Questions on NLnet fundings with the LibreOffice name

Hi Laszlo, hi all,

the NextCloud Office is nothing else than Collabora Online integrated in NextCloud as an add-on. The same applies for example for EGroupware and further applications with integrated online office. Thus your work is not for a usable LibreOffice Online but for a commercial product only.

There is no LibreOffice Online or an active source repository for it. That was first freezed and later sent to attic by those in the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation with a clear Conflict of Interest (CoI) in LibreOffice Online. They have put their own business in the first place and is a violation of their duties in their role as members of the board.

Hi @PaoloVecchi ,

let’s cut through this gish gallop of random pastes and quotes, and get to the core of the issue:

  1. me, like many other community members, tried very hard to keep LibreOffice Online alive & part of the project - I’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to discourage you from your very aggressive approach back then - alas
  2. I’m a positive person - the outcomes of today are regrettable, but clearly not foreseeable in 2020
  3. I had therefore included LibreOffice Online as one possible user of the WASM port - but as you’ve learned now, it was not funded (and therefore not leading to a CoI)
  4. conversely, you’ve lobbied very hard for unlimited, free binaries of LibreOffice Online - to the obvious detriment of TDF & this community - while clearly being under CoI
  5. I’ve never pushed to ‘kill LibreOffice Online’ - quite the contrary, I tried very hard to build bridges and repair. There were a lot of attempts, reaching out, granting extra time, asking for people to come fwd and take over the maintainership of that abandoned repo. In the end, to avoid having TDF knowingly ship insecure abandonware, the ESC agreed to atticise it.

It’s a mystery to me, how you can with a straight face be mad at people for trying to attract funding to the project (both LibreOffice and Online), after you were the primary reason to kill the Online project at TDF. Claiming that I deceived anyone here is entirely nonsensical - or perhaps what you really meant, is that you yourself didn’t understand anything that was happening back in the day? But it’s hardly me who can be blamed for that.

On your concern about using code funded by NGI Zero / EC money in a commercial offering: that is not just permissible (as per the MPL license), but explicitly encouraged by the funder: TETRA #2 Summer Build-up bootcamp | Next Generation Internet

Best, Thorsten

Hi @thb

I do understand that facts and evidence put your tenure as a director and as a chairperson in a very bad light but by carrying on trying to mislead the community doesn’t improve your position at all.

Talking about gish gallop I’ll briefly comment your points without “random pastes and quotes” as you know where to find the supporting evidence for my statements:

  1. Tell me more about “artificial scarcity” and a “source only” agreement on which you commented even before I joined the board. Things were done in ways that didn’t match our statutes, I raised the issue and then the whole board worked on it.
    You were indeed interested in keeping the status quo as you were doing business with LibreOffice Online, eg:
    Press Release: CIB and Crust Technology announce partnership - CIB Group

  2. The outcomes for LibreOffice Online were either we kept it in an artificial limbo where TDF was hosting it and promoting it without actually making it “user-centered” as from our statutes or we ask to clarify the relationship between TDF and the project. In September 2020 the valuable member of the ecosystem decided to clarify the relationship.

3, The board learned that the funding to improve LibreOffice Online went on until 2022. Our inquiry led to changing the page of the funding, the 23/06/2025, to reflect the actual intentions that were masked as community project. So yes, you were clearly in CoI also on LibreOffice Online but you kept the real description of that funding secret while acting in CoI for years.

4, If you check your email archive you’ll find that I was working with the rest of the board to find a win-win balance between the commercial needs of the valuable members of the ecosystem and the need to fulfil our statutes by publishing LibreOffice in an “user-centered” manner.

In 2018, 2 years before joining the board, I was mislead to think, like others, that LibreOffice Online was a community project and that I should promote it also commercially to support the valuable members of the ecosystem. When I joined the board I then found what the real situation was, the board agreed that the issue should be solved and the valuable member of the ecosystem did it for us.

If I’m to be in CoI for my wrongly placed belief that LibreOffice Online was a community project in 2018, 2 years before joining the board, and to try to support the valuable members of the ecosystem then you confirm you acted in CoI for years while being a board member selling LibreOffice Online and then selling the forked version of LibreOffice Online.

  1. There were no bridges to repair. Michael decided to breach the agreement and forked LibreOffice Online, that’s it. Then as you were being funded to develop an improved version of LibreOffice Online you could have disclosed that as that could have changed the situation a lot in terms of keeping the repositories open and allowing interested developers to join into a project that would have finally be seen as a community project. You choose to remain silent leading to the killing of LibreOffice Online and then promoting and voting its final demise when you were the board chairman while in CoI.

Then I never had concerns about NGI Zero funding projects that then lead to commercial offerings, my concern has only been about asking and obtaining funding for improving LibreOffice Online to deliver P2P and E2EE features, never deliver these features to LibreOffice Online and then just create a commercial product out of the features that should have been in LibreOffice Online.

Now that we asked, the project has been rebranded to reflect what happened to the 2 year funding you received for LibreOffice Online but you should get it corrected as in August 2020 there was no allotropia nor ZetaOffice.

You want to carry on trying to mislead the community and make public more of your wrongdoings or you want to take a break, reflect on the things you did and apologise so that we can restart a productive and mutually beneficial relationship without making the same mistakes?

Then to avoid future discussions. I see that LibreOffice CRDT still points to libreoffice.org, does that mean that you would allow TDF to work on it an release if as a community project or you’ll complain that it’s your employer’s commercial product and we must leave it alone?

Ciao

Paolo

food for thought …
about the scattered channels in use, synthesis, possible moderation, …

Inline translations of comments

Re: [fr-discuss] À propos du fil sur les financements NlNet et l'utilisation des marques LibreOffice et On Line – The Document Foundation Mailing List Archives
[translated by google]

@sophi Thu, Jun 26, 12:40 PM
[…]
26/06/2025 11:35, Alexander Thurgood wrote :

[…] All that being said, the entire exchange strongly resembles a
Spanish Inquisition or a witch hunt, which doesn’t give
a very good impression to the public, I think.

And I completely agree with you, I don’t like the tone
of some of the exchanges at all.
I think it’s very difficult to conduct these discussions publicly,
even if they must be for the sake of transparency.
The acrimony of some goes back a long way. TDF has suffered greatly in
recent years and is still suffering from certain behaviors; this doesn’t help
the calm of the discussions, unfortunately.

Hi Thorsten, hi all

and this opens the question, why only Paolo has a CoI on Online although you and Laszlo were funded to work on Online and Cor was a partner of Collabora, the company that developed and sold the fork of LibreOffice Online. You had a partnership with Collabora on Online back then. You three have a clear business interest in Online at that time.

And why you did nothing to reopen the LibreOffice Online repository once or after you got funded to work on Online?

Regards,
Andreas

2 Likes

Something that matches the statutes, mission and objectives of TDF cannot be “detrimental” to it. LibreOffice Online was a project that was supported by TDF, e.g. with translations, marketing and documentation. If the repository and the localization had not been frozen, the community could have continued to contribute.

There was even an open letter to revive Online.

I am also interested why Paolo is considered under CoI, but not others who actually made a business with Online.

1 Like

Hi all,

I support this. This is within the mission of TDF. The development of LibreOffice Online and publishing usable binaries of it is one of the objectives of the project and the foundation. It was the reason why we created a foundation with this objectives, The Document Foundation. If one supports the mission of TDF she / he couldn’t be in a conflict with the objectives of the foundation.

Because the lobbying was targeted on the mission of TDF, I see no justification for the accusation of a CoI. Thus I ask the board to revoke the decision of the former board stating a CoI of Paolo regarding LibreOffice Online.

Regards,
Andreas

I’d like to read an answer to this too…


Best,
Eliane

Please stay inclusive and help non English speakers.
If you need link to Wikipedia, that is not good.
Please use Simple English.

Thank you.

Given the phrase you are are objecting to is a technical term identifying a rhetorical tactic that is clearly in use, and given the recommended defence against the tactic is to say the phrase Thorsten used, I would love to hear your proposal for describing it concisely without a link to the explanation. “As simple as possible, and no simpler” as Einstein supposedly said.

Once sentence. 53 words. Wow. Best example.

“Clearly”? Really? You don’t find the questions Paolo is asking relevant at all?

On the other hand, there are translations in wikipedia for all “major” languages…

Hi y’all,

and

It seems what I said earlier bears repeating: we have not received any funding from NLnet for LibreOffice Online. Anybody claiming the opposite is not telling the truth.

Again, we have not received funding for LibreOffice Online - the initial project proposal did include a part for Online, but that only made sense as long as the project was alive & maintained. So when LibreOffice Online was left in limbo, instead this was turned into useful additional features for LibreOffice core, e.g. for the in-browser pdf conversion.

Best, Thorsten

Hi @tjhietala,

I don’t believe @webmink was specifically referring to what I stated, as ignoring all the public and the board available evidence would be a dereliction of duties for a director, and it more likely was an imperfect attempt of explaining how that term is commonly used.

I surely disagree on the statement that the Gish gallop technique “is clearly in use” as there are is no “format” limiting anyone in their capacity to answer as we could see in a in person time-limited debate.

One would say that we can see “series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations and outright lies” but we can also see fact-checking and evidence refuting those statements making the wrongly mentioned “Gish gallop” ineffective especially in a public forum where the community can evaluate that evidence and the various statements in their own time.

Of course it would have been better if @webmink wrote a clearer sentence and actually confirmed that the evidence presented is correct, as available also to him, that Thorsten indeed got funded for the “LibreOffice P2P” project which had the purpose of improving LibreOffice Online and that its scope changed about 2 years after he applied for it but I guess that after dinner isn’t the best moment to validate evidence and write posts.

Anyway that was just another example of how directors and chairperson should not behave and yet another lesson learned that make the following 2 decision more important than ever:

Ciao

Paolo

The various projects ran over a larger time span, sometime between August 2020 to November 2023, some seem still running, from what I gather from the website. See the below screenshot, I’ve highlighted the dates.

The vote to freeze LibreOffice Online was taken in November 2020. The vote to put LibreOffice Online into the attic was taken in March 2022 and it explicitly states a project “can be moved back into active development”.

The tie-breaking vote mentioned “a short term period” and “as soon as we have these new active project it/the content should be used again”.

So given there seems to have at least been a funding opportunity: Why wasn’t the repository opened again?

You write yourself that “LibreOffice Online was left in limbo” and “the initial project proposal did include a part for Online”. That “limbo” could have been easily resolved.

Why was Online put in the attic, when the attic prevents such active contributions that are needed? I would have expected that the moment a viable chance for contribution comes up, the development is encouraged and the attic status is removed.

Also my question stands: Why Paolo has been put into a CoI over Online but others haven’t? As you were just pointing out again Paolo is supposedly having a CoI, would you please answer my question, that is shared by others, too?

1 Like

Forgive me for exploring that statement briefly; I was not party to this now contested decision so I may be missing details, but:

If a non-profit was to fund some Task in line with its mission at fixed-price, and that Task was already funded by a third party, and could only be done once, that would surely be a waste of its money ?

Or another scenario:

  1. Imagine a world where Bob owns a book-shop which sells educational books.
  2. Bob gets elected to the board of the ‘Foo’ non-profit that writes new educational books.
  3. Bob pushes enthusiastically for the charity to stop writing and instead spend funds buying and giving away free books to students.
  4. Foo is an educational charity. Giving away free books serves an educational purpose.

Is it your contention that because Bob’s change of direction is still inside the mission - that there is then no conflict of interest for Bob ?

Ultimately I would hope that TDF only chooses to do things that are inside its charitable mission. If so is it your contention that no choice in line with the mission can be to the detriment of TDF ?

Thanks,

Michael.

If a non-profit was to fund some Task in line with its mission at fixed-price, and that Task was already funded by a third party, and could only be done once, that would surely be a waste of its money ?

The problem would occur if a board member of the non-profit decided to not pursue this task further, until there is funding. When an opportunity of funding arises, they don’t pursue this task further in the non-profit, because the task has been “temporarily” laid to rest, due to the lack of funding. The problem seems pretty obvious to me…

Or another scenario:

I think this is a more helpful scenario:

  • Imagine a world where Bob owns a book-shop which sells educational books.
  • Bob gets elected to the board of the ‘Foo’ non-profit that writes and publishes new educational books free of charge.
  • Jane owns a publishing company which publishes educational books.
  • Also Jane gets elected to the board of the ‘Foo’ non-profit.
  • Bob pushes enthusiastically for the charity to continue writing and fulfil the nonprofit’s mission by giving away free books to students.
  • Not Bob, but Jane fears her business endangered. Some board members, including at least one contractor of Jane, in the ‘Foo’ non-profit vote to stop writing and publishing a specific book and to point readers to Jane’s publishing company.
  • Although Jane’s company contributed a lot, the book has been written by the help of authors worldwide. Others in the non-profit translated, illustrated, proofread and advertised for this book.
  • Foo is an educational charity. Giving away free books serves an educational purpose.
  • Bob is publicly blamed to have a conflict of interest. It is publicly pointed out that he “failed to establish a business relation” with Jane’s and another company.
  • Others, including a contractor, do not have a conflict of interest.

Question 1: Why does Bob have a conflict of interest? He voted to continue the free publication of books. Bob obviously cannot sell free books. Where is his conflict?

Question 2: Why no one else has a conflict of interest, even if they work for the publisher and point at Bob’s supposedly failed business relation?

The whole situation is like running a pizza place in the same street as a food bank. The pizza place owner can decide to support the food bank and do something good for society. They can also decide to see them as a threat for their own restaurant, because some food bank visitors might be willing to buy a slice of pizza.

While that would be sad, it becomes truly problematic when the owner becomes a board member of the food bank and then votes to not serve specific goods anymore. The owner fears that this might take customers away, and in return, they cannot support the food bank anymore, so by giving away free goods, the food bank would damage itself.

That’s not how nonprofit works in my world.

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Let’s also say that those that point out about the “failed” establishment of a business relation do so knowing perfectly their statement is false as they all know, having also seen the evidence, that Bob refused to establish a business relationship with Jane as he considered unethical the contractual clause stating that contributions to free publishing should go to Jane’s company instead of directly to the non-profit.