Questions on NLnet fundings with the LibreOffice name

Hello,

in another thread, @PaoloVecchi added four links that caught my attention:

I would love to understand more about these projects.

One thing that is a bit irritating is that the project pages use the LibreOffice brand sometimes in a, let’s call it, “creative way”. We all should stick to the trademark policy TDF has put in place and to which a Guidelines and Best Practices wiki page exist.

That aside, I am curious to learn more about the projects.

First: Is the decision to freeze the LibreOffice Online repository compatible with seeking for funding with another nonprofit for LibreOffice Online? Shouldn’t the repository be opened again before?

Second: If I recall correctly, one of the proposals in a Munich in-person meeting was to send a bigger chunk of TDF’s funds to NLnet so they could do LibreOffice projects. I remember a heated debate around this and now I wonder if the funds would have been used for these projects. NLnet was mentioned in an earlier board meeting already, but I didn’t find further details.

Let’s also look at the projects individually:

NLnet; LibreOffice P2P

In the description, WASM seems to be refered to as “The improved LibreOffice Online”, even if the project ran for two years after “an Online move” and after LibreOffice Online was frozen as per a board decision using the back-then chairperson’s tie-breaking vote. I see the TDF product name and trademark, and the TDF wiki as “The project’s own website”, so maybe TDF should start to consider to actively do something with the code?

NLnet; Collabora Online/LibreOffice Accessibility

This project started more than two years after “an Online move”. It mentions Collabora Online, but clearly shows a “LibreOffice Online” logo, more than two years after LibreOffice Online was frozen as per a board decision using the back-then chairperson’s tie-breaking vote. Can anyone unwind the confusion?

NLnet; LibreOffice/Collabora Online typography

Paolo Vecchi was put under a conflict of interest on LibreOffice Online. This is already very problematic for several reasons. One interesting detail here are comments in a public board meeting like:

  • Paolo’s personal and business situation ignored so far
    • failed to establish a business relation with Collabora and CIB

The typography proposal shows the company another board member is affiliated with as running the project. Unless we want to establish double standards, there is something really wrong here that we need to address urgently. Why would one board member have a conflict, but not another one who seeks funding using the LibreOffice name and an edited logo? In addition: Should that board member have voted on the CoI declaration, it is very likely void altogether.

NLnet; LibreOffice CRDT

How does this proposal differ from the p2p proposal TDF budget 75.000 € for one year later? Do they complement each other? Are they mutually exclusive? The NLnet project seems to have been in place a year before the TDF proposal was made, but I don’t see any reference to it, so I am curious.

Thanks
Florian

Hi Florian,

Please do see my reply in that thread; presenting speculation as fact is deeply unhelpful as always. I expect the usage there can be easily fixed.

Your question about seeking funding based on the wrong brand is based on Paolo’s speculation, and did not happen.

Not sure I was there, but the minutes seem clear:

* lobby EU to use LibreOffice everywhere
  * as domestic technology with european values
  * and complement that perhaps with EU grant money (to possibly tender out in smaller chunks, c.f. NLnet)

To those unfamiliar with Latin. cf. there clearly means ‘compare with’. “see this other thing that works well and do similarly”. Or to put in simpler words: nlnet rocks - why doesn’t TDF do something similarly great ?. I don’t recall being there, but that’s what the minutes say to me. I would hesitate to force some horribly negative meaning on them.

The rest of your mail supposes that the individual proposal submitters have used and/or edited these logos and sought funding with them. That seems to be far from the case. Instead a wonderfully positive non-profit and well established participant in the FLOSS space has tried to promote LibreOffice and now gets it in the neck from TDF in public.

Regards,

Michael.

It remains vastly unclear what was funded actuallly, because there is repeatedly LibreOffice (incl. Online) mentioned, in the text, in the URLs, and in the the title. Additionally, if you check the guidelines in the wiki, there are logo modifications used that should not exist at all. Given the representatives of the companies to whom the funding seems to have been awarded have been in the board, some with a dedicated responsibility for trademarks, this is surprising.

My question is based on what I saw on the website myself.

No, you weren’t, and it seems there are no minutes of this conversation. It was a proposal by a current board member to send funding to NLnet instead of spending it directly as TDF. Me and others were quite concerned when we heard the proposal, and seeing the funded projects today, makes this proposal even more strange.

Don’t worry, Simple English is enough: It was another meeting.

Because some former board members - you can read who voted in favor - decided to “freeze” Online. If TDF freezes the repository it cannot do much with Online.

Again: I am not talking about NLnet.

Let’s see with images what “did not happen”

Request of clarifications here:

That’s funding that went to Laszlo’s company for a contribution related LibreOffice. It is very nice that Laszlo got funded for it but even there I do not understand why the LibreOffice logos are there and point to his web site. Why not putting his company logo pointing to his web site instead of misleading the readers that might have clicked to go to the LibreOffice web site?

Then why does Laszlo mentions Collabora Online?
Are the funds used to improve LibreOffice which in turn benefits also Collabora Online or the project was funding 2 separate typography issues and he forgot to put the Collabora Online logo?

This is an interesting one as it has the LibreOffice logo, it points to TDF’s wiki but, despite receiving funding using the LibreOffice brand, it was then marketed as being an allotropia product then re-branded ZetaOffice. Thorsten has been offered to present the project officially to TDF to see if we could fund it but he refused, the reasons became clear when news of Collabora Productivity came out during a board meeting in 2022, Michael’s presentation at FOSDEM in 2023 and then the acquisition of allotropia closed the circle.

The funding ran from August 2020 to October 2022, did anyone see these contributions in LibreOffice OnLine?

Did allotropia informed NLNet that they will not use the funds for LibreOffice OnLine as it was forked by Collabora Productivity into Collabora Online in September 2020?
If so, why they didn’t update the page to show where the money actually went?

Also here allotropia got funding in 2023 to develop what seems to be a community project, it even points to the LibreOffice web site but I have no idea if that’s supposed to be part of LibreOffice for the benefit of the community.

Nobody ever mentioned that “LibreOffice” was running that project and that LibreOffice would have had these feature thanks to NLNet funds.

So as we can see it “did not happen” but just to make sure that it really did not happen we should check with NLNet to see if they also agree that it did not happen and it was all a misunderstanding.

Ciao

Paolo

Hi y’all,

seems some people at TDF are getting increasingly shrill & aggressive around trademarks - and sadly much of what is presented here is very light on facts. On the bits that have my name mentioned:

This is LibreOffice, and all the code that was funded during this project is included in the core repository. If I may direct attention to the project start date: that was predating the (Paolo-induced) walk-out for LibreOffice Online; the project application was written even earlier.

Also here, it would help to establish facts, before jumping to conclusions. Work funded under this project is still underway, but what’s ready can be found in the LibreOffice’s core repository under LOCRDT-prefixed commit messages.

It seems deeply unhelpful to me, to attack those who write project applications, do the work, invest heavily & consistently over the years in the project (far beyond the mentioned seed funding) - and even worse, go after very generous funding sources - over something that could have been a community-driven & unifying project. Neither do I understand the motivation for this, nor can I follow the points made. It’s all quite sad to see.

And why I should have refused funding by TDF for any of this, is beyond my comprehension - funding was never offered, quite the contrary TDF stopped paying my invoices & froze all development tenders. It was moreover clearly “presented to TDF” (and the world at large), in numerous presentations, including FOSDEM LibreOffice dev rooms & LibOCons.

Best, Thorsten

1 Like

Paolo asked for what is entirely in line with the mission, scope, objectives and goals of The Document Foundation.

He did not “induce” the situation around LibreOffice Online. You can see who made that decision and voted for it.

Interestingly, the tie-breaking vote from the back-then chairperson had some additional comments:

[…] it is far more important, that we all try to engage old/new code contributors to the LOOL project for TDF.
With that I see this as a short term measure […]
So in this understanding for a short term period […]

These conditions seems to have been applicable the latest the funding was granted, so Online should have been opened up again.

What happened instead, Online was put into the attic.