The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2024-06-03
Call Minutes
Date: Monday, June 3, 2024
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht (unanimously accepted by all participants)
In the call:
Eike Rathke (Member of the Board), Italo Vignoli (Member of the Board), Sophie Gautier (Member of the Board), Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Chairperson), Laszlo Nemeth (Member of the Board), Simon Phipps (Deputy Chairperson), Osvaldo Gervasi (Member of the Board)
Mike Saunders (Deputy Member of the Board), Paolo Vecchi (Deputy Member of the Board)
Shinji Enoki (Membership Committee, substitute)
TDF Team: Heiko Tietze (UX Designer), Florian Effenberger (Executive Director), Stephan Ficht (Administrative Assistant)
Community: Justin Luth, Andreas Mantke, Dennis Rozcek
Representation: None
The Board of Directors at the time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The call is quorate. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
The meeting commenced at 16:04 UTC (18:04 Berlin time).
PUBLIC SECTION
A1. Questions and answers from the community
Stephan asked about the resignation of Board member Bjoern. Eliane said she was sorry to hear about his resignation, and doesn’t have any details. Laszlo was surprised too. Heiko raised Thorsten Behrens’ mailing list question about the audit, and Florian said that he had already replied.
A2. Status update from the Board
The Board briefly discussed the upcoming in-person meeting in Munich, confirmed that planning for the LibreOffice Conference is on-track, and welcomed Osvaldo as a full Board member.
A3. Planning of regular community sessions
Sophie talked about planning a session to talk to the community, which was also an idea from Simon, and said that a schedule would have to be adapted for the convenience of different communities. Mike said he will suggest something to the German-speaking community, although Florian noted that the community has become rather dormant.
Eliane talked about weekly meetings of the Brazilian community, going on for three years, and Simon said it’s important to reach out to developers too, like having a “town-hall” meeting" for developers.
A4. Update on tenders and growth of ecosystem
Italo said that the Board has to solve the issue of completing the tender regulations policy. Paolo suggested mandating Carlo Piana to complete the policy, while Florian described some blockers from the last Board, related to the budget. Simon said the Board needs to allocate time to it and clearly document the remaining issues. Italo said he had talked to Carlo about his doubts, and that Carlo should point the Board to the most important documents to be prepared for the Munich meeting. Osvaldo agreed with Italo.
A5. Update on the budget
Florian said there is a draft budget, inherited from the last Board’s budget which was voted on on December 31 2023. Eliane suggested having a budget for the Latin American LibreOffice community.
A6. Status update on the LibreOffice Conference
Sophie thanked Paolo for working on the organisation, and Italo on the marketing, hotel and catering. Paolo described how he is connecting with sponsors and supporters, and described the location.
A7. Translation of meeting minutes
Eliane said that translating Board meeting minutes would encourage more people to get involved with TDF’s projects. Sophie agreed that it’s important, but it takes time to find people among local communities. Florian said it would be a gateway to getting more information out to people, to spark more participation. Italo suggested looking into DeepL corporate accounts to help with translations.
A8. Status update from the project, the ecosystem and the team
Sophie and Florian provided a schedule for the upcoming in-person team meeting in Munich.
A9. First anonymous community survey on board work, TDF and LibreOffice
Heiko described a survey from years ago, and Sophie asked if a multilingual version would be possible, saying she will work with Heiko on it, who added that a good survey starts with good questions.
BOARD AND MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE-ONLY SECTION
The meeting progressed to a closed session also attended by the Membership Committee as observers. The closed session was due to the most urgent matters discussed being of a sensitive commercial/legal nature.
The meeting ended at 18:26 UTC (20:26 Berlin time).
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)
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