Sorry, but I give up

Just a couple of additional information:

(1) I have left tdf-internal mailing list, which means that I am not reading your replies there (if any).

(2) I am deliberately trying to focus on my tasks, which means that I am not reading emails since I have sent my last message to tdf-internal. If you have emailed me since January 1st, please resend your message after January 6.

(3) If you really think that I should read your message before next week, please use Signal or Matrix, as there is too much background noise on Telegram.

It is extremely dismaying to see you give up on this. While we disagree on some of the details and causes - I was really encouraged to vote for you, and to see you elected and engaging with the problems. Even more encouraged to see you making some progress too against the odds. Thank you so much for diligently working to get something positive actually done! Thanks too for being a person who reaches out and listens to others across the aisle - we badly need more of that in board work.

It is very far from clear to me why, despite me repeatedly signalling a willingness to talk and help solve these open issues, that no-one is talking and/or proposing even silly ideas for sensible ways ahead: instead there is just brutal escalation. So - thank you in particular for not having that attitude - and always being open.

I completely agree that people should be co-operating in a search for a fair solution - which starts and ends with talking constructively (by which I mean with a focus on building something better). I hope there are still enough board members with the skill & experience to do that in TDF’s interest, although we have lost an unfortunate number of experienced people this term both in the board and membership.

I’m particularly grateful for the self awareness you brought to the role, as well as accurate communication and framing: that these problems are difficult - there are many factors that feed into them, there is no panacea, and the blame is widely distributed etc. That seemed a wise and winsome approach to me.

Anyhow - thanks so much for the time you put in; I really hope you can make good progress on the various important activities you have underway - and that you’ll be able to have the satisfaction of finishing them up; and perhaps a small final hope - that the situation improves enough before you leave - so that doing so will be no longer necessary.

Best wishes, Michael.

That’s good. And the usual procedure.

And hopefully everyone also agrees that a ‘fair solution’ must fulfil the requirements of the charitable TDF’s statutes and the legal provisions.

Best,
Stephan

It is very far from clear to me why, despite me repeatedly signalling a willingness to talk and help solve these open issues, that no-one is talking and/or proposing even silly ideas for sensible ways ahead: instead there is just brutal escalation.

Let me see if I can unravel this mystery from my perspective.

First, as a general observation, I notice that your conception of the way ahead for TDF seems to involve some kind of technical challenge that will get programmers excited. I think the P2P LibreOffice project is one and I wish it success. While getting new programmers involved and giving fresh challenges to the veterans is a commendable goal, I’m afraid no amount of singing Kumbayah between programmers is going to solve TDF and ecosystems’ problems at the leadership level, where the real conflicts are.

Second, I don’t think more silliness or off-the-wall ideas is what TDF needs right now. On the contrary, I think many of us trustees would appreciate a more serious attitude toward the legal issues TDF is facing. Right now I can’t be sure if everyone taking part in these conversations agrees that the laws of Germany do, in fact, apply to TDF and will override any previous arrangements held together by duct tape and common sense. I’m sure the companies in the ecosystem do not go about flouting the law while doing business themselves! That we’re not hearing a resounding commitment by the key players in the ecosystem to seeing TDF through the current troubled legal waters is rather worrying, in my opinion.

Third, this is not the first time we’re having discussions about the future of TDF and LibreOffice. Those who were around in 2020 will remember that after long discussions with the ecosystem, an agreement was reached - and then almost immediately disregarded by Collabora, who proceeded to fork LibreOffice Online. However valid the reasons for the fork may have been from Collabora’s perspective, I think this kind of surprise manoeuvre resulted in a lot of trust and goodwill burned. The ecosystem needs to win that trust back. It’s no use spending lots of time and effort crafting lofty plans and pronouncements if one of the parties can simply flush everything down the drain on a whim afterwards.

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Hi Tuomas,

I think it is good that you bring these things here clearly; let me answer in the same spirit.

I’ve never noticed anyone saying, writing or suggesting that German law does not matter or can be ignored. I do have seen various statements of the opposite, people confirming they do respect law and want to act accordingly. It is possible that you find these reassuring statements much less, than those insinuating as if ‘some do not mind’, and even slanderous and defamatory statements. Responding to all kind of frames and rumors however, would clearly increase the amount of noise even more - with people rightfully complaining about that already now.
If you find statements, say e.g. about an audit, that suggest there are issues, then please do remember that there are well documented controversies about the facts, but not about the law. I think it would be very helpful to the situation if all cooperate to have these controversies sorted out… Quoting Michael (from above here):

A last topic.

Without having a date, I’m sure the compromise was there well before 2020. The description of the situation can still found on the LibreOffice website. However someone (having business interests but no relevant contributions) who entered the TDF board, started to attack the agreement, finally resulting in Collabora moving the development (that of course remained open source and providing gratis versions too) to another place.
(Note: I was working most of my professional time for Collabora during that period.)

So there was a situation with LibreOffice Online development (almost completely by Collabora) at TDF that was not competing with the ecosystem company, responsible for developers’ salaries and that brought (and brings) a lot of important improvements for LibreOffice in all areas, benefiting all kinds of LibreOffice users. Any sensible person will understand that also from TDF’s own best interest, it would be clearly unwise to try to do that different. It was not Collabora that started breaching trust.

HTH,
Cor

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We have seen you and Michael Meeks repeatedly spreading the implausible theory that lawyers have been intentionally mislead and that the advice received is just a result of “garbage in, garbage out”. This combined with your actions and inaction gives this impression of not caring about the law or what happens to TDF.

Hello Cor,

If my rhetorical exaggeration wasn’t clear enough, I don’t think anyone here literally believes that German law has no bearing on TDF whatsoever. The crux of the mattter is, in plainer language: do people believe that complying with the law is actually vitally important to TDF? If they do, why don’t they act like they do? I’m seeing the kind of carefree, dismissive attitude that’s quite unexpected and concerning for a matter of this importance.

I think it would be very helpful to the situation if all cooperate to have these controversies sorted out…

Indeed. If you really believe that, though, why did you spend much of last year starting a fire and then happily throwing more fuel on it?

Hi Ilmari,

Apart from the ways in which, at various occasions, I’ve expressed my increasing amazement about the fact that there is no interest to even look at possibilities to provide more complete and better information - which could only lead to a situation with less risks for TDF - that is clearly no indication whatsoever of any disrespect for the law.

Hi Tuomas,

Maybe my explanation wasn’t clear enough either. When I write:

for me that just means complying.

This seems confused. It is clearly the case that if you don’t provide all the necessary background to your counsel, and/or worse mis-inform them - that you can get nonsense out of the very best counsel; for an easy example see: attacks over claims that TDF makes itself on its own website.

In more recent time - you can read the vote to approve a procurement policy that contained an Arbitration Clause:

The arbitrator(s) have the power to issue preliminary measures including a temporary order to award the Tender to the plaintiff and TDF will be bound by any such determination, order or award, relieving TDF of any liability. <!-- FIXME: add clause →

And also this:

11.4 “Developer shall compensate FhG for all damages that result directly or indirectly from the termination of the agreement” -

Where FhG turns out to be Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Apparently not proof-read; furthermore in that vote thread, no answer has been provided if a Rechtsanwalt had reviewed the policy for compliance before voting it through.

It seems at least well within the bounds of plausibility that there might be serious problems with how TDF handles legal matters.

This impression is far from the truth. We are incredibly blessed to be based in a developed nation underpinned by the rule of law - and we should not just follow, but honor the law.

What actions and inactions are you thinking of? I spend my time trying to encourage board members to engage in real dialog to resolve these issues - often with many months of non-response in between: it takes two to talk - and I pro-actively reach out.

For my part it is really hard to understand why TDF engaging a mediator / facilitator and a lawyer to try to help improve things at TDF is/was somehow bad. Particularly given the state TDF was in relationaly at the time.

TDF staff do good work every day; I helped to found TDF; I care about what happens to it - particularly that it remains true to being a Free Software project driven by its contributors, and ideally is returned to effectiveness again.

I believe that the current situation is the result of a history of years of miscommunication (probably, the worst example of communication I have witnessed in the past 50 years as a communicator) and its consequences. Today, it is difficult to trace back what we can define as original sin, because the problems have superimposed themselves on the problems, to the point that there are opposing but equally legitimate interpretations for each of them, obviously depending on the point of view.

I do not believe that anyone has ever deliberately acted against the law, but that bad communication has crystallised the respective opposing positions, and this has meant that those who had a majority in the BoD have tried to use legal advice in an instrumental way, to support their point of view.

If the first legal opinion that raised the issue of trademark licences had been immediately followed up, today - years later - we would not still be discussing how to solve the problem, which is now crossed with tenders and other issues.

And here we come to the two examples cited by Michael.

Personally, I believe that the decision to use the term LibreOffice Enterprise was an egregious error, the result of the BoD’s misinformation of the law firm ( the BoD completely ignoring the decisions made by the BoD itself in approving the marketing plan). An egregious error, which today - in light of other definitions - should in my personal opinion be categorised as a partial misuse of TDF funds.

Moreover, since - unlike others - I am perfectly aware that it is possible to make mistakes even in good faith, I protested against the decision at the time but was completely ignored by the BoD, despite the fact that I was the one who had written the rules (and therefore knew them perfectly well), but I did not accuse anyone of criminal behaviour, as others have done several times for even much less serious things. Let us also say that the fact that my protest was ignored is perfectly in line with the incredible number of mistakes made by the BoD in 2020/2022 and 2022/2024.

As far as the Procurement Policy is concerned, I have already made it clear that the errors contained in the first version that was published have been corrected in a version 1.1 that I hope will be published as soon as possible, and that in any case even version 1.1 cannot be considered final because it only addresses a partial case of tenders, i.e. those for which the skills are widely distributed within the community and not concentrated within the companies of the ecosystem. A fact that is quite obvious to those who have even a minimal knowledge of LibreOffice developers, such as myself, but evidently not obvious to those who have an obviously inferior knowledge to mine but think instead that they have a good grasp of the project.

Once all this has been clarified, I repeat my point of view for the umpteenth time.

At this time, I believe it is appropriate for everyone to avoid going back over points that have already been clarified, as if the clarifications had never happened, or to continue in accusations that are almost always the result - to a large extent - of communication crimes committed in the past by the majority of BoD members (this is a professional judgement, for which I can provide all the supporting evidence).

I believe that it would be much better for everyone to do a good examination of conscience, with a cool head, trying to understand how and where we may have gone wrong by creating in others the perceptions that - in the long run - turned into the current frictions. Assuming that we have all done something wrong, and nothing we have done is perfect. Not even in all those cases where we are adamantly convinced that we have done the right thing, even from a legal point of view.

I, too, would like to understand the criterion on the basis of which the auditor determined that some consultancy expenses represent a misuse of TDF funds and others do not. This is to help me in my decision-making. In fact, while I can understand the two decisions, I would like to be sure that my point of view is the same as the auditor’s.

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Hi Tuomas,

Assuming you are referring to e.g. ‘extremely irresponsible’, then please read this:

Further more it appears to me, that also the 2023-audit shows that I rightfully considered it completely normal and within possibilities, to prevent any possible involvement from me as MC member in the audit, by recusing myself: three members just did that…

Talking about starting of a fire: I think there can be no misunderstanding about my intentions for the MC. But possibly this brings you closer:

I hope that you find it justified that I stand up for my rights and (even though actual responses seem to be few in number) defend myself. Really: to me this is not ‘happily throwing fuel on…’; I can fully concede with you though, in expressing hope that this can be closed soon in a fair and sensible way!

@ilmari : Unfortunately, given some of the rhetoric we’ve been reading these past few months (mostly by @PaoloVecchi and @elianedomingos in name fo the BoD, but to some extent also from @italovignoli), I have to say this theory is not implausible. But regardless - secret legal advice visible to only one side of an argument are really not something worth consideration. You know, I contracted a very respectable lawyer who advised me that all of my claims are valid and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong… but I can’t publish his advice because it’s very sensitive. Or just because. :frowning:

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(Sorry for the late reply to the initial post, I’ve been catching up on the tedious arguments in tdf-internal)

I am sad to hear this news, @italovignoli - much more about your decision to withdraw from trusteeship than even your upcoming resignation from the BoD. Even though I have some strong disagreements with you, your willingness to engage - and invest/waste a lot of time talking to disgruntled trustees with oppositionary views like myself - is and has been very much appreciated, by myself and many many others (which I’m sure you know but it never hurts to say it :slight_smile: ).

I will say that, from my perspective, that it is an excessive expectation, not to have to “share presence with people [you] would try to avoid outside the project, because they are are completely alien to my way of seeing and doing things, incapable of building a constructive relationship with other people, and toxic to any kind of environment.”

Certainly, some of us have alien behaviors to one anothers, some of us may be incapable of being constructive, and some of us may be toxic. Well, sometimes and to some extent, anyways. But - being an LO trustee requires contributing to the project, not capability of constructive relationships or non-toxicity. Society as a whole is not made up of virtuous people, and LO contribution is not really a virtue filter on quality of character. And of course, different TDF trustees believe that different other trustees are those “bad apples”, toxic and intolerable. We are stuck with each other, because of our goal, of perfecting and expanding the use of LibreOffice; in that sense, TDF trusteeship is not entirely voluntary - if we want to be involved, we also put up with people we don’t like.

Of course you’re fully within your right to choose to withdraw. You’ve earned it, not to “take so much crap”, after long years of contributions and community activity. But then - you have also chosen to put yourself in the heart of it as a BoD member. … well, a change of heart is also legitimate. I still want to ask you to consider, upon your resignation as a BoD member, not to resign from the board of trustees. Even if you reduce your level of activity, please don’t give up on us all the way.

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just to emphasize that these kind of legacy considerations are totally opaque to (most?) readers.

this “term” seems only vaguely used in LibreOffice in business :thinking:

we strongly recommend using LibreOffice Enterprise versions from one of our ecosystem partners
LibreOffice Enterprise doesn’t refer to a single product, but a family of products built upon LibreOffice with the additional benefits mentioned above.
LibreOffice Enterprise versions of the suite are ideal solutions for businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.

Additional info welcome.

Hi Eyal,

would you find it plausible that Michael, which stated he spent money with his own lawyer, or Thorsten and Cor that asked the legal firm they had exclusive access to, while being in CoI and without the board’s knowledge, about these legal issues, did not get anything that they could have used against the statements and advice provided by 7 other lawyers?

I have no doubt that if they found even a comma that could have been used to discredit all the other lawyers they would have used it years ago and made the world know that they were right and all the lawyers were wrong because of that comma.

Not having found that comma some resort to nitpicking from other documents:

I got surprised as well to see an error in that document (FhG) as I’ve corrected it a month earlier but an old version of the PDF has been published.

Of course, as expected, that has been used to imply that the current board might be incapable of handling legal matters correctly.

I guess you mean legal details or information that should not be shared with people that are in conflict of interests. Not that it mattered that much as since Caolan left and Thorsten disbanded the legal group, that was supposed to work on these matters avoiding influence from the directors in CoI, they were all over the places despite advice from the lawyers to stay out of it.

As stated a while back, I believe by Italo, legal documents or a summary of them will be shared with the trustees as soon as the matters at hand are solved.
I would be for sharing the whole lot including whole email threads showing who has said or done what as it would clarify once and for all the roles and the responsibilities of each director.

Just a note about this:

We have discussed the matter at length at the time and, while there have been a case of miscommunication and different opinions, the specific matter of stating “X is an enterprise version of LibreOffice” on the app store, the actual term “LibreOffice Enterprise” was not found, discussed or used at all in that context, had zero (0) influence on the general legal matters at hand at the time or currently.

The majority of the board that sent that letter, after having warned Michael that we had to take actions on the relevant legal statements we received, did not consider the use of “X is an enterprise version of LibreOffice” as being the same thing as sporting a “LibreOffice Enterprise” logo/statement so we did not contact you for that.

The solution to the matter was very simple as it can be seen even today, eg: “X is an enterprise-ready office suite based on LibreOffice technology…”, that in my opinion is OK as it states a similar thing, without stating that it’s a different software, and of course if should state that X provides enterprise services and support.

Then if X is actually a different software which provides features that LibreOffice doesn’t have it’s an entirely different matter but at the time I was not aware of that being the case.

The attorney in question has not been “misinformed”, the attorney has been asked to check the compliance of the corresponding app store pages following the expiry of the trademark license.
No instructions have been given to look at or not look at something to ensure that the attorney would do an objective and impartial job and to ensure that nobody could claim that there has a preferential treatment as it would have gone against the application of the arm’s length principle recommended in the legal documents we received.

The attorney reported the findings that have been shared with Michael, as they were, together with an additional explanation complementing the previous warnings that unfortunately these were steps we had to take.

These are the facts supported by evidence.

If you want to claim that in your opinion I was one of the person involved in a misuse of TDF funds then you should report it to our legal team, the auditors and the supervisory authorities, together with the evidence supporting your claim if you have any, to complete the 2022 audit and to see if they share your opinion.

Hi y’all,

I was relieved to see others apparently catching up on a number of long-running issues now. It’s a shame that Paolo still feels compelled to continue insisting on his fantasy stories, like e.g.:

In case anyone wonders where to look, should those details be shared with the trustees eventually: the firm engagement letter says “The Document Foundation”, not “only Thorsten and Cor”, and so did the board decision to hire them. And on and on it goes, of course implausible CoI accusations had to be added, or the absence of proof, that is proof of absence…

I just wish everyone here would instead reflect on why @italovignoli wants to resign, and come together & prove him wrong - that actually we can overcome the differences, and work together for the best of TDF, and LibreOffice.

Cheers, Thorsten

Then I guess we’ll have to discuss how and where to publish the evidence.

Taking in consideration this:

and this:

and reading from the evidence that we received from the law firm, whose contract was disputed as it was obvious due to past experiences what would have happened, the first thing you and Cor did is to ask for advice on matters in which you were in CoI hiding that from the rest of the board.

Please do check your email archive to refresh your memory to find plenty of evidence including, as one of the last and most egregious cases, Cor sending with only you in copy legal statements he then discussed with the law firm over the phone while in CoI, without an approved budget or mandate and without informing the board.

Only the new board became aware of what the 2 of you did as we challenged the invoice you left to us to pay.
This board managed to limit the damage removing a good chunk of the costs that, as the lawyer stated, should have been 3 times more than what we paid.

That expenditure has been considered a misuse of TDF’s funds by the auditors so that is yet another issue you created that we need to address.

It would be great if you check the evidence you also have before defining my statements “fantasy stories”.

I agree on this but if nobody ever takes responsibility for or even admit that they made mistakes then it doesn’t help in fixing the issues.

Finally there is a board that actually tackles the issues that the previous board didn’t fix and takes the necessary difficult decisions but then we can still see statements that imply that the lawyers have been mislead so as a consequence we might be acting on the wrong advice.

I would have liked to avoid pointing out yet another one of your mistakes but as the matter got raised again we should agree that if you or Cor would have managed to get a different opinion from that law firm you would have used it.

So let’s all agree that the statements and advices from several top lawyers are correct and let’s work together to implement the fixes that our legal team suggested and will suggest.

As you had access to all the lawyers, the relevant legal statements and advises as well as having discussed with lawyers what is needed to conclude the matter in relation to your company, you can lead by example and provide all the information you know you should provide even today.

That would be the best indicator you could provide to the whole community that you are genuinely willing to help solving the issues we need to fix.