When and how was 5 last times TDF credit Collabora ? What not work about it ?
You seem to love statistics, why don’t you tell us? Or, alternatively, please do not keep hijacking threads.
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Open-core is not only against the Free Software ethos, it is powerless to solve this issue - it just moves the problem somewhere much worse.
It depends on how open core is interpreted. Easy access to Zotero, for example, allows LibreOffice to shine without breaking their business model. Digital Scholar (the company behind Zotero) can develop expertise in an area, LibreOffice focus on our essentials. And ultimately it’s the freedom of choice if users pick open or closed sources, free or paid software, Zotero or Endnote to stay with the example (if integration was easy for any reference manager).
We all have set up TDF with specific ideas in mind. TDF is the independent foundation, not depending on one single sponsor, but working with many. We are the home of LibreOffice, we are here to foster, support and strengthen the community, the project and the software.
(I’ll spare quoting from the statutes, the incorporation discussions and the Next Decade Manifesto, as then we’ll probably dive again into eternal debates that lead nowhere.)
There a setups where one single company runs the project, develops the software, and supports the community. That might be a legitimate model - but it is not TDF’s model. TDF is not a company. TDF is not owned by anyone. TDF does not favor anyone. TDF is not to be controlled by anyone alone. This is the main thing to understand and accept. This is why people are here at TDF and not elsewhere.
This is our model, and it will not change, and it will not be circumvented.
The bittersweet irony of all this is that together we all could achieve so much more. We still have a stable foundation, we have a good reputation, a strong brand, and most important, a lot of dedicated, active and passionate community members. The fact that so much time is spent on the whole situation and on debating makes me very sad. It is time we could use for something good for society: develop code, localize, test, package and make available for download.
Doing something good for society strengthens TDF, but at the same time, it strengthens the ecosystem. A prominent brand, a good reputation, this is what helps also the companies. Maybe the market is not easy, but it is not TDF to blame for that. TDF should not build artificial scarcity, that doesn’t do any good to anyone, at least not in the long run, not sustainably.
If we look in the archives, nearly every press release featured name of ecosystem members, so did the slides for our advisory board. Conferences had strong visibility for companies who sponsored. Our download page literally had a big blue button titled “Business user?”, which pointed to the offers of the ecosystem. Just earlier this month, I gave a talk in front of the chamber of commerce, where I clearly indicated that for support, services, migration, LTS support, custom developments and the like, there is an ecosystem out there. IMHO there were (or are?) even recurring marketing calls between TDF and ecosystem members. Just looking in the current release notes, I see credits for the ecosystem companies.
The 26.2 release notes have the word “Collabora” thirty-seven times! What would be the proper amount of crediting? 50 times? 100 times? What is “enough” credit?
Let’s also not make the mistake to focus only on code, because then we miss the bigger picture. There is an infrastructure operated on which LibreOffice is developed. I don’t see Guilhem and Cloph credited 37 times. At least in the past there used to be a help system integrated, that - correct me if I’m wrong, of course - was developed also with the help of TDF. I don’t see Olivier credited 37 times. The translations - also here, correct me if I’m wrong, of course - were at least in the past done also by TDF people. I don’t see Sophie or Tuomas credited 37 times. Or Italo for the press releases, or Mike for the social media.
And there’s much more. Everyone contributes their share. Code might be tangible and visible, other things less, but that doesn’t meant they are not important.
- No infrastructure, no download, no development.
- No translation, no adoption.
- No documentation, no adoption.
- No marketing, no knowledge about the product.
- No accounting, nothing from the above is paid for.
The joy of FLOSS is that people are working together, to achieve something together. To see the bigger picture. Not to count lines of contributions. I review 60 pages of accounting each month, with dozens of lines each. Shall I claim that number now? I won’t. Because I add my share to our joint success, like many others do.
FLOSS is not about a “me”, but about an “us”. It is not about money, but about achieving something.
So: Can we PLEASE get our stuff together and do something for the common good, which is why we are here at TDF?
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Hello Michael,
I’m saying that there are options you could take, if needed. The all-or-nothing approach to FOSS is not something imposed on you by TDF or anyone else. You’re intentionally playing the game of software entrepreneurship on hard mode, as it were. If it works out for you, that’s fantastic of course, but I don’t think anyone would judge you for switching to normal mode, either.
For TDF however, getting to legal compliance is not an optional challenge.
Is this a common occurrence in the real world, though? If the proprietary bits are actual “enterprise” features, I doubt there will be many hobbyists with the time, expertise and motivation to re-implement them.
I’d suggest to take a look at the approach Element (of Matrix fame) have taken:
So if feature sponsorship and support contracts are not enough, what did we do instead? We need some way to hold back value without limiting growth of the eco-system at large.
Element’s approach balances open source freedom with practical sustainability:
- FOSS (Free and Open Source Software): Core features that empower end-users, including standard client functionality, cryptography, spaces, and threads.
- Paid features: Specialised enterprise functionality such as clustering, high availability, or regulatory compliance.
They tried a pure FOSS approach for many years, but switched to open-core for their server-side software last year, IIRC. It doesn’t sound like to me that they’re experiencing a “battleground” where hordes of hobbyists are cloning their enterprise features.
Hi Tuomas,
You’re intentionally playing the game of software entrepreneurship
on hard mode, as it were. If it works out for you, that’s fantastic
of course, but I don’t think anyone would judge you for switching to
normal mode, either.
You’re right - this is playing on hard-mode. However it is made significantly harder by having TDF’s rump-board un-necessarily attack our business and brand - for the most incredible reasons eg. “Yes, COOL is Free Software, but we want something called LibreOffice” for example.
For TDF however, getting to legal compliance is not an optional challenge.
Let me be very clear. There is no real legal issue with TDF collaborating nicely with other FLOSS projects, this is a deliberate and aggressive choice. The COOL they want to take will not work by itself anyway - it requires working together with software from Nextcloud, pydio, ownCloud, OCIS, openCloud, E-Groupware, seafile etc. etc. to store its files and authenticate.
mmeeks:
*In my experience “going open core” just moves the battleground from /“please don’t re-brand and pretend our code is made by TDF”/ to /“please don’t write FLOSS alternatives for our proprietary bits”/.Is this a common occurrence in the real world, though? If the proprietary bits are actual “enterprise” features, I doubt there will be many hobbyists with the time, expertise and motivation to re-implement them
Again I find the open-core suggestion objectionable. I do agree that “enterprise” vs. “citizen” is a rather sensible division of domain of focus. Unfortunately TDF has decided recently to focus on providing free binaries to governments, paid for by individual citizen donors. The rump board has voted to remove the ‘Community’ branding on their product that was somewhat helpful here too, so the direction of change is clear.
Furthermore there is past form here. Paolo (who seems to have an enterprise use-case for his hosting business) proposed a vote for TDF funding of a duplication/removal of all of our proprietary value-adds. That was a key driver behind the move away of the COOL team, opening our proprietary bits and instead focusing on building our brand.
I’d suggest to take a look at the approach Element (of Matrix fame) have taken:
I’ve enjoyed spending quite a bit of time 1:1 with both Matthew & Amandine at Element. We support joint customers, and they rock, and I’ve talked and listened to them extensively on this topic.
They tried a pure FOSS approach for many years, but switched to open- core for their server-side software last year, IIRC. It doesn’t sound like to me that they’re experiencing a “battleground” where hordes of hobbyists are cloning their enterprise features.
And yet Element have institutions out there cloning their enterprise features, with governments forking their product to avoid buying maintenance subscriptions. As you say running a FLOSS business is really playing on ‘hard mode’. Unfortunately TDF seems to be dedicating to using the LibreOffice brand we know, love and built
together to do this exact same bad behavior, and make life harder for its main contributor.
As a note - as you’re interested in FLOSS business (and thanks for engaging on the topic, it is helpful to go deeper), you can read Element’s financials. I would recommend carefully reading this year’s and last year’s filings. Things are getting better there but still - Element is a VC funded company running at a (shrinking) loss.
I hope that helps,
Michael.
Hi Michael,
I’ve kindly asked several times to avoid posting false and/or misleading statements which seem to have the only scope of creating divisions and mistrust.
If these false and/or misleading statements were made in the members mailing list then many would look at them and discard them as they would know that what you are stating is factually incorrect.
On a public forum things are a bit different as some, lacking the background information that would invalidate your statements, might see what you write as plausible which in the past led to articles that some could see as defamatory for TDF.
In this case I’m pleased to see an article that actually sticks to the reality of this announcement:
That’s straight to the point and without speculating on plans that do not exist as now it’s up to the community to help us planning a way forward for LibreOffice Online as stated in the vote:
So instead of wasting time with false and/or misleading statements wouldn’t it better for you to invest time in helping creating a way forward for LibreOffice Online, a project that was started by SUSE employees (including you) well before your company existed, as a community project around which a wider and more diverse ecosystem can be created for the benefit of all?
As you know, our passion is also to do something good for society, this is why we avoid open-core, and create an organic, FOSS company. When it comes to societal good: will aggressively attempting to de-monetize LibreOffice’s main contributor in some zero-sum scarcity mindset do something good for society? and/or LibreOffice? and/or ultimately TDF ?
This is a fair point. Let me expand on why I tend to say effective crediting’. TDF is skilled at crediting in a way that is ineffective ie. it does not work. As you say the release notes do contain a link to a wiki page that mentions us. However - all previous research I’ve seen suggests that these wiki pages containing the credits you celebrate are seen by next-to-no-one.
Again - there is a big gap between people reading your quote: “LibreOffice 26.2 shows what happens when software is built around users, not business models, …” and those following an embedded link, and also noticing that huge chunks of the work were actually funded by Collabora’s business model. A huge gap of thousands of people to one I expect. Or to take another crediting example the idea in this thread that LibreOffice Online started thanks to substantial funding from TDF which is not only unhelpful but untrue.
Traffic metrics are/were somewhat similar for the other business pages you raise - checkout what is point zero five percent from some years back. So there is crediting, but it is ineffective.
But what do I mean by effective ? apparently this is also unclear:
The TDF staff you list above do great work, but the reason Collabora wants crediting is not for some ego-trip. It is to make people aware of the existence of subscriptions and services that will make their experience and migration massively better. Not only that - but that by buying that they inject funds which can be re-invested into even more open source code - ie. the credit is ultimately what pays our developers. There is a need here to build a virtuous cycle of improvement that benefits society.
The TDF staff you list above (who, again I agree, also do great work), are already systematically credited with the creation of LibreOffice, and are also paid by TDF from donations given on the partial belief that TDF creates LibreOffice. As an aside - they are also encouraged to keep the release notes wiki page up-to-date.
So it is just not reasonable to contrast TDF staff who are already visibly paid in full, with ecosystem contributors whose businesses are effectively systematically hidden, and even criticized, and whose work is minimized, and who have a need to be visible in order to be able to re-invest in the project.
The words sound good, and yet - economics drives paid people - including yourself. I fear you see this as a zero sum game. TDF’s funding comes primarily from individuals, ours comes from enterprises. There is just no need for TDF to position itself for the enterprise market, and then use citizen’s donations to subsidize non-donating business’ needs - it is a very strange choice. To effectively mislead people about the source of LibreOffice’s development is self defeating, and deeply unhelpful.
The previous setup of separate projects allowed credit (and so leads which drive funding) to be somewhat reasonably distributed, this divisive change creates friction. I agree TDF cannot spend it’s time and energy talking about Collabora for many reasons - but it can easily choose not to try to pass off our huge investment in Online as its own in a counter-productive way.
I’ve written long texts on this which were apparently not understood, but perhaps in a fictional world it’s easier to expore the meta-problem here in comic form.
Hello Michael,
it’s important to remember that TDF is not a company, and TDF does not push any third party’s interests in particular.
If you help to setup a food bank or a social café, and are a restaurant owner (or food discounter store) at the same time, one thing shall never influence the other. You cannot stop handing out goods at the food bank, or limit the opening times in favor of your discounter store, or restrict the vegetables offered, just because it would harm your restaurant business. If your business model is around scarcity elsewhere, your restaurant will not survive.
At the same time, TDF has a clear mission. Let me quote from the Next Decade Manifesto: "To eliminate the digital divide in society by giving everyone access to office productivity tools free of charge to enable them to participate as full citizens in the 21st century".
Maybe your life situation has changed and you don’t like this “gratis” anymore. That is fine, lifes change. But this is the very idea TDF was born with, and we’re not gonna abandon it. We did setup something stable and enduring so everyone clearly knows the rules their contributions fall under. If we open this can of worms, tomorrow someone can say that instead of free and open we mean proprietary, and instead of ODF we mean OOXML, and instead of productivity tools we mean a jump and run game… nobody wants that room for interpretation.
Now that might affect your business, just as the food bank or social café might affect the restaurant. If you don’t want a food bank or a social café, that is your choice, but they cannot be bent in a way beneficial to the resaurant. Just as TDF cannot demonetize the ecosystem, the food bank cannot demonetize the restaurant. It’s a different target audience!
What happens if in three years from now it turns out that also the desktop version can be monetized quite well? Will TDF stop to provide it? Will we only, as some planned in the past already, offer a source code download, but no binary form? Will we have a nag screen? We already had the strange spin of the “Home edition”, later on “Personal edition”, that was not for mission-critical documents and that sparked quite some controversy. Do we need to be worried also desktop is at stake at some point?
This, by the way, is something different from being in competition. Neither is TDF in competition with the ecosystem, nor is the food bank in competition with the resaurant. Even the “gratis” doesn’t bring us into competition. They serve different purposes and target audiences. TDF does not offer service, support nor consultancy. That is what the eocsystem offers, and what TDF repeatedly points to. Now, if that does not work, that is unfortunate, but I wonder to which degree this is TDF’s fault, and to which degree it depends on the choice of business model.
TDF has extensively pointed to the ecosystem, including a big blue button on the download page, addressing business users. The download page is used by quite some people each day, so there was a wide visibility of this link. If that didn’t work, I struggle that TDF should take the blame for that. We were literally popping up in front of people with the message where to go if you are a business user. Even if it’s clear you and me have very different ways to see certain things, I was also pointing at the ecosystem at my speech recently at the Berlin chamber of commerce. We do point at the ecosystem literally at every occasion.
We have also repeatedly mentioned the ecosystem in press releases. We have done a lot, and as we’ve learned from the issues of the past, probably sometimes even a bit too much.
We do point to the companies. We did setup a certification program. We established LibreOffice Technology. We did have a big button when downloading. We talk about the ecosystem in interviews and in talks. All that costs money and time, including time of the staff that is so heavily criticized for being in the board and what not.
TDF cannot write a company’s business plan. We can and should work together in a friendly, cooperative, collaborative way to achieve something together, for the benefit of both your company (and every other ecosystem company) and TDF. That principle has not changed over the years. What we cannot do, however, is to be the booster for your business model and always do more, more, more, it’s never enough it seems, until the conversion rate or leads is what you expect.
Until we’ve all understood that, I fear we will continue to run in circles.
Florian
So lets do that ! I would love to know who is leading this discussion? is there a plan we can discuss? what is the timeline? In the substantive comments - so far I see horror around the business impact of the decision - replied to by denial from TDF, there is rather little discussion sadly.
I assume this, along with your accusation that it is me who is being divisive (in querying this fork) - are added primarily for ironic & humerous effect - if so - very funny!
And more comedy. What you point at was an un-related gtk-broadway based prototype, it has no connection with online today (which is massively more complex), and as an aside was anyhow written by people who are today Collaborans (since SUSE stopped investing in LibreOffice for economic reasons).
For a rather complete history of who did what and when would make a better read and perhaps readers would notice that the fundamental missing piece here is not free git repo hosting, but the very significant investment needed to create the code. You should also take to heart slide twelve. Also anyone with half a second can check the git history of online and see that this is nonsense.
Conclusion your comment is hyper-misleading, refers to an obsolete prototype that went no-where, and misses the big point here - which is that the economics is vital - or (put another way) the food chain drives ecosystems.
Dear @mmeeks,
as you know I fully respect you as a developer and for having built a successful business on top of joint efforts made with TDF and the wider community.
However, by keeping this attitude of attacking TDF and spreading false and/or misleading statements you are not making things easy for anyone.
Why are you attacking TDF for simply having fixed one of the many governance issues that have been left to it to handle?
I was pointing at when the cooperation with TDF that led to creation of LibreOffice Online started. A cooperation that led to contributions that went well beyond code and that materialised also in substantial funding to create yet another prototype. The code, of course, changed but what didn’t change is the fact that LibreOffice Online was promoted as a community project to get as much visibility as possible.
You surely remember that I was in the room when you presented those slides. When you asked me if I had comments about it I limited myself by just stating that there were a lot of missing pieces that would have provided a very different reading of that presentation.
Maybe I should have started filling up those gaps then by presenting documents, board minutes, emails and marketing plan to clarify things a bit and avoid this never ending misrepresentations of past events.
Nobody ever disputed that you provided most of the code but it seems you never want to take in consideration what TDF and the rest of the community did to get you to a point where LibreOffice Online was a viable commercial product.
First of all, you keep missing the big point that this vote simply fixes governance issues.
This board approved Code of Ethics and fiduciary duties, an improved version of the Conflict of Interest Policy and new Community Bylaws which transposed the lessons learned from the past with the hope that future boards will not make the same mistakes including those that led to this vote.
Then you prefer to ignore the other big point that is the marketing plan which included also the “Community” tag and many other steps was being implemented to give you what you, your employees, business partners and contractors wanted. The hope was that it would also attract other organisations in the ecosystem but with you dropping out without warnings in the middle of it then you destroyed the whole plan and the benefits that it would have brought to you and a wider, more diverse ecosystem that we could have created together.
It pains me to think about the big opportunities of growth for TDF, the community and the ecosystem that have been missed in the past 5 years but I still hope that, once we fixed some outstanding issues, we will be able to create more opportunities together.
LibreOffice Online is at present just a starting point for something that could move on from where it was left or something completely new. It will be up to those that would like to contribute to help in defining the new strategy.
I hope these few comments refreshed a bit your memory and that will lead you to have more constructive approach when posting in this forum.
Ciao
Paolo
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Hi Paolo,
I’m not really sure how that relates, but I have only two convincing explanations for our business success (such as it is) to date: divine providence, and/or the passion and excellence of the team, partners and community I love to work with. Consider if you will the courage and love for the codebase that lead Kendy, Andras, Miklos, Tor, Kohei & Muthu to risk joining a company with initially half of one customer. My respect is with them for helping to keep LibreOffice alive at another dark time when external investment was declining, and we had to be spun out of the safety of SUSE. Then again - many of us also had a lot to do with creating LibreOffice too particularly Caolan who put his career on the line at RedHat as I did at SUSE to provide engineering muscle, not to mention the innumerable other community heros who have ended up in the Collabora team to accelerate the codebase since and today contribute so much, not to mention the allotropia team merging into the fun more recently.
This new pattern of you repeatedly claiming I’m lying and misleading people in this forum is unhelpful. I was closely involved at each stage of the Online story, often hacking on the code and communicating too - and I find your descriptions inaccurate. But lets take a single simple example: apparently this is primarily about fixing a (contrived) governance issue:
But the E-mail vote starting this thread as picked up by lwn seems to contradict that with this rationale:
Which seems to align well with your personal interest. While the press-release as picked up by the register and others pulls out other things than the claimed simple governance fix:
I can only assume such plans are discussed privately and internally, as there seems to be little sign of a public discussion here.
Regards,
Michael.
Shouldn’t everyone at TDF want to have an Online version of LibreOffice? Our very own manifesto says "To eliminate the digital divide in society by giving everyone access to office productivity tools free of charge to enable them to participate as full citizens in the 21st century"
It would only be problematic if Paolo asked for a big blue button on our download page, which states business users should go to Paolo for their office instead of using the TDF-provided binaries. Or if Paolo asked for a “Home edition” of LibreOffice that is not to be used with mission-critical documents, which is a feature Paolo’s office provided however. Or if Paolo voted to close the repository and point to Paolo’s Online office instead.
None of that did happen.
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Hi @floeff ,
your understanding of what a Conflict of Interest is, appears inconsistent with at least the common definition:
Someone accused of a conflict of interest may deny it exists because they did not act improperly. A conflict of interest can exist even if no improper acts result from it. (One way to understand this is to use the term “conflict of roles”. A person with two roles—an individual who owns stock and is also a government official, for example—may experience situations where those two roles conflict. The conflict can be mitigated—see below—but it still exists. In and of itself, having two roles is not illegal, but the differing roles will certainly incentivize improper acts in some circumstances).
This is somewhat surprising to read from you, after the extensive discussions we had over the past several board terms. Precisely because of this very nuanced reality, the previous board had established the habit to have all board member declare their ‘interests’ (without any judgement), for every call. Sadly the current board did not continue with that, despite the very obvious presence of multiple CoIs (staff membership, business interests, family interests).
Best, Thorsten
In the current board, everyone who has a potential conflict fully abstains from even discussing such matters, let alone decide on them or be in charge of them in areas of oversight. It would have been good if previous boards had adapted that same behaviour.
The previous version of the CoI policy had foreseen exactly such rule, recommended by our German lawyer, but not all past board members were in favor of it, so it did not make its way into it. This only happened in the updated version, which was initiated by the very same Paolo who got called out earlier in this thread.
And what Paolo asks for is what the very TDF Next Decade Manifesto states. Fulfilling TDF’s mission, in TDF, is actually a board member’s duty, not a conflict.
If someone works at a social café, you cannot claim they have a conflict just because they are eating. They would have a conflict if they sent customers to their own restaurant.
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many of us know the story behind the creation of your company and there is no doubt that everyone respects the work of the many developers involved and their decision to stick with LibreOffice when the companies they worked for decided to stop their investments on the desktop environment.
We should surely celebrate the good work of your contractors but you keep forgetting to consider how much TDF and the rest of the community invested into the success of LibreOffice which also contributed in a significant amount to the success of your company.
What has been unhelpful is that you haven’t been told in clear terms, and in public, to stop with your false and/or misleading statements and narratives a long time ago but the mantra was to keep it quiet as some wanted to keep the appearance that everything was just fine.
That was, IMHO, a big mistake as it allowed your behaviour, supported by some of your employees, contractors and business partners to carry on unchallenged creating grief for many, making it impossible to create a diverse ecosystem, slowed down the growth opportunities for TDF, its community, LibreOffice and consequently also your company.
There is a lot that could be said about your current and past behaviours and actions as there is a lot of evidence related to it but I would consider it counterproductive to expose all of it in public while professionals are involved in the process that hopefully will help in settling a lot of issues allowing all of us to move forward in more productive ways.
All these public misleading statements, from yourself, your former employees, contractors and business partners, of course influenced a number of journalists that have no access to board minutes, documents, legal statements and email threads as otherwise they would have been writing very different stories.
I’m pleased to see that Moritz Förster wrote things as they are, on the Heise, mentioning the governance issue we addressed as the vote was carried out “including members with conflicts of interest from the commercial ecosystem”.
Many of us naturally noticed that you kept going on with your false and/or misleading statements also on LWN and that is very sad.
What makes it even more sad is that since a while you started using your company, which we all respect, as a vehicle to spread misinformation through the comic strips which we all know to be your own personal stabs at TDF.
Do you think it’s doing any good to the image of your company?
Maybe Collabora Ltd, which owns half of your company, should check if Collabora Productivity Ltd’s time and funds should be used to publish material that some would interpret as negative messages toward foundations/non for profits hosting Open Source projects in general while others would see misinformation aimed at damaging TDF.
As you anyway decided to do that, maybe you could also start posting your false and/or misleading statements and narratives in your own company forum, instead of doing it here, so at least you won’t have anyone pointing out what’s wrong with what you write.
You are one of the invited parties to the discussion on how to move LibreOffice Online forward so maybe, instead of carrying on with negative and misleading statements you could start participating to the conversation in a constructive way.
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Dear @thb
it is very surprising to read that you want to lecture others on a topic for which you consistently demonstrated a lack of preparation. It seems like you also completely forgot the legal statements we received as a board while you were a director or those that were even clearer while your were the chairperson.
Wikipedia isn’t the most authoritative source but as you reported a small snippet of it let’s see if the section before the one you mentioned finally helps you understand a bit more this topic:
A conflict of interest can, however, become a legal matter, for example, when an individual tries (and/or succeeds in) influencing the outcome of a decision for personal benefit. A director or executive of a corporation will be subject to legal liability if a conflict of interest breaches their duty of loyalty.
You could then follow the link to the duty of loyalty to understand more about it:
Duty of loyalty in corporation law to describe a fiduciary’s “conflicts of interest and requires fiduciaries to put the corporation’s interests ahead of their own.”[3] "Corporate fiduciaries breach their duty of loyalty when they divert corporate assets, opportunities, or information for personal gain.
This has been explained to you and board members in all possible ways but up to now it seems like these concepts don’t resonate with you and unfortunately many others.
These are just few of the elements that a person should take in consideration especially when thinking about becoming a director of a non for profit organisation.
As it seems some haven’t yet learned the lessons derived from past behaviours they can review their understanding of how to behave, from more authoritative sources than just some snippets from a Wikipedia page, by reading the Community Bylaws, the Code of Ethics and Fiduciary Duties and naturally the Conflict of Interest Policy.
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Wanting LibreOffice Online is one thing, the real question is who’s going to spend the effort on it? TDF can add developers to the project, as the board intends to do, but TDF’s resources are limited, and effort spent here is effort not spent on LibreOffice that LibreOffice itself badly needs.
And while you’re pointing to the manifesto, you must also be aware that an online document editor can’t do much in itself, it needs a storage solution to integrate with, and both need to be hosted somewhere. Who wouldn’t want a “LibreOffice Drive”? Who wouldn’t want a hosted service of both? Not TDF, apparently, based on the announcement. That doesn’t seem consistent to me.
Back to who’s going to do the work, I’m sure the magic word “community” will come up many times. (like “the journey that will lead to having an online version by the community and for the community”)
I was here back then and saw how hard it was to find and encourage online contributors, and while I see some eager community members in TDF, I’m not sure how that will translate to contributing to each aspect of the project, from development to documentation. In fact, getting the project out of the attic based on contributor interest wouldn’t have been difficult, if such interest really existed. But if someone has the secret sauce to attracting contributors, they better come forth, because LibreOffice could make use of that already.
Your claim here is that as long as a board member’s actions are towards fulfilling TDF’s mission, they can’t have a conflict of interest. But TDF’s projects are diverse, and it’s possible for a board member to influence prioritizing and spending resources on some parts vs others based on personal interest.
Yet these days “eating” can even get one expelled from the membership by association, how ironic.
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Working on LibreOffice Online and on LibreOffice Desktop is not mutually exclusive. We have actually just hired two new developers for Desktop, one for scripting, another for Base. Earlier one we hired Dan to work on macOS, which is also a Desktop role. Before we already hired for RTL languages and accessibility. If we now have job openings for two or three developers for Online and mobile, that seems quite balanced to me.
TDF is not a hoster. What we should have done during the Covid lockdown is to make a showcase for some selected schools and universities, to show what is possible with free software. That would have been great advertising for our project, our community, and the ecosystem. Sadly, there was not enough support back then to do it, and I still think this was a huge mistake. It only helped our proprietary competitors, who’ve established themselves even more as a standard for the educational sector since then.
I also don’t remember any past budget proposals that contained items for Online, and I think this was a mistake. TDF could have joined much earlier to fund Online.
Now, however, let’s not cry over spilled milk, but make things better.
Yes, the term “community” does come up, because we are exactly this - an open source and free software community. We need less “me” and “mine” but much more “us” “and ours”. Everyone contributes what they can, everyone has their share. If we all start saying “But I did this” and wants to claim it, a FLOSS community cannot work. If someone wants the credit and exclusivitiy, they are free to do so with their work, but it’s hardly compatible with work in a FLOSS project.
One potential example is to vote on tenders in the budget and in the engineering steering committee, is that correct?
To stay with the picture, what is problematic is endangering the social café, eg. by means of putting the charitable status at risk, or misusing the social café’s funds, or by damaging any of the social café’s’ assets.
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They indeed aren’t mutually exclusive, but the amount of resources TDF has, and can spend on pursuing its goals is limited. Splitting those resources between two projects that each could use many more developers doesn’t seem “balanced” to me. More developers on LibreOffice is great, but in addition it would also be crucial if TDF could focus on restoring and maintaining a healthy and vibrant ecosystem around the project, and I see no intention of that.
I don’t understand how in some comment you keep pointing to the manifesto, and in the other you put up your hands that apparently it’s not up to TDF to fulfill the manifesto in its entirety. In that case perhaps another entity providing a FOSS online office suite that is also available in binary form free of charge also counts as fulfilling the manifesto, freeing up TDF’s resources to pursue other aspects of it.
Yes, the community is crucial, but one really has to look for the substance behind the words, as appealing to a community in words doesn’t equate to having one, most importantly, having contributors who actually do the work. As I wrote above, I was there, and the interest to contribute was marginal. If there’s no interest in the TDF community to contribute to a project, maybe it having found a better home elsewhere by the people growing and maintaining it from the start, while remaining free and open source, is justified.
So, contributors who have no claims of doing anyhting problematic against them should be safe in the foundation, right? Right…?