The evidence is that directors in their role as deciding and awarding excused themselves from tenders they had interest in.
Of course we all know that the necessary and unavoidable specific experience of development of the project, leads to involvement of people associated to companies, is one of the relevant aspects inside the ESC, alongside also the following aspects:
- a max of 1/3 of the seats may be for people associated to one entity (what the rule 8.3 and 8.4 of our statutes are meant for, as you know
);
- the ESC looks at a wish list of projects, to which anyone can contribute;
- the wish list for ranking projects, is long enough for maybe a decade or more of development;
- as a rule tenders were done in public;
- it is no rule that projects were awarded to companies came up with an idea;
- finishing a certain development work, usually benefits the full LibreOffice project, and in principle all the users.
Already the previous board voted in the new procurement policy, with extra separation in the early phases of the procurement process. As explained: all directors supported that work.
Suggesting that creating a level playing field for new comers has anything to do with a new policy, is wish thought and not realistic. It is known, as explained in detail multiple times, that it is just very hard and extremely risky for companies to step in just because the very specific technical nature of the project. In the past (and also this is explained earlier…) existing ecosystem companies have even supported newcomers in the efforts to enter LibreOffice development, to try growing the project and the ecosystem. It is not the (old) practice of procurement that makes it hard to start contributing.