph)
    • lacking information
    • perhaps a timeline of issues/events could be helpful
  • denying problems is not helpful (Hossein)
    • improve communication about issues
  • different levels of information available (Stephan)
    • difficult to see the whole picture for everybody
  • clear statements from lawyers were ignored or even the opposite was done then (Florian)
  • several people expressing in general their opinions and points of view; till 13:00 Berlin time
  • additional explication from auditor has arrived yesterday (Florian)
    • to be checked when shared with trustees
  • we as a board did as much as possible to fix the issues (Osvaldo)
    • unfortunately every attempt of clarifying creates much noise and mess
    • my hope is to real focus on the severe problems
    • climate inside the community is so horrible and toxicity has to stop immediately
  • suggest that everybody commits to concrete actions and plans (Olivier)
  • current TDF situation should be a severe alert to all of us (Florian)

lunch break 13:15 - 14:20 Berlin time

  • projects
    • community bylaws
    • p2p
    • devs hiring
  • budget wise cleaning up of projects (Florian)
  • hire someone to dev UI (Ilmari)
  • Base (Ilmari)
  • Could get funding from EU possibly for Base or other projects (accessibility?) as long as they are well “packaged” to be presented for funding. (Paolo)
  • agree with Base (Hossein)
    • huge amount of work is needed
    • there are alternatives for Base in the FLOSS
  • Python support
    • MS doing a lot of advertising of Python
    • LO had Python since many years, but needs polishing
  • q. about mobile app during FOSDEM (Mike)
  • invest in inside knowledge, help tendering (Sophie)
    • a11y: fund accessible from French Gov
  • Sophie: Funding from DINUM (FR Interministerial Digital Directorate) for LA SUITE (http://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/)
  • AI: improvement of API, LLM (Osvaldo)
    • focus on language, translation
  • LLM integration (Osvaldo)
  • unfortunately still not possible to collect donations via PIX (Stephan)
  • false narrative of hiring devs at TDF means competition w/ ecosystem (Florian)
  • enough dev work for all (Paolo)
  • very large areas for many devs (Hossein)
  • we have a duty to act for the benefit of TDF, the legal entity (Paolo)
  • money is not the problem, if we need more money we can find ways e.g. European Commission (Paolo)
  • Michael and Jonathan could do the technical assessment on tenders (Jonathan)

coffee break 15:48 - 16:04 Berlin time

  • budget-wise hiring of 1-4 devs would be possible (as an example) (Florian)
  • cleaning up old projects from budget
  • already included in budget: graphic design work for consistent, modern, appealing look (Stéphane)
    • could cover:
      • ideas:
        • splash screen / guide front page
        • release announcement graphic
        • QA blog graphic
        • dev blog graphic
        • donation banner
        • website graphics
        • marketing materials (flyer, poster…)
        • conference material
        • documentation / guides
        • team wiki pages
  • Italo already has community members in mind to do this kind of paid work.

coffee break 17:50 - 18:05 Berlin time

  • closing words (Florian)

meeting ends 18:20 Berlin time