[board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Friday, September 11th at 1300 Berlin time (UTC+2)
Dear Community, find below the agenda for our -> TDF board meeting with a public part, and followed by a private part -> on Friday, September 11th at 1300 Berlin time For time zone conversion, see e.g. https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converted.html?iso=20200911T13&p1=37&p2=136&p3=241&p4=589 -> at https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/TDFBoard We meet on jitsi, and please, if possible use Chrome browser and do not use video and until not speaking up please mute. -> AGENDA: Public Part 1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 min) Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF. 2. Inform & Discuss: Open letter of the membership committee to the board (Board members, all 10 min) Rationale: Feedback and further steps for mentioned issues with old and/or new MC, especially handling of minutes of board meetings 3. Discuss & Organize: Status & further steps in the subgroups with: a) marketing plan b) tender streamlining c)app store offering TDF d) TM licensing (All 10 min) Rationale: Discuss and identify the next steps Redmine ticket(s): a) LibreOffice 7.0/7.1 marketing plan URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3206 Status: Paolo, Franklin, Michael, Thorsten, Mike, Italo continue working on this, Follow-up when everyone is back from holidays b) KG22.01 - Streamline Tendering Process in 24 months URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3107 Status: Nicolas, Lothar and Florian had first call. Documents and process description in the works. Next call September 10. KG22.01.1 - Two more tenders signed in 6 months URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3108 Status: ODF 1.3 delta is written, can be published when approval is given, Thorsten following-up with Regina atm c) form sub-group to work out and publish business entity proposals URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3294 Status: Draft proposal for Luxemburg entity published - https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/NeBWm25cd2LHyoq Thorsten, Michael, Nicolas, Paolo, Lothar: due to holidays a part of the subgroup did coordinate, Lothar will update his criteria list/problem statement with feedback, Paolo to follow-up with ministry for clarification of details d) from subgroup tp work out proposal for handling outrunning TM licenses End of September 4. Inform & Discuss: Status of redmine tickets of last board meetings (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 5 min) Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones Just to be discussed if any news on: Membership Committee election (Florian) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/803 Status: tbd coordination of LibOCon internal meetings (Sophie) URL: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3293 Status: tbd Agenda items of Private Part 5. Inform & Discuss: Pending questions wrt. the license inquiry of an Italian Company about LibreOffice online (Florian, all 10min) Reason why in private: confidential information about trademark inquiry Rationale: clarify pending questions/trademark grants, evaluation and further steps 6. Inform & Discuss: wealth management for foundation capital stock, evaluating the two proposals, further steps (Lothar, board members 5min) Reason why in private: confidential information about finance decision making Redmine ticket: do we need one? Rational: evaluation and further steps, do we need a presentation from both banks in a board meeting? -- Florian Effenberger, Executive Director (Geschäftsführer) Tel: +49 30 5557992-50 | Mail: flo...@documentfoundation.org The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..
Hi Telesto, Am 05.09.2020 um 20:32 schrieb Telesto: > > This would give membership some actual advantage, I think. You provided really good ideas how to improve the rights of the members. And to be honest: the system is getting improved, although very slowly. For example last year we were voting for the location of the next LibreOffice Conference 2020. In 2017 there was a discussion about the mascot (sorry, yes again), if only members should be allowed to vote. What I want to show: there are ongoing thoughts and actions how to enhance the membership. It is not a club to have yet another plastic card in your pocket (to get 10% discount). And yes, the system is far from perfect but it is improving. And yes, more transparency would be better, but really: see the SIS / TDC stuff: the board is trying to change. But also understand: we (neither the board of directors, nor the membership committee) is voted in to a board as a new full time job. Board members (BoD+MC) do this next to their normal job (doesn't matter if the job is connected to LibreOffice at any kind) and private life. Best regards, Dennis Roczek signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..
Hi, Dennis Roczek wrote: Me, too! But GDPR is the atomic argument to stop the discussion here. apart from that - we already heard that people are reluctant to become members, some are shy, thinking their contributons do not qualify. Knowing their application will be discussed in public, with a potential "You don't qualitfy yet, please apply again later", also in public, will very likely keep people from applying at all in first place. Transparency is important, but such a step will likely prevent growing our membership base - the exact opposite of what we want. Florian -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..
Hi Brett, Am 06.09.2020 um 04:48 schrieb Brett Cornwall: > On 2020-09-05 18:53, Dennis Roczek wrote: >> Am 05.09.2020 um 18:07 schrieb Dennis Roczek: * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion be transparent (ie. publicly available) ? >>> Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about >>> concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be >>> public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved >>> (e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems. >> >> I missed to add a reason why the discussion about the application should >> not be published: see our disaster with the mascot: if we make >> everything in public the members of the MC might get spammed, pushed, >> and bullied. > > > The mascot incident is a great example of why public involvement > matters! The lessons learned should not be "make everything more > closed-door" but "What can we learn from disappointing our > users/community?" Users were angry and hurt for a reason and brought > very valid concerns to a very flawed event. I guess we talking side by side. Of course, the whole incident would have need more transparency. I was talking about the bullying and spamming afterwards. To compare this now to the MC: if the members of the MC vote in public, they can be influenced by the crowd. Plus we are talking about sensible data: from names, mail addresses and reasons why we renew (well or not) a membership. And we have cases were we do need private data which should not public. There is contrast also Wikipedia which is public voting about potential admins. It is called in the English Wikipedia as "Hell Week", because some guys go back to the earliest edits of somebody searching for something bad in your 10 years editing carree. It is really not a nice system. The community raised the bar for new admins to something crazy in the meantime! > I have anecdata: A high-profile "rockstar" developer applied to be an > Arch Linux TU last year [1] and we received colorful remarks from the > peanut gallery. Contention and disappointment was voiced with our > questions and handling, and the applicant ultimately withdrew but the > discourse was not toxic. In fact, I'd say that the comments from the > general public provoke reflection - even if I do not agree with them. Luckily for Arch! I do know Wikipedia which is the other way round. > I lean toward making applications public (GDPR concerns put aside). Me, too! But GDPR is the atomic argument to stop the discussion here. > From > a pragmatic perspective, private list mails can easily be leaked the > moment contention bubbles up. My Debian outsider perspective sees > private lists as good for promoting their issue with political drama and > causes sites like [2] to sprout up. I'm not qualified for much more than > speculation; I'd love to hear the opinions of the more experienced. I'd > be curious to know how other communities like Debian or Fedora manage > applications and whether public/private have been helpful. I'm happy if we (as a community) can improve the situation as much as possible. OTOH I do not believe that we have any problem in the membership process except that we should try to get more members into the game. I cannot remember that we had any problems in the past that somebody got the membership although didn't meet the criteria (or the other way round), nor that somebody were against any decision. Most users act with their plain name, or well known account names. You will not find anything which was not correct. Please let us focus on the real problems and let us improve the projects and community. Best regards, Dennis Roczek signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Collecting proposals on TDF subsidiary
Hi Dennis, see below but keep in mind that the this is a draft proposal so it may require some fine tuning and further verifications. On 05/09/2020 17:03, Dennis Roczek wrote: > Hi Paolo, > Hi Florian, > > Thanks Florian for the new proposal. > > Personally I do like the idea of having a Lux-based company. > > I still have some questions about the "TDF Services SIS Proposal Draft" > > 1) "TDF’s fully owned Social Impact company (Société d’Impact Sociétal)" > --> Does that mean that the TDF is also fully responsible? Then I have > to ask what is different to the general idea that the TDF can do it on > its own without having another layer? How does this work with Germans > law of a foundation? The SIS is a special type of Sarl (Ltd) so the liability is limited to the company capital so, unless TDF as the only/majority shareholder and the company directors do something illegal, there is no liability for TDF. The need to have another layer is due to the way contracts for App Stores have been written and could be changed by those corporations in future. Having a dedicated entity helps in separating the commercial aspects of dealing with App Stores and the main focus of the foundation. During the due diligence process executed to assess the validity of this option it seems like TDF can be the only/majority shareholder of this type of external entity. > > 2) "TDF may also decide to buy services from TDF Services, once its > fully operational, and use it as itsown service provider to streamline > and make more efficient the running of shared operations." > Does this mean that the TDF won't open any new code-tenders but simply > hand the tasks over? My idea is to do things one step at the time starting with the App Stores and then, depending on the level of success and income generated, use the new entity also to deal with some of the development. I personally wouldn't mind, if consensus and funds are available, to employ some developers to deal with code streamlining and simplification to make it easier for new contributors to participate and to deal with the tenders that TDF is unable to issue. > > 3) I'm still missing (hence might not be worked on in this published > proposal) what happens if something goes wrong? How can the TDF take > down SIS and take over and regain the App Store rights and existing App > Store users? I had the same questions that haven't been answered in a satisfactory fashion when another proposal has been presented at FOSDEM and that's why I did not feel comfortable supporting it. I believe that the new entity should be seen as an extension of TDF which can deal with tasks that may go beyond the purpose of the foundation but with the clear intent of benefiting TDF, LibreOffice, the community and the user base. In this case TDF, as the majority shareholder, has the power to directly influence the direction of company, fire the company's director/s and to take control. This doesn't mean the entity can/should be micromanaged by TDF but at any moment TDF's board can have a majority vote on instructions that the director/s must follow or come up with good explanations on why they shouldn't. In any case TDF will have a lot more power than by just using a TM agreement as a way to force an external organisation to comply. > > 4) and of course, what Stephan Ficht asked. ;-) As I wrote in the document I still have to check 'The “precise definition of the corporate purpose” which satisfies both TDF and the auditors'. At last BoD meeting I got permission to meet with the relevant Ministry to verify with them if "the development of cultural and creative activities;" is the best purpose or if there are other types of incorporations we should use. I should be able to meet them next week and report back my findings. > > Best regards, > > Dennis Roczek > > > Am 26.08.2020 um 11:29 schrieb Florian Effenberger: >> Hello, >> >> as discussed during the last board calls, the board is currently >> collecting proposals on a TDF subsidiary. For that, we've created a >> folder "TDF Subsidiary" in the Nextcloud "TDF Members" share, where the >> various ideas will be collected. >> >> The folder is also publicly available at >> >> https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/NeBWm25cd2LHyoq >> >> Please do consider all content as a draft, work-in-progress state that >> is subject to discussion and changes. Note that the documents do not >> represent any official board opinion, statement or vote, but are drafted >> by individual members or groups. >> >> The first proposal added so far is the one by Paolo Vecchi on a >> Luxemburg entity. >> >> The board is eager to get the discussion started, preferably on the >> public board-discuss mailing list. >> >> Florian >> -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint s
