Questions To MC Candidates

Board Discuss
#21

       Sorry for that. The essence of the question is simple - if you
want to grow the membership there are at least these two approaches:

  + encourage more people to contribute more to meet
    the criteria
or
  + lower the criteria for membership

There is a third solution: convince more contributors to apply for
membership, as many of them do not even know that it is possible to
become TDF members by contributing to LibreOffice.

For instance, we have over 4K people registered on weblate, or 20 times
as many TDF members. Of course, many of them would not qualify as their
contribution is marginal, but many would.

I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
core group is less strong.

  I would hope that:

"* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?"

  Is a legitimate question for the MC candidates ?

I think the question is legitimate if you take away the last portion:
"assuming the statutes can be tweaked". I do not see how the statutes
can be tweaked, but I think that they can be applied with some added
flexibility ("flexible" is different from "tweaked").

#22

Hi *,

to comment on one aspect here for the moment:

Italo Vignoli wrote:

I think the question is legitimate if you take away the last portion:
"assuming the statutes can be tweaked". I do not see how the statutes
can be tweaked, but I think that they can be applied with some added
flexibility ("flexible" is different from "tweaked").

The statutes _can_ be modified, but the bar for that is relatively
high (for good reasons), plus the changes must not modify the original
intends and purposes:

- § 14 (1): The Board of Directors can make changes to the Articles of
  Association provided that the changes do not affect the foundation’s
  goals and do not substantially alter the original design of the
  foundation or facilitate the fulfillment of the foundation’s goals.

- and any change has to be ratified (in essence cross-checked to
  fulfil the above requirements) by the foundation authorities

All the best,

-- Thorsten

#23

Hi Mike and Andreas,

I just joined the board-discuss couple days ago, so not much know about previous topics (even it can read on archive)

Pada tanggal Jum, 4 Sep 2020 pukul 18.18 Michael Meeks <michael.meeks@collabora.com> menulis:

Hi Andreas,

b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question to
the candidates!

That’s something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
members / contributors a voice and a say.

Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I’d love to know
from each candidate:

What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.

Some people probably do not read this mailing list too much (like me, sorry). The newer generation below me dislike mailing lists.

  • many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
    Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
    number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
    translation, documentation etc.
  • how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?

In my experience, here what I do:

  • active in community, if you can’t active physically because of busy with daily job, you can donate/support their activity, in Indonesian community, we often have some challenge to community and there is a prize for the winner. you can donate the prize if you feel busy and can’t help much.
  • give a good example and impression how we use libreoffice and how to contribute in the easiest way to the community.
  • have good manners to newcomers, sometimes arrogant also needed but still, we must help newcomers.
  • create a conference. I (with help of the community) often create open source conferences. Of course we have held a libreoffice indonesia conference before with more than 500 audience. This year’s conference failed because covid-19
  • exhibition booth. be happy and set up booths in as many exhibitions as possible. you will have a lot of questions and answers at that booth.
  • create a workshop about libreoffice, it can be user (how to use) workshop, translation, and QA.
  • Gave a talk in university or any organization.

And we lack (never happen at least in Indonesia) about coding/UX workshops for libreoffice.

Please explain more about the term “marginal”.

  • what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

Anything, in my case, local community have:

  • If you’ve stood before, approximately how many people have
    you encouraged to apply for membership ?

I can’t remember it, but I do encourage several people who are active in the community (from Indonesia and Malaysia).

  • How many applications have you voted against ?

Many, especially if I know the applicant. Mostly I know in person if they are from SouthEast Asia.

  • Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
    between membership and non-membership that encourages
    a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
    achieve full membership ?

I have no idea about this. But I often have questions from students “what would be the benefit if we become a member?”

  • When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
    code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
    decide on a person’s contribution; what is best practice for
    MC members vouching for their friends’ contributions, and how
    should other MC members validate that ?

In my case, I will validate if I know the person. If no, I ask another MC to verify it. If still nobody knows, then one of MC will send them an email asking more questions.

  • To what degree should the MC’s decisions & discussion
    be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

It can be transparent if there’s good tools. Some discussions are in MC telegram groups. IMHO it doesnt need to be totally transparent, of course there’s reporting. But people can ask. Probably need to discuss more about “the transparent thing”?

  • How do you believe we can improve the existing election
    system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
  • I’m interested in where we have the situation that
    being too popular can stop you being able to
    engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
    Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
    in the last Board election.

Thanks for any answers =)

Michael.

I can’t answer this since I don’t know about this issue. But it should be no problem. Being popular is a gift.

Thanks,
Haris

#24

IMO, this should be the first solution that we should explore. I
completely agree with Italo that we should reach out to those whom we
see regularly on any of the project's volunteer teams and see if we
could not assist them in becoming members and, in so doing, build more
of a loyal family of members. Most people think a member has to put out
hours of work per week to become a member or maintain one's membership.
We should do more reaching out internally and promote internally.

Marc

#25

Hi Andreas,

Hi,

I have two first questions to the candidates:

a) regarding the mission of the MC (§ 12 of the statutes) have you
already participated in board calls during the last two years as
external (non-member)?

Yes, a few times. But I usually skim through the minutes, and read the interesting (to me, as a member of BoT & MC) parts in detail.

b) What is your personal take on a 'cooling down' periode between being
a member of leading bodies of the foundation, regarding the first
sentence in the statutes § 12?

Didn't think about it specifically before, but after checking the statutes again based on your question, and reading through some of the replies, Uwe's take makes sense to me.

Regards,
Muhammet

#26

Hi Andreas & all,

Hi Uwe, all,

Hi Andreas

(...)

b) What is your personal take on a 'cooling down' periode between being
a member of leading bodies of the foundation, regarding the first
sentence in the statutes § 12?

This seems only of interest in case a member of the BoD wants to get a member of the MC to prevent or influence a pending lawsuit against himself.
It is surely desirable to have prevented such a possibility by our statues - but nothing is perfect. And some kind of self-commitment will not prevent such a case.
On the other hand the time schedule of the board and mc elections is a bit cumbersome for such an operation.

Maybe a look into the second sentence of § 12 is also of interest here.
The MC initiate and supervise the board elections.

a) Could lead to a conflict of interest?

It is hard to say 'never' to such things with many aspects, but I can't think of a general case right now. One needs to resign from the MC before nominating for the BoD elections, and he/she is out of the MC loop immediately. And it is no longer possible to have an effect on the election process any more.

b) Is not showing solidarity (if MC membership is canceled or
suspended), because more work on less shoulder?

It depends. In terms of the number of the MC members, role of the resigning member etc. But I wouldn't expect it to have any significant effect on the process of the BoD elections. It is mostly an automated/technical process.

Regards,
Muhammet

#27

Hello Michael,

</snip>

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
  Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
  number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
  translation, documentation etc.

  + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?

  + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
    more marginal contributions for membership cf.
    https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

  + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

contributors who are willing to help users in Ask, on mailing lists,
usenet and other forums and this over all languages.

We do also have other projects (e.g. ODFToolkit) who are mostly loosely
connected to the TDF.

I talked to many different contributors and mostly they simply do not
know that there is something like a membership and also do not have any
interest in another mail address and ask what are their gains in getting
into the club.

* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
  you encouraged to apply for membership ?

I'm not sure. I asked many and I'm still trying to convince more
contributors although my success-rate should be improved. :-/

* How many applications have you voted against ?

I guess this question is only for the existing membership committee.
I have no statistics, but in the end it is something between "one or two
hands". Some contributors for example were corner-cases since a few
years or some which we couldn't verify by all good faith.

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
  between membership and non-membership that encourages
  a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
  achieve full membership ?

We need badges! There needs more "gamification", although I do not like
the "hat hunt" for the next badge (hence one reason why I quite
Wikipedia). If our OpenBadget system is in place: yes, we should also
add a badge for being a member.

But the main "problem" is that many contributors are "only" subscribed
to some mailing lists and helping users won't see badges nor know
anything of membership. We have to - at least - inform these contributors.

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
  code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
  decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
  MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
  should other MC members validate that ?

That depends. I do not believe that we have any problems in accepting or
declining applications. We do have a problem to get contributors to the
application form! There might be some *seldom* corner-cases where we
have to believe or need some third-party answer as we are having
problems to verify the contributions.

Especially for the last case it is important to have as much as possible
diversity within the mc to know at least who to ask, which was not easy
in the past as Asian contributors were missing.

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
(e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.

* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
  system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?

I'm not really sure, if we do need any improvement. At least I do not
have any suggestion as I do not believe that we do have any problem
within the statues.

  + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
    being too popular can stop you being able to
    engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
    Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
    in the last Board election.

As mentioned in some other response, we do have a problem with COI like
in the mentioned cases.I do have a problem with MC members stepping down
for getting voted to the BoD, but to answer your question: simply
getting more people running for the MC will statistical reduce the
possibility of getting into such problems. Luckily this year many
candidates run for MC and thus our members have a real choice!
@everybody: please use your tokens and vote!

  Thanks for any answers =)

Thanks for your questions.

    Michael.

Best regards,

Dennis Roczek

#28

Hi Michael, Andreas, dear members of BoT,

Hi Andreas,

b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question to
the candidates!

That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
members / contributors a voice and a say.

  Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to know
from each candidate:

  What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
   translation, documentation etc.

  + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?

  + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
    more marginal contributions for membership cf.
    https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

First of all. I don't think lowering the threshold for membership is a good idea. Bringing people who doesn't contribute to the project regularly, and who probably doesn't follow what's going on, into TDF membership wouldn't bring any value into the project/community, and might even be considered harmful, I think.

So I have two main ways in mind for expanding the membership base:

1- Finding the ones who are already contributing silently, but who are not aware of the importance of the membership, or who doesn't see themselves "worthy" for membership. (Yeah, I've seen such people. They usually don't think what they do is enough for membership. But their contributions are very valuable in fact.) I have already found & invited tens of contributors during my current term in the MC. Some regular code contributors and long-time translators are among them.

I keep an eye on various sources to spot those contributors, but I especially focus on the code contributors & translators because it is more efficient use of time for me (because of my experience/expertise in those areas) as a former translator and current developer.

2- Reaching out to people, especially the young ones, to bring fresh blood into the project/community, mostly through organizing & running events, and helping mentor/onboard/welcoming the newcomers to the project.

I think, of course without neglecting the general public, focusing on the universities & colleges is the most efficient way of gaining new contributors and increasing our project's chances of survival in the future.

For example, I have been applying/experimenting-with a cascaded/layered strategy about this lately: Reach out to as many as possible students/people via large-scale events like conference & presentations etc, to ansure exposure to FLOSS concepts and familiarity with LibreOffice & TDF. That is the first contact. Then through the connection you got, try to engage them in active contribution events like workshops & bug-hunting-sessions etc. And hope for the best. :slight_smile:

One example of what is described above is the LibreOffice Developer Bootcamp (large scale, with weekly lessons & assignments), and the LibreOffice Development Workshop (small-scale) we run after that. We gained several active contributors from this series, including translators, and developers (2 of GSoC 2020 students of LibreOffice are from here). Now we -yes, started as I, but now it is we :)- are planning for the next run of this series.

  + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

1- Improved sense of belonging for the active contributors, and an increased chance for a longer contribution period.

2- A more vibrant/lively community with many active contributors, and hopefully some positive effect on the sustainability of the project. (Volunteer contributors may also become full-time/paid open source developers, so a double win for the community.)

* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
   you encouraged to apply for membership ?

Tens of people. Probably less then 50.

* How many applications have you voted against ?

Can't tell. Maybe less than 10?

Based on my experience, the approval & rejection decisions have been mostly made unanimously in the MC. I guess that's because opinions and evidence are shared before the voting, so if there is strong evidence against (or lack of any evidence altogether) an application, it gets rejected, and if evidence is in favor of the application, then it gets approved. Of course, there are also edge cases, which are the most difficult ones. So, I expect the "voted-against" number to be similar (but not exactly the same) for all members of the current MC.

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
   between membership and non-membership that encourages
   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
   achieve full membership ?

Hmm. Might be. The recently started initiative of issuing open badges to contributors might be something which can be used in this direction.

Additionally, let me tell you what I do about this for new contributors I spot. I check their contributions, and project the date they would become eligible for membership. Then contact/meet them and try to encourage them by telling about the TDF membership, and telling that they would become eligible for membership if they keep contributing like this until that date.

And other than the new contributors, there is also the case of former/old/long-time contributors. If a person keeps contributing for years as a TDF member, but fails to contribute for ~1 year for some reason (health, work etc.), we have to decline their renewal request. This looks/sounds harsh/unfair/harmful to me. Or there might be some people who have been actively contributing, and would like to / need to decrease their contributions maybe because of a change in life or something like that, but keep their affiliation to TDF & LibreOffice, and show their support when it is possible...

The case described in the paragraph above has been bothering me for a while, and I have been wondering if we should have an Emeritus Member status which doesn't give the voting privilege, but provides a sense of belonging.

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
   should other MC members validate that ?

Easily verifiable, publicly accessible data is the golden criteria for the MC. If such sources are the central/main ones (such as translated strings, code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.), we are the most happy. But if the sources are from the local community, not in English etc. we seek help from an active member of the certain local community. There are sometimes almost no public source, because of the way of contribution, like giving on-site user trainings, user support etc. without online attribution, so in such a case, we again seek info from an active member of the certain local community, and that person becomes the verifier. There is no distinction between an MC member and a BoT member in this regard. So they are both considered as witnesses of the contributions, rather than the friend of the contributor.

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Some FLOSS foundations like ours use semi-public (accessible by current members) issues to track & handle membership decisions. I see no harm in being as transparent as possible in this regard, to the extent allowed by GDPR & other applicable law. Some possible benefits of such an approach:

- The applicant creates the issue himself/herself, so no need for additional consent (?-need to consult an expert on this)
- Other contributors can see the criteria & contribution level needed for the foundation membership by examples, which might also be an encouragement for them (setting contribution goals etc.)
- The approved issue might serve as a public profile for the foundation member, thus giving the members an additional way of knowing (about) each other

* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
  + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
    being too popular can stop you being able to
    engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
    Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
    in the last Board election.

If I remember correctly, the statutes declares a rule, but doesn't tell how to ensure that, regarding the situation in the example. So a change in the statutes might not be needed, and a change in the way of application might be enough. (?-need to consult an expert on this)

I think an option for an MC member to step down to a deputy position might solve the issue above, but needs careful formulation, and possibly also some consultation to a lawyer. (Like, what happens if all deputies have the same affiliation? Maybe we should apply the affiliation restriction also to the Extended MC -including the deputy members-?)

By the way, let me try to explain the problem/unfairness described above a bit by example, for the ones who are not familiar with the issue:

A and B are working in the company X
C and D are working in the company Y

They all run in the MC elections

A got the 1st position (becomes member)
B got the 2nd position (becomes member)
C got the 3rd position (becomes member)
D got the 6th position (becomes deputy member)

Because of the affiliation restriction, both A and B having the same affiliation, one of them (let's say B) steps down from MC position, and is kicked out of the MC completely. But C and D, although they have the same affiliation, stay at their positions. So B is, in a way, punished for getting too many votes. See the unfairness?

  Thanks for any answers =)

Thanks for the questions. And thanks a lot to whoever got this far, reading the loong answers! Sorry about that. :slight_smile:

Regards,
Muhammet

#29

Hi Michael,

I missed something. :wink:

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
(e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.

I missed to add a reason why the discussion about the application should
not be published: see our disaster with the mascot: if we make
everything in public the members of the MC might get spammed, pushed,
and bullied. Even more fatal: some groups might get pushy to get their
folks into the group. Moreover the GDPR sometimes prohibits every
discussion public: as already said we do have corner cases with heath
issues, corona-problems, being too young and other cases which do not
should be public!

Best,

Dennis

#30

Still not really a clue what they advantages are.
* Libreoffice.org e-mail
* Able to vote and get voted for.
- However currently not interested being active in MC
- Voting on people I don't really know. So can't really asses their quality
They formal task of MC not that spectacular and the informal tasks don't go about strategic decision either
So voting for MC which doesn't have big role (not saying irrelevant). Except MC members maybe move up to BoD

I wouldn't really mind if they sitting MC would recruit the new MC members themselves (co-option)
Maybe they know even better who are capable or not.

I don't get the feeling to having more influence by being a member or not.
They membership is more a TDF organizational/governmental requirement (so needed for TDF perspective) instead for they members being member.
TDF needs they members to have a group who can vote and be voted for. To prevent outsiders to get control over TDF (MC/BoD)
They only advantage for the members themselves is maybe a role at TDF. Or to show affiliation / association with TDF.

Might have hoped for some more strategical information (in a role of a members) . Some 'inside' information. Some exclusivity.
There is not even a roadmap for what to expect for next release. Say what project planning is; I mostly assume devs working towards something.
So some kind of planning. If it's simplification of code or new feature. Not that I want to pin people on deadlines or whatever. But to get some impression what's playing.
It's still a kind of black box.. Release plan filled after being finished.  Their is for example the jumbo sheet project; it's still at experimental (for good reason).  However no clue what the targeted time frame is;
Especially after it got announced in Release notes for 7.0. To silence they angry mob for now. Not that it's actually stable or usable. But no clue about what the idea currently is.

They "Marketing in Vendor Neutral FLOSS Projects" could have been discussed internally with members (before being posted online).
Or they whole discussion on marketing strategy (Personal Edition). If there is a place where they discussion should be, it's at member level.
I still prefer some secrecy. Not everything should be argued en public.. transparency is nice but not everything. Exclusivity is also a thing.

Still love a non-public forum like of thing for members only. [Please not as mailing list]. And would make it possible to communicate/ share thoughts a bit more freely/openly.
They board could post some (provocative) question/ insight. And members given the ability to react. Even a member could start a discussion.

It's the BoD who has the ultimate say. Consulting they MC. Both must make up their minds based upon the members input (and maybe weighting some other concerns like profit of eco-system partners)
They MC needs to be their to be consulted and to give advice to they BoD. With ultimately they impeachment card.

So Marketing plan shouldn't be posted on public mailing list, before they members are consulted. Only the 'accorded' version should go public (fiat from BoD/MC) after members got consulted.
They public response could still make it necessary to adjust. But there was an internal discussion in advance. Instead of they Personal Edition mess.
They members could also get some more details/regular updates on they research for say commercial route.

This would give membership some actual advantage, I think.

Telesto

#31

Hi

  ..
  + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
    more marginal contributions for membership cf.
    https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

As § 10 (3) of our statutes read "The details of the induction and exclusion from the Board of Trustees shall be regulated by a community by-law from the Board of Directors..."
So I see just a little influence of the MC on this. It's rather at the BoD to make things clear on this topic.

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
  between membership and non-membership that encourages
  a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
  achieve full membership ?

No. Purpose? You do contribute - then you qualify for application. I've see rather the opposite view: People contributing a lot but don't feel that this qualifies them to apply. And even if they knew that they qualify, they often ask "Why should I do so?"

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
  code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
  decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
  MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
  should other MC members validate that ?

Interesting question. For example myself - no translated strings,
code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc. at least in the last few years.
And there are even more persons fitting into that schedule (beside their work payed for by the TDF).
Seems high time to discuss this community by-law.

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Afaik the decisions are publicly available and send out per mail to all members every three month :slight_smile: - and this is btw more than the BoD does :wink: .
The metrics used by the MC - as far as metrics apply - should be also available for the public (btw: Aren't they?). For the rest: Perhaps we need better defined criteria (c.f. community by-law). Normally these "soft" engagements are in public and so per definition traceable for the public.
Other way round: Threw out Mike Sch. just because his work can't be seen (by it's very nature) publicly? At least in a few cases some trust in the decisions of the mc seems unavoidable. Questions or public discussion should always be possible, but not get the standard procedure.

* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
  system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?

To solve what problem? Wasn't this...

  + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
    being too popular can stop you being able to
    engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
    Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
    in the last Board election.

...a clear matter of § 8 (4) of the statutes to avoid a CoI?

#32

Hi again :slight_smile:

By the way, let me try to explain the problem/unfairness described above a bit by example, for the ones who are not familiar with the issue:

A and B are working in the company X
C and D are working in the company Y

They all run in the MC elections

A got the 1st position (becomes member)
B got the 2nd position (becomes member)
C got the 3rd position (becomes member)
D got the 6th position (becomes deputy member)

Because of the affiliation restriction, both A and B having the same affiliation, one of them (let's say B) steps down from MC position, and is kicked out of the MC completely. But C and D, although they have the same affiliation, stay at their positions. So B is, in a way, punished for getting too many votes. See the unfairness?

So now I understand the problem. Seems to me rather a handling glitch :wink:
Is it right that a deputy member is - in all practical matters - seen as a member of the body but without a vote (attends meetings in an active role, shares all information etc.)? Then the CoI-Rule surely should apply for deputy members as well. This is imho the necessary solution because this affiliated deputy member ("D") could only step in if a member with the same affiliation ("C") steps back; otherwise the CoI-Rule would prevent him/her to observe his/her duty.
Legal advice needed: Is a "deputy member" also a case of "member"? If "yes" then the case is ruled by the statute's CoI-Rule anyway. If in doubt or if not, then:

There is § 12 (5) which reads "The details of the induction and expulsion from the Membership Committee shall be regulated by a community by-law from the Board of Directors."
So these by-laws maybe could have ruled (or specified the handling of) such a case; so the BoD is free to change or add such rules.
So maybe no need to tweak the statutes - at least for the MC. But imho we need a solution for this for the BoD also. So a "yes" would be appreciated :slight_smile:

#33

Hi Michael,

I missed something. :wink:

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
(e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.

I missed to add a reason why the discussion about the application should
not be published: see our disaster with the mascot: if we make
everything in public the members of the MC might get spammed, pushed,
and bullied.

The mascot incident is a great example of why public involvement matters! The lessons learned should not be "make everything more closed-door" but "What can we learn from disappointing our users/community?" Users were angry and hurt for a reason and brought very valid concerns to a very flawed event.

(Bullying is *not* acceptable and I vehemently denounce any acts of harassment from the controversy).

Even more fatal: some groups might get pushy to get their folks into the group. Moreover the GDPR sometimes prohibits every discussion public: as already said we do have corner cases with heath issues, corona-problems, being too young and other cases which do not should be public!

I have anecdata: A high-profile "rockstar" developer applied to be an Arch Linux TU last year [1] and we received colorful remarks from the peanut gallery. Contention and disappointment was voiced with our questions and handling, and the applicant ultimately withdrew but the discourse was not toxic. In fact, I'd say that the comments from the general public provoke reflection - even if I do not agree with them.

I lean toward making applications public (GDPR concerns put aside). From a pragmatic perspective, private list mails can easily be leaked the moment contention bubbles up. My Debian outsider perspective sees private lists as good for promoting their issue with political drama and causes sites like [2] to sprout up. I'm not qualified for much more than speculation; I'd love to hear the opinions of the more experienced. I'd be curious to know how other communities like Debian or Fedora manage applications and whether public/private have been helpful.

[1] https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/aur-general/2019-February/034918.html
[2] https://debian.community/

#34

Hi Michael, members, community!

Sharing my answers, thanks for the questions!

...

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
  Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
  number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
  translation, documentation etc.

  + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?

Let me clarify what I think about "gain new contributors" and "expand the membership".

About "gain new contributors", my perspective is regional. Years ago, some Latin American members agreed we should do a step ahead to growing our local community. In that moment, we saw we had many difficulties in Brazil (including losing contributors), but many potential in the other Latin American countries. Jumping to now, after a great first Latin American Conference and also a great Conference in Spain (which was too important for us too), we can say that our regional community (nowadays we have said Ibero-American) is much better than before.

About "expand the membership", I think it's a natural result of the "gain new contributors". Get *more* members is important (new people, new ideas, new goals...) but, as I told in my candidacy statement, my main personal focus as a candidate will be continue to work with the mcm-script to provide better support to our members.

  + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
    more marginal contributions for membership cf.
    https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

  + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

I don't have difference (core or marginal) in my personal approach, as we have a non-exhaustive list of types of contributions in §10 b.) of the statutes. Of course the explicit types of contributions listed there are our main references to approve or deny a new member in the MC, but, in many cases, we should check applications in a wide perspective (for example, organizing an official conference, advocating for the project in a public/academic institution, managing a Facebook group with thousands of participants, etc).

* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
  you encouraged to apply for membership ?

I'm going to answer in a wide perspective (as I'm currently a MC member). I already encouraged a lot of people to apply, from many different areas (counting successes and fails). No idea how many, but I'm glad to remember two nice cases: a translator who simply didn't know he could be a member and a documentation volunteer who had his application denied in the past because the language barrier.

* How many applications have you voted against ?

As in the previous question, also an uncountable amount since 2016.

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
  between membership and non-membership that encourages
  a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
  achieve full membership ?

I think some actions like our Open Badges awards are interesting to recognize contributions from non-members. But I believe they are more related with Marketing/Communication than with the process of membership. In other words, it's a recognition for the contributor and can be a tool for the MC, but I don't believe that it should be in the formal path to reach the membership.

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
  code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
  decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
  MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
  should other MC members validate that ?

Search for more information, asking for references to another members or asking directly to the person. Discuss until reach a consensus. Suggest he/she to reapply in future if contributions aren't clear.

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

I guess we could split it in small topics. I'm going to comment two here.

About applications, I think we are fine publishing our minutes with the current format (I mean renewed and new applications). I think we shouldn't publish additional information (MC member votes or comments in applications, for example) as they could be interpreted as personal information. There are also some issues related with the European GDPR. Unfortunately, K-J , who started to check it's implications in our process, isn't longer with us.

About other process, I think it's mandatory sharing contents and activities. I'm trying to do it with all aspects related with the mcm-script (as I presented in Almería) and other current MC members are doing the same with another topics.

* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
  system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
  + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
    being too popular can stop you being able to
    engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
    Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
    in the last Board election.

I believe we can always improve a process, but I'm not comfortable to answer a simple yes or no in this case, especially if it could imply in changes in the statutes. If yes, we should check carefully not only all possible issues (remembering that, in both cases mentioned, we didn't have corner cases because one of the candidates involved decided to resign before the final announce by the electoral body) but also if the changes will be coherent according the German law.

  Thanks for any answers =)
    Michael.

Regards,
Gustavo.

#35

Hi Brett,

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
(e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.

I missed to add a reason why the discussion about the application should
not be published: see our disaster with the mascot: if we make
everything in public the members of the MC might get spammed, pushed,
and bullied.

The mascot incident is a great example of why public involvement
matters! The lessons learned should not be "make everything more
closed-door" but "What can we learn from disappointing our
users/community?" Users were angry and hurt for a reason and brought
very valid concerns to a very flawed event.

I guess we talking side by side.
Of course, the whole incident would have need more transparency. I was
talking about the bullying and spamming afterwards. To compare this now
to the MC: if the members of the MC vote in public, they can be
influenced by the crowd. Plus we are talking about sensible data: from
names, mail addresses and reasons why we renew (well or not) a
membership. And we have cases were we do need private data which should
not public.

There is contrast also Wikipedia which is public voting about potential
admins. It is called in the English Wikipedia as "Hell Week", because
some guys go back to the earliest edits of somebody searching for
something bad in your 10 years editing carree. It is really not a nice
system. The community raised the bar for new admins to something crazy
in the meantime!

I have anecdata: A high-profile "rockstar" developer applied to be an
Arch Linux TU last year [1] and we received colorful remarks from the
peanut gallery. Contention and disappointment was voiced with our
questions and handling, and the applicant ultimately withdrew but the
discourse was not toxic. In fact, I'd say that the comments from the
general public provoke reflection - even if I do not agree with them.

Luckily for Arch! I do know Wikipedia which is the other way round.

I lean toward making applications public (GDPR concerns put aside).

Me, too! But GDPR is the atomic argument to stop the discussion here.

From
a pragmatic perspective, private list mails can easily be leaked the
moment contention bubbles up. My Debian outsider perspective sees
private lists as good for promoting their issue with political drama and
causes sites like [2] to sprout up. I'm not qualified for much more than
speculation; I'd love to hear the opinions of the more experienced. I'd
be curious to know how other communities like Debian or Fedora manage
applications and whether public/private have been helpful.

I'm happy if we (as a community) can improve the situation as much as
possible. OTOH I do not believe that we have any problem in the
membership process except that we should try to get more members into
the game.

I cannot remember that we had any problems in the past that somebody got
the membership although didn't meet the criteria (or the other way
round), nor that somebody were against any decision. Most users act with
their plain name, or well known account names. You will not find
anything which was not correct.

Please let us focus on the real problems and let us improve the projects
and community.

Best regards,

Dennis Roczek

#36

Hi,

Dennis Roczek wrote:

Me, too! But GDPR is the atomic argument to stop the discussion here.

apart from that - we already heard that people are reluctant to become members, some are shy, thinking their contributons do not qualify.

Knowing their application will be discussed in public, with a potential "You don't qualitfy yet, please apply again later", also in public, will very likely keep people from applying at all in first place.

Transparency is important, but such a step will likely prevent growing our membership base - the exact opposite of what we want.

Florian

#37

Hi Telesto,

This would give membership some actual advantage, I think.

You provided really good ideas how to improve the rights of the members.
And to be honest: the system is getting improved, although very slowly.
For example last year we were voting for the location of the next
LibreOffice Conference 2020. In 2017 there was a discussion about the
mascot (sorry, yes again), if only members should be allowed to vote.
What I want to show: there are ongoing thoughts and actions how to
enhance the membership. It is not a club to have yet another plastic
card in your pocket (to get 10% discount).

And yes, the system is far from perfect but it is improving.

And yes, more transparency would be better, but really: see the SIS /
TDC stuff: the board is trying to change. But also understand: we
(neither the board of directors, nor the membership committee) is voted
in to a board as a new full time job. Board members (BoD+MC) do this
next to their normal job (doesn't matter if the job is connected to
LibreOffice at any kind) and private life.

Best regards,

Dennis Roczek

#38

Hi,

Hi Andreas & all,

Maybe a look into the second sentence of § 12 is also of interest here.
The MC initiate and supervise the board elections.

a) Could lead to a conflict of interest?

It is hard to say 'never' to such things with many aspects, but I can't
think of a general case right now. One needs to resign from the MC
before nominating for the BoD elections, and he/she is out of the MC
loop immediately. And it is no longer possible to have an effect on the
election process any more.

Of course I've seen the process and the situation a few times during the
many years that I served in the MC.
Given the number op people involved in the MC, looking at the election
process, multiple people supervising it, the way we discuss in openness,
etc. the change that one MC member influences the elections is in my
experience rather hypothetical.

b) Is not showing solidarity (if MC membership is canceled or
suspended), because more work on less shoulder?

It depends. In terms of the number of the MC members, role of the
resigning member etc. But I wouldn't expect it to have any significant
effect on the process of the BoD elections. It is mostly an
automated/technical process.

I think that's reflecting reality in a fair way too.

Cheers,
Cor

#39

Hi all,

       Sorry for that. The essence of the question is simple - if you
want to grow the membership there are at least these two approaches:

  + encourage more people to contribute more to meet
    the criteria
or
  + lower the criteria for membership

There is a third solution: convince more contributors to apply for
membership, as many of them do not even know that it is possible to
become TDF members by contributing to LibreOffice.

For instance, we have over 4K people registered on weblate, or 20 times
as many TDF members.

This is a very interesting point. 4k people in Weblate, so that would be
350 persons or so on average for every language that LibreOffice supports?

Of course, many of them would not qualify as their
contribution is marginal, but many would.

We could ask the MC their experience with reaching out, what is marginal
and not.
I know we reached out in the past, and thus attracted more members. And
reading the replies from MC members, that is still the case.
Also I remember that different people, had a different appreciation of
the work the did/do for LibreOffice.

But.. having more members is positive as this reflects support, and
since members are likely to help spreading the word about LibreOffice.
However then there regularly was - and I assume it is similar nowadays -
the situation that people feel they contribute so little, that they are
only weakly connected and membership is not reasonable.
And that makes sense. Because membership also comes with the power, and
thus responsibility, to help setting the goals in steering the community.
In the past I've been stating regularly that it is important that
developers have enough understanding of the needs of the people doing
e.g. QA and l10n.
But the same can happen the other way round. The recent discussion about
the marketing approach, with all related items, in the board and in the
full community, reveals that for many it is not natural to understand
the situation of commercial entities in the community. This comes with
the clear risk that one of the major pillars under LibreOffice's success
- professional developers - is seriously weakened. Details can be read
in the recent discussion.
And I don't want to blame anybody for that. It is only natural that many
people, at larger distance to the core group, have a different
understanding of the situation.

I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
core group is less strong.

I think we have to recognize that the number of 4k people there is very
high. Even if say 10% would contribute (...) it is unrealistic to expect
that their membership will help with a balanced, strong governance of
the foundation.
Yet, having them on our side showing support, spreading the word, is
important. And the same applies in the area of e.g. marketing and
design. We do want to value the support also from people that help on a
booth or do a local presentation 2, 3 times a year and have them engaged.
Is it necessary to try to make them all member? Growing membership is
not a goal of the community. More important is that the board of
trustees is composed in a way, that this supports that people who are
doing the hard and essential work of development will also be leading
their own work. We cannot afford that the meritocracy disappears; this
is undesired.

...

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
  between membership and non-membership that encourages
  a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
  achieve full membership ?

Investigating in that direction possibly brings the best of two worlds
together.

Cheers,
Cor

#40

This is a very interesting point. 4k people in Weblate, so that would be
350 persons or so on average for every language that LibreOffice supports?

Although I have a degree in humanities, I am still capable of handling
basic operations: 4000 divided by 140 active language projects gives as
a result 28.6, quite a smaller figure. Even if we consider only the 119
available languages, the figure is 33.6.

I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
core group is less strong.

I think we have to recognize that the number of 4k people there is very
high. Even if say 10% would contribute (...) it is unrealistic to expect
that their membership will help with a balanced, strong governance of
the foundation.

According to the statutes, if they contribute they can become TDF
members. Statutes do not mention at all the way their membership can
help a balanced and strong governance of the foundation. And in any
case, how each TDF member helps a balanced and strong governance falls
under the personal judgement, and here each one may have a completely
different point of view.

Yet, having them on our side showing support, spreading the word, is
important. And the same applies in the area of e.g. marketing and
design. We do want to value the support also from people that help on a
booth or do a local presentation 2, 3 times a year and have them engaged.
Is it necessary to try to make them all member? Growing membership is
not a goal of the community.

My opinion is completely different here, and I think there are several
other people who share my point of view. Actually, several people asked
about ideas to grow the membership by involving more contributors.

More important is that the board of
trustees is composed in a way, that this supports that people who
are doing the hard and essential work of development will also be
leading their own work. We cannot afford that the meritocracy
disappears; this is undesired.

Sorry, but I completely disagree here. Having a board of trustees based
only on developers would be as bad as having a board of trustees without
developers, and would kill meritocracy in both cases.

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