[VOTE] Adopt version 1 of Community Bylaws

It is deeply unfortunate that despite having asked you many times over the years to kindly to check your sources to avoid making deeply flawed statements you keep doing it in most of your posts.

Please do take your time to actually read the document, you will discover that many of the public comments have actually been taken in consideration.

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I strongly oppose this vote and the lack of regard it demonstrates to those who disagree and call for the motion to be withdrawn. I requested an open review process because the changes needed are too extensive to be reported privately to the author and applied privately without an open discussion. This has not happened, despite the many wise voices questioning aspects of the document and the obvious need for formal review.

In particular the portions that remove membership from Trustees in several different ways without due process or transparency are simply wrong, are open to abuse and I fear they will quickly be abused to exclude from TDF anyone who disagrees with the directors who support this motion. These are not the only problems; there are many others, which other posts here have documented as recently as this week. This is not a consensus document of the Foundation as a whole, and no attempt has been made to make it so.

If the Board majority group insists on proceeding with this misguided and premature motion, I vote NO.

Hi Sophie,

+1

I vote in favor of adopting Version 1 of the Community Bylaws

I would like to thank everyone involved in preparing this document. This is an issue that our community has been waiting for since the initial discussions in January 2011, but which has remained without definitive formalization for a long time.

After 15 years, this board takes responsibility for finally establishing this historic milestone, transforming long-standing aspirations into a solid governance structure. Regardless of individual perspectives, what unites us is our commitment to the integrity of the foundation. Our priority is to ensure that TDF operates independently, always putting the interests of The Document Foundation first.

Best,

Eliane Domingos

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You might have missed the fact that the few voices that made comments have been taken in consideration by the wise members of the board and the MC which amended the document accordingly.

As recommended previously please do read the motion and the document before commenting on it.

As this motion is neither misguided nor premature could you please state clearly if you vote no to a document that you haven’t even read yet or if you’d like to take time to actually read it and then vote according to the actual merits of the document?

Thanks a lot Sophi,

+1

–Osvaldo

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Hi

To help make the changes clearer and easier to review, here is a simplified red-line of the differences between the initial and latest versions of the Community Bylaws:

This is a mechanical diff highlighting additions and removals only, similar to the redlining I shared earlier during the draft phase here:

Hopefully this makes it easier for others to see what changed at a glance.

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Just to double underline the unclear nature of this one new clause - it is possible to see what ChatGPT’s thinks - and it makes a number of interesting points:

IANAL, it seems the clause is deeply vague and broad. So - again I ask, who does the board think is currently “involved in legal claims ?” and/or affiliated with those.

Has the board considered the consequences of this on the membership as of today? I would like to think that this is part of its duty (predicting the future is of course harder than predicting the present - but this was flagged well ahead of time). If the consequences have been properly considered, then perhaps the board can share the list of those that this is thought to affect (?)

It seems to me that the text says very little about the fact that the community is today mainly digital, and it hardly addresses issues of privacy and personal data related to tracking contributions (accounts, messages, activity history, etc.).

However, this kind of tracking clearly falls under the GDPR, with requirements for transparency, proportionality, and limited retention. Are these aspects defined somewhere else (for example in a privacy policy or internal procedures), or are they handled elsewhere in the governance?

Dear Community,

-1

My dissenting opinion:

≠==========
We have repeatedly pointed out the problems among the current and former board members, which makes this absolutely unacceptable for the community we represent, even despite the forced, non-consensus vote. The rules described are not strict, but quite the opposite: without any justification, they weaken the free software principles of our founding document, destroy the forces that hold our community together, replace the golden people’s representation with numerus clausus, and even explicitly falsify the original statutes of The Document Foundation.

(Unfortunatelly, this vote was positioned during my holiday, so I had no access to any computer to write more about the details, which were already shared on board meetings and partially here and community discuss. I’m sorry, I can write more and answer only on Tuesday, when I will be at home again.)

Best regards,
László

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The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4.

A total of 6 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 4 votes.

Result of vote:
5 approvals: Sophie, Mike, Paolo, Eliane, Osvaldo
0 abstain
1 disapprovals: Laszlo

Decision: The proposal has been accepted.

Dissenting opinion from Laszlo: “We have repeatedly pointed out the problems among the current and former board members, which makes this absolutely unacceptable for the community we represent, even despite the forced, non-consensus vote. The rules described are not strict, but quite the opposite: without any justification, they weaken the free software principles of our founding document, destroy the forces that hold our community together, replace the golden people’s representation with numerus clausus, and even explicitly falsify the original statutes of The Document Foundation.”

Conditional votes can not be counted. Votes must be made in an unambigious form. (Had the expressed opinion be counted as vote, the outcome would be unchanged.)

Florian

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Given the vote proceeded (my rhetorical comment was not a condition) I clearly voted no as well as explaining why.

S.

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You voted with “If”. That is conditional and can not be counted. Only clear, unconditional votes can.

The comment was clearly not a condition on the vote itself but a rhetorical consequence of my comments. But even if it was you need to count it as abstaining as I participated in the vote. If you’re including comments in the closure you also need to include mine.

S.

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Congratulations to the TDF Board of Directors for putting in place the Community Bylaws. These are a very important milestone in our foundation’s governance, ensuring stability, safety and independence at the home of LibreOffice

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Thanks to everyone who gave their feedback and suggestions, so that we could incorporate them into the document :blush: This is a great step give TDF a good future as a truly independent foundation.

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I prepared an (unofficial) German translation
CommunityBylaws-V1-DE.pdf (100,9 KB)

Find attached spanish version
CommunityBylaws-V1-ES.pdf (186.9 KB)

@Osvaldo_Gervasi worked on an Italian translation of the community bylaws, which I’ll attach here. Thanks a lot!

CommunityBylaws-V1-IT.pdf (89,0 KB)

Hi @floeff ,

It seems pretty obvious, what @webmink 's intention was here, even more so after his clarification:

It would be easy & appropriate for you, to just edit the post with the vote tally & reflect that. Not doing that under normal circumstances would simply make you look petty; for an important vote like this one though, it gives the impression that significant opposition to the bylaws should be buried.

Not a good look, and not a very transparent handling of the case, either. In the same vein, the recent blog post announcing the bylaws talks about them being “based on feedback from the community”.

Well, if only that were the case…

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Traditional Chinese translation:

tdf-CommunityByLaws-V1-zh_TW.pdf (507.9 KB)