Hi all,
Over the last ten months in the Board of Directors, I have been trying
to achieve two things: Get a *balanced* proposal how to hire and manage
TDF in-house developers, and to contract Weblate developers to improve
Weblate for our l10n community needs.
The latter seemed simple - there was a huge support for improving
Weblate inside the Board, we've got an offer from the Weblate people,
and yet, there is no contract signed ten months later. I have high
hopes that it will happen at some stage, but now it is becoming obvious
that there is very little chance that the actual work will start until
the end of the year.
The former was a tough nut to crack obviously; there were many views
how to do that, but that is fine - I am used to work with people who
see things differently, always happy to present my ideas, and work
towards a compromise. What I am much less happy about is when people
start accusing me that I'm doing everything "because of commercial
interests" - which is not true; all I want is a fun, successful Free
Software / Open Source community that is equally pleasant for all the
contributors: volunteer, commercial, and TDF in-house.
It has come to the point when I am sick and tired of all the
accusations and passive aggression against me and others. It has just
become folklore in this community: "when you don't agree with somebody,
accuse them that they do that because of commercial interests".
In other words, TDF has moved from a meritocracy (where the doers
decide) to some kind of "shouting-ocracy" (where the vigorous shouters
decide).
I was always trying to be calm even in heated debates (both public and
those inside the Board). I worked with many of you since the 2003 [*]
so I hope many contributors here can confirm I am a very patient and
open-minded person.
Unfortunately, the toxicity of the questioning of motivations of me and
other long-time community members has exhausted my emotional energy,
and I cannot stand that any more.
I resign from the Membership (Board of Trustees), and consequently I
also resign from the Board of Directors.
I'll be still around contributing to the LibreOffice code (which I
still love), and I'm still excited to talk code, l10n, documentation
(ie. areas to which I've contributed over the years) with everyone, but
I don't care about the TDF's governance and its politics any more.
I hope that things will change for the better, and I'll be willing to
become a Member again, but for the moment, I cannot see it happening.
All the best,
Kendy
[*] I started contributing to the code as a volunteer, and I am
extremely grateful that initially SUSE and later Collabora decided to
sponsor me. But even with that, I've always been contributing on top
of my paid time.
In the code, my areas were eg. the KDE integration, 64bit porting, or
interoperability.
Outside of the code, I've worked with many of you when I've helped
forming the UX team in LibreOffice, were translating to Czech, or when
I've created the web-based LibreOffice help.
I was one of the Founding Members of LibreOffice, and mentored a lot of
newcomers who joined the freshly born project; and also many GSoC
students later.
