The Document Foundation - Board of Directors Meeting 2025-10-20 - Call Minutes

Date: Monday, October 20, 2025
Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Eliane Domingos de Sousa
Notes for the minutes: Stephan Ficht, Mike Saunders, Florian Effenberger

In the call:

Board - Mike, Eliane, Laszlo, Simon, Paolo, Osvaldo
Board deputies - none
Membership committee - Pranam
Membership committee substitutes -
Team - Florian, Stephan, Ilmari
Community - Jeff F.T. (Jean Francois), Justin Luth, Michel Meeks

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 6 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 16:06 UTC / 18:06 Berlin time

A. Public section

  • Community Q&A: 10 minutes

    • I would like to mention that every month the Board invites the community to participate in the meetings (Eliane)
      • This shows that the current Board is always open to questions and dialogue, as an act of good faith and transparency
      • If there are no participants or questions, it’s simply because there is nothing to raise
    • any news on Bugzilla? (Jeff)
    • contractor was unable to deliver (Ilmari)
      • Bugzilla raising donations
      • seeking for a sponsor to lift it to 6.0
    • TDF put nearly 50% (Florian)
    • contractor used a sub-contractor to make more progress (Ilmari)
      • so sub-contractor might be interested in input
    • hopefully we can move on here (Jeff)
  • Potential grants for LibreOffice: 5 minutes

    • grants with Erasmus (Florian)
      • paperwork to be done
      • ETA next year
      • Italo is looking into this
    • hopefully Italo can share information with the board (Eliane)
  • FOSDEM 2026: 5 minutes

    • applied for dev room, no reply so far (Florian)
    • suggestion: meeting Monday board, MC, Team; Tuesday: Board, MC
    • remain unconvinced holding the meetings after event (Simon)
      • needs a lot of time staying around FOSDEM
      • board meetings not very productive
      • suggest having a board meeting apart from events, planned well in advance to allow attendance
      • people are busy with other things during events
    • risky to get all people gathered apart from events (Florian)
      • many people need to take vacation, so they might not join yet another meeting
  • Budget 2026: 10 minutes

    • promoting developers (Paolo)
      • Friday participated to OnRamp session with OSPO Alliance where another public sector organisation would like to donate to TDF to support also the employment of more developers
      • evaluating the possibilities for funds from the EU, etc.
    • close to final budget by FOSDEM (Florian)
      • reach out for community for input
      • incoming board should have a say also
      • some hirings running
      • aim for second half of February
      • action item: all to think about proposals to be funded
    • wondering if we can plan a dedicated meeting with community for input (Eliane)
      • let’s see what community thinks about it
  • Developer hiring status: 5 minutes

    • negotiations will continue this week (Ilmari)
      • Base hiring pre-filtering
      • lots of candidates
      • things are progressing
    • hiring worldwide adds a huge load of challenges (Florian)
      • costs of time and administrative stuff needed
    • kudos to Ilmari driving the interviews (Eliane)
  • LibreOffice Conference 2026: 5 minutes

    • organizing gets more tedious (Florian)
      • have a couple of ideas
      • Italo, Sophie following up
      • type of conference to be discussed
      • different opinions were expressed how to shape the conference
    • few people contacted already with first ideas shared (Mike)
    • need to prepare something (Eliane)
      • perhaps train people how to prepare a conference
      • avoid remain in our own bubble
      • eg in Budapest thought seeing students but were also us
    • need to gather in-person (Simon)
      • maintain personal relationships, friendship
      • assure LO is the subject in conversations around the world
      • already said this during last meeting
      • have a single TDF conference (for the trustees, board and Foundation) and LibreOffice conferences (for reaching users and newcomers)
      • suggest getting a group together to consider alternatives for conferences
    • risk to have people split among the two conferences (Florian)
    • clarify how to market it (Paolo)
      • maybe a “LibreOffice week” in order to combine both the need of the community to meet with the opportunity of engaging with institutions and Open Source actors as we did for the conference in Luxembourg
    • heard about trying an online conference first (Eliane)
      • examine this topic closer

Public section ended 16:38 UTC / 18:38 Berlin time

B. Trustee/members-only section

  • Nothing for this meeting

C. Board and MC only section

  • Collabora: 10 minutes (Michael Meeks)

    • [REDACTED: 43 lines of confidential meeting]
  • knocking at open doors (Laszlo)

  • did you read my email? (Eliane)

    • no, when did you share? (Laszlo)
  • please, read this email, thank you (Eliane)

  • Audit status: 5 minutes

    • [REDACTED: one line confidential part of meeting]
  • Status of legal situation: 5 minutes

    • [REDACTED: one line confidential part of meeting]

(Eliane, Mike and Pranam left at 17:00 / 19:00)

  • HR topic: 10 minutes
    • [REDACTED: 42 lines of confidential HR discussion]

The next Board meeting is planned for November 17.

The meeting ended at 17:25 UTC / 19:25 Berlin time.

Eliane Domingos de Sousa (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht, Mike Saunders (Keeper of the minutes)

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