[board-discuss] Separating users/community/contribution? (was: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs)

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi Michael,

[reordered for the sake of a linear argument]

Michael Weghorn wrote:
> and I remember that the importance of users was emphasized at some in-person
> event I attended (probably Akademy) as well.
> 
And I would agree. A user-facing project (opensource or not) that
doesn't care about users in the aggregate is probably doing something
wrong.

> Just to mention it, the KDE Code of Conduct contains this:
> 
> > Our community is made up of several groups of individuals and
> > organizations which can roughly be divided into two groups:
> > 
> > * Contributors, or those who add value to the project through
> >   improving KDE software and its services
> > * Users, or those who add value to the project through their
> >   support as consumers of KDE software
>
I'm not sure KDE would have a fundamentally different view here, but
happy to have that conversation & perhaps hear new, fresh perspectives.

For a code of conduct, it makes of course sense to include users
(conduct is about interactions), so if contributors interact with
users, ground rules of kind behaviour should apply.

To clarify what I mean (and why I think KDE's take is not so
different), the KDE manifesto [1] has this:

* End-User Focus to ensure our work is useful to all people

I'm perfectly in-line with that mission statement, as a guiding
principle. But I would not turn down a contribution because it doesn't
meet that standard yet (and instead try mentoring and other ways to
improve it over time). I would, though, dismiss user requests that
don't meet community norms, and not bother mentoring everyone until
they understand.

For perspective: it is not a scalable task to care for 200 million
users individually. It is though a priority for me (and I hope
achievable), to care for all our contributors, individually. Thus,
mentoring existing, and attracting new contributors will always have a
higher priority to me, than fixing end-user bugs (with project
resources).

Of course, there's nuance. The areas you and others have mentioned,
that would need special attention, are worth tackling.

> Of course, one could try to make a distinction between users that
> contribute something back and those who do not, but I don't know
> whether that would be particularly helpful, or even easy.  (E.g. is
> a user that only uses the software for themselves not part of the
> community, but one who recommends it to others is, because they
> "spread the word"? - And maybe one of those starts getting active in
> some "official" area in the LibreOffice project, or migrates their
> company from a proprietary office suite to an LTS version from an
> ecosystem company,...)
>
Perhaps it's a different meaning I ascribe to the term 'user' in this
discussion. The moment someone starts contributing to the project,
this person becomes a contributor to me (in contrast to a mere
anonymous user). Let's gloss over grey areas, as in, when does a
contribution start to 'count' - I think it doesn't matter for this
discussion (and surely there's different yardsticks anyway for that,
between TDF sub-projects considering someone to have merit, over to
how the MC evaluates contribution).

So yes, from your list, it would be a distinction to me.

[1] https://manifesto.kde.org/

Best,

-- Thorsten


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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Simon Phipps]

Hi Emiliano!

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate your thoughtfulness here, and I agree
with you wholeheartedly.

On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 9:47 PM Emiliano Vavassori <
syntaxerror...@libreoffice.org> wrote:

>
> I'd just question if a semi-finite number of tenders will solve forever
> the specific needs of, just for the sake of the argument, a11y. What
> decided that, for example, UX will have to be a recurring problem that
> granted the direct employment of someone (thanks Heiko for your
> efforts!) but a11y or RTL is not?
>

I agree it's non-obvious - but there was thinking behind it! For user
experience, the expert (hi Heiko!) had to be an influencer and
servant-leader rather than acting primarily as a developer as user
experience design has a significant dimension of setting an overall
direction and then persuading *all* the developers to follow it. In many
ways this is more of a senior mentorship role, and the recipients of the
guidance are not beginners but rather super-experienced developers who
consent to being guided. The role is ideally met by having an expert on
staff. (FYI I wrote about this
 at the time)

For accessibility, there are definitely elements that have a similar
profile and a good argument could be made for having an accessibility
architect on staff playing a similar role to Heiko in mentoring the
"college of developers" to consider accessibility in their work. On the
whole, the LibreOffice developer college is fairly tuned-in to
accessibility though.

The challenges are often attached to systemic issues and need extended time
of LibreOffice experts to unpick the root cause before implementing the fix
- even specifying them to tender takes research and pre-work as I expect
you know. We've tendered these sorts of issues, and we could consider
employing someone to deal with them full time, yes. However, there are also
specialist elements - having accessibility devices for testing, for
example. My sense is we would be better off paying an existing expert team
(there are a few companies who specialise, not necessarily "the usual
suspects") to take on the whole backlog for us for maybe 18
months, doing both engineering management and implementation and joining
the ESC while they do. After that I'd return to the topic and reconsider
the best approach in the light of that experience.

It's possible that RTL might surrender to the same approach, but that's not
an area I have focussed on in my career so I'd want to hear from product
managers who have dealt with it. I'd be open to whatever was the best
solution. We need to discuss each of these topics on their own merits.


> Honestly, I still feel there are parts of the project that would use
> much more love and are definitely matter of inclusiveness, but for the
> various reasons we already know very well and were even touched in the
> discussion, are laying there suffering.
>

I definitely agree. I think it needs discussing and breaking down
topic-by-topic though, as each area will have an optimal approach (and may
have a different optimal approach once the backlog is dealt with). As in
much of life, easy answers are unlikely to be correct answers!

And yes, sure, employing internal developer is just one of the tools we
> can deploy to assure a greater sustainability of the community and the
> Foundation, and not the only one.
>

I'm also concerned by the "centralised service" challenges I mentioned in
my earlier e-mail. I have thought about the subject a great deal, over
several years, and I do think TDF could embark on a direction to serve the
individual citizen in this area independently of the business solutions.
But this is a topic where there are significant challenges from the vested
interests of almost all the directors, so addressing it is going to be
tough. I certainly don't want to "just hire a few people and see what
happens" on this one!


Cheers!

Simon
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*TDF Trustee*

Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Emiliano Vavassori]

Hi all,

Thanks Simon for bringing some ideas to the table, and for all the 
others that endured the discussion to provide feedback.


Il 10/02/22 18:26, Simon Phipps ha scritto:
For Accessibility, my preference would be to tender for a specialist 
organisation to either triage accessibility bugs or implement 
capabilities for a fixed period followed by a performance review and 
re-tendering (possibly for a longer period). By doing that we would 
avoid having to also develop in-house engineering management and product 
accessibility expertise. This is beyond the current tendering practice 
in that we would ask the successful applicant to also direct and design 
their work.


I'd just question if a semi-finite number of tenders will solve forever 
the specific needs of, just for the sake of the argument, a11y. What 
decided that, for example, UX will have to be a recurring problem that 
granted the direct employment of someone (thanks Heiko for your 
efforts!) but a11y or RTL is not?


Honestly, I still feel there are parts of the project that would use 
much more love and are definitely matter of inclusiveness, but for the 
various reasons we already know very well and were even touched in the 
discussion, are laying there suffering.


And yes, sure, employing internal developer is just one of the tools we 
can deploy to assure a greater sustainability of the community and the 
Foundation, and not the only one.


Cheers,
--
Emiliano Vavassori
syntaxerror...@libreoffice.org

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Italo,

Italo Vignoli píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 18:28 +0100:

> I would have applauded a reaction to the message that has opened
> this 
> thread which was integrating the proposal with some additional
> thoughts 
> and suggestions, to specify which could be the areas where a
> developer 
> hired by TDF could work for the common benefit of the project.

I see, thank you for the explanation!

I have expressed elsewhere in this thread that I am a proponent of
hiring more development mentors rather than generic developers; so it
is hard for me to get excited about this proposal.

Also I forgot to answer Heiko elsewhere that his idea of graphics
designer / website developer in one person sounds reasonably positive
to me.

Having said that, maybe we can get a bit more constructive even in this
 discussion about hypothetical possibility of hiring generic
developers; so what about this:

Michael, please - would you be willing to further your (and Sophie's)
idea in form of a document that can be discussed as a whole,
particularly how the details together fit the TDF mission?

I myself would be interested in the following questions; do you think
you can cover them some way, please?

* How to frame the hiring process - where developers should have a say
  in it, without being accused of CoI?

* How to make it quick, so that the potential hires are still available
  once TDF decides for this or that candidate?

* How to get the developers up-to-speed or mentor them once they are
  hired?

* Also how to task them, how to day-to-day manage them, and how to make
  sure they are progressing at a reasonable pace?

* What to do if they get stuck, and there is nobody in the community
  who can help them?

* How to detect they are not performing, and just consume the donors'
  money?

* How to make sure they don't compete with other open source projects,
  or the ecosystem companies?

* How to make sure they are not misused by (any, not only ecosystem)
  companies to fix bugs for them or for their customers?  [Particularly
  companies disguised by @gmail or so addresses in bugzilla.]

* On the other hand - how to make it possible to cherry-pick fixes or
  features into the release branches of ecosystem companies without
  the risk of being accused of misusing the previous point?

* Should there be a mechanism for the ecosystem companies to flag a bug
  "this is what I'm working on for a customer - please don't touch"?

* With my pet idea of development mentors rather than generic
  developers in mind - should they be mentoring too, and if yes, how
  to prioritize vs. the actual development?

* How to avoid growing a group-think in the internal developers
  group that there is no need for the ecosystem companies, or even
  for the community as a whole?  [As explained elsewhere; as much as
  it sounds strange - TDF is a subset of the community, not the other
  way around.]

* How to avoid TDF internal developers to feel (or worse, to be)
  "more equal" than the rest of the community - particularly when
  there is no 1/3 rule for them, direct access to release engineering
  and admins (their colleagues), etc.?

I am sure this list is not exhaustive, and suppose others will
contribute, but hope it is a start.

Thank you in advance!

All the best,
Kendy

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Paolo Vecchi]

+1 from me

Ciao

Paolo

Note to self: propose to institute a position for an honorary member of 
the board.


On 10/02/2022 22:32, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Hi,

Am 10.02.22 um 16:54 schrieb Jan Holesovsky:

Hi Andreas,

Andreas Mantke píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:58 +0100:


once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a
different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation
in OOo project at that time.

I may be wrong, it is a long time ago, but from what I remember, the
problem was not the domination per se [though please don't understand
me as supporting domination ;-)], but the unwillingness to communicate
& seek consensus how to improve the situation for contributors.


it seemed there are different worlds for developer and other community
members.

I and others had the impression that the project domination by one
company at that time wasn't healthy and that the engagement of this
dominant player would end very soon (because of their business
management model).

This was the reason why we get involved in the LibreOffice project from
day one.

We, the majority of the German speaking community members, left the OOo
project and had to fight against accusatory mails from employees etc.

But we withstand this violating situation and invested a lot of our
spare time and resources to make the German language project vital.

Thus I think it is important for community members, which remember the
situation of 2010, to avoid a situation, where only or nearly only one
company dominates the project and especially one area of the project.

The incorporation of a foundation was meant to avoid such situation. But
currently I think, the idea behind this action was not shared by all TDF
members and maybe we had to have set stricter rules to avoid cluster
risk in the TDF bodies.

And one thing which I take with me from this discussion is the evidence
that it is (nearly?) impossible to wear two hats at the same time.

Regards,
Andreas

--
## Free Software Advocate
## Plone add-on developer
## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog




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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Andreas Mantke]

Hi,

Am 10.02.22 um 16:54 schrieb Jan Holesovsky:

Hi Andreas,

Andreas Mantke píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:58 +0100:


once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a
different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation
in OOo project at that time.

I may be wrong, it is a long time ago, but from what I remember, the
problem was not the domination per se [though please don't understand
me as supporting domination ;-)], but the unwillingness to communicate
& seek consensus how to improve the situation for contributors.


it seemed there are different worlds for developer and other community
members.

I and others had the impression that the project domination by one
company at that time wasn't healthy and that the engagement of this
dominant player would end very soon (because of their business
management model).

This was the reason why we get involved in the LibreOffice project from
day one.

We, the majority of the German speaking community members, left the OOo
project and had to fight against accusatory mails from employees etc.

But we withstand this violating situation and invested a lot of our
spare time and resources to make the German language project vital.

Thus I think it is important for community members, which remember the
situation of 2010, to avoid a situation, where only or nearly only one
company dominates the project and especially one area of the project.

The incorporation of a foundation was meant to avoid such situation. But
currently I think, the idea behind this action was not shared by all TDF
members and maybe we had to have set stricter rules to avoid cluster
risk in the TDF bodies.

And one thing which I take with me from this discussion is the evidence
that it is (nearly?) impossible to wear two hats at the same time.

Regards,
Andreas

--
## Free Software Advocate
## Plone add-on developer
## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog


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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Michael Weghorn]

Hi Michael, all,

On 10/02/2022 17.53, Michael Meeks wrote:
 There is a huge amount of need around LibreOffice development. It 
is easy to find a hundred different "top priority" issues each dear to 
the heart of a user, each user convinced that if only we had eg. 'Reveal 
Codes' in writer everyone would use LibreOffice.


True, and I think there is consensus that not everybody's personal "top 
priority" issue can be handled, no matter what steps are taken in the end.


 As for no-one listening to users - I spend my life listening to 
customers & partners & users - and trying to do what they want. Anyone 
jealous of some big pool of unconstrained money / development power in 
corporate contributors is mistaken. Nevertheless I still get impassioned 
complaints of why Collabora did X and not Y from intelligent, 
articulate, engaged community members.


To mention it explicitly: Thanks for all that you and Collabora are 
doing for LibreOffice, that's much appreciated and I think nobody here 
is expecting Collabora to solve all problems by itself.


 TDF in contrast while it has many constraints on what it can do - 
has few time constraints on its spending, which frees it to do more 
strategic long-term work. Thus it can invest more efficiently with some 
multiplying factor - via the educational / mentoring role into specific 
areas. I for one would support some targeted a11y / CTL mentoring - 
those seem like good areas that Sophie outlines - and ones where we can 
perhaps shine & grow the contributor community.


 However - there is a cliff-face of need here. It seems totally 
sensible to suggest that hiring internal developers without any plan of 
working out what they should work on seems premature. Part of why 
mentors are attractive is that their agenda is partly lead by what 
volunteers want to do. That can be steered of course by creating new 
easy-hacks / tasks / projects in directions they want to go - and/or 
learning on the job themselves by hacking on things.


I completely agree that TDF has different constraints than other 
contributors and that could allow, among others, for doing more 
strategic work, rather than only focusing on single bugs that are 
important to specific users.


I'm not so sure, though, whether mentoring alone will be enough to 
ensure that otherwise neglected areas will sufficiently be taken care of.
For that to work, there at least need to be capable people willing to be 
mentored and to work on those topics, and having a certain amount of 
time to do so. I'm skeptical whether having more mentors alone will 
necessarily also provide for that.


I am wondering whether dropping a strict distinction between the two 
roles (developer, mentor) might help here. My expectation would be that 
a TDF developer currently "responsible" for a certain area would also be 
a great mentor in case people willing to work on that show up.
And once other contributors are willing to take care of specific areas, 
I believe it makes sense to allow them to work on that and have TDF 
staff focus on something else.


I think some flexibility depending on how things develop would nicely be 
able to deal with both scenarios: the one where other contributors 
interested in a specific topic show up, as well as the one where they don't.



 For myself, I would want to see some sensible mechanism that 
includes the views of those who contribute via donations as to what is 
important. Then again if we dedicate donations solely in-line with what 
donors want - I suspect certain key functions: admin, marketing might 
not get the attention they deserve: so again, there is no obvious 
solution here beyond the board getting wide input and deciding (as they 
do now).


While I understand that details need to be sorted out on how to 
prioritize potential development topics to be worked on, I believe it 
should be doable to find a way.

But I don't see the issue, as ESC and BoD members could easily stop
any project before it starts, when there is a potential risk of conflict.


 These days the we have created rules to exclude people from such 
decision making - which has the potential to significantly exacerbate 
conflict and division I feel.


 But you're right, in theory the BoD is sovereign.


In my previous email, I wrote:
"Assuming members in the involved LibreOffice/TDF bodies found a way to 
work together constructively, my current impression is that this 
approach could be for the benefit of all."


I admit that this will probably be very hard if members of the involved 
LibreOffice/TDF bodies don't find a way to work together constructively, 
but rather "fight against each other". But I think that's a problem on a 
completely different level, and I don't see how TDF can properly serve 
it's purpose then anyway, regardless of the specific question around 
TDF-internal developers being discussed here...


Best regards,
Michael

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Simon Phipps]

Hi all!

On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 4:45 PM sophi  wrote:

>
> Their is even no written proposal at the moment, but only a discussion
> on the pros and cons and what it could bring to the project. But it
> seems impossible to discuss because the ecosystem companies won't allow it.
>

And yet it seems here we are discussing it!  It's fun to do things that
aren't allowed :-)

The OP did indeed not make a written proposal, but there still* a *Board
Motion to hire two developers despite this. Personally (and I don't work
for any "ecosystem company" or TDF or belong to a local group) I don't feel
either the OP's proposal or any other response commenting on it here
represents me.

I volunteered here because I think LibreOffice is massively important to
the free/open source software movement, as well as to the freedom of
citizens globally, including especially non-English-speaking and
differently-able people. I want to see TDF spend its money in the service
of that global movement to the maximum extent it has allowed itself to in
its bylaws. I especially believe TDF needs to act to allow individuals to
avoid the need to use centralised services for making, reading and sharing
documents of all kinds.

Right now TDF is not doing so, despite being given millions of euros by
end-users. My concern is thus not with the desire to spend donated money on
donor problems - we should do more of it, and better, and not let any
corporate interest stop us. My concern is with accepting as agreed the
proposal that TDF should hire developers and afterwards address what they
would do, how and under whose supervision. I can see *significant* risks
from doing so and I do not want in any way to endorse that premature
proposal.

So sure, let's have a pros and cons discussion.  I have already chipped in
positively elsewhere and look forward to being able to amplify other
positive ideas, But first let's take the political and premature motion off
the table so that no-one feels their contribution is either supporting or
opposing it.  It has led to an essential discussion becoming yet another
divisive fight and that's got to stop.

Cheers!

Simon
-- 
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*TDF Trustee*

Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Michael Weghorn]

Hi Thorsten, all,

On 10/02/2022 18.07, Thorsten Behrens wrote:

It is putting the cart in front of the horse though, to start with:

* we want TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice

and then follow with

* therefore we must employ two developers


Whether or not that's an adequate summary of Paolo's proposal is not up 
to me to judge, but...



I believe it is more productive to start thinking about what we want
to achieve, in order to fulfill our mission. It is therefore
encouraging to read some good thoughts about that (RTL/CTL, a11y, and
other under-developed areas with little ecosystem contributions).

The board can then ponder what is the best way to achieve those goals,
relative to other demands. It is possible, but by no means certain,
that actually hiring specialised staff is indeed the most economic way
forward (e.g. for an area like a11y).


... I completely agree that having a clear goal and considering the pros 
and cons of different approaches to get there before taking a decision 
definitely makes sense.



Best regards,
Michael

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Marina Latini]

On 10.02.2022 17:56, Michael Weghorn wrote:

Hi Michael (W.),

I absolutely agree with what you wrote.
My deepest thank you for being so open-minded!


On 10/02/2022 16.31, Italo Vignoli wrote:

On 2/10/22 13:36, Michael Weghorn wrote:
Of course, in case the main intention were for TDF to provide more 
business-like services (like an LTS version or creating an impression 
of "donate a certain amount of money and your pet bug will be 
fixed"), I see very well how that might interfere significantly with 
the business model of ecosystem companies.


Totally agree. But I don't see the issue, as ESC and BoD members could 
easily stop any project before it starts, when there is a potential 
risk of conflict. AFAIK, major development activities are scrutinized 
by both bodies, as they are ranked in order of importance, suggested, 
approved and transformed to tenders, or not considered for tendering.


I totally agree, extending that process to cover significant tasks
that internal developers would work on may be a solution.

Development activities which are not considered for tendering, or just 
ignored, could probably be developed by TDF without creating 
disruptions (or even discussions).


To double-check nobody is "secretly" working on that as well or is
planning to do so, discussing/mentioning larger items first certainly
won't hurt.
(But that doesn't only apply for work done by TDF developers; e.g. the
weekly ESC call already has a "What’s cooking" section where that
would fit well.)

I am rather sure that in 7 million lines of code (plus the open bugs) 
there are enough challenges for everyone.


Definitely!

Of course, given my complete lack of understanding of development, is 
too easy to find a technical angle to disprove what I just wrote, 
[...]


At least from my developer's perspective, I totally agree with what you 
wrote.




Thanks again,
Marina

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Marina Latini]

On 10.02.2022 17:53, Michael Meeks wrote:

Hi Michael, all,



It seems reasonable to explore what people should be hired to do -
before hiring them =) That has the benefit of working out what skills
are needed in the job advert and/or interview process for example. The
'discussion' here - I would not see as blocked, but problematic see
later.


I don't think the discussion is even at this point. Reading the messages 
I can only see some board members just questioning every single commas 
used by the others, fighting in public without even realising that all 
this drama is only bringing away community members interested to share 
more ideas and proposals for solving this deadlock we are experiencing.




As for no-one listening to users - I spend my life listening to
customers & partners & users - and trying to do what they want. Anyone
jealous of some big pool of unconstrained money / development power in
corporate contributors is mistaken. Nevertheless I still get
impassioned complaints of why Collabora did X and not Y from
intelligent, articulate, engaged community members.


...and again, it's not always "Collabora vs others" discussion. There's 
a discussion, not even a concrete proposal on how TDF could contribute 
more code, there are other opinions shared and an attempt to really act 
like a community that tries to shape its own projects. Can we stop to 
reduce every possible discussion to the "ecosystem vs all the others"?


We are all part of the same project, many of us were part of it from day 
0, some officially, others unofficially, but we were all there.

Can we stop to act like kids and try to really cooperate like adults?



As for finding new board members on the list to express a view you
feel represents you: these long threads packed with trolling and
misrepresentation on board-discuss are not a great way to interact I
suspect. Why would a new board member want to engage in them while
they find their feet ? Lets not be quick to preemptively despair of
sensible decision making.



This way to act is not only affecting the board members. It has a 
negative impact on the full community and on all the potential new 
contributors that are just scared away by all those dramas.



These days the we have created rules to exclude people from such
decision making - which has the potential to significantly exacerbate
conflict and division I feel.



...talking about trolling, I was indeed missing yet another comment 
against the CoI policy.


Cheers,
Marina

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Marina Latini]

On 10.02.2022 17:44, sophi wrote:

Hi Sophie, hi all,



And I feel the same. Hiring developers is not the only way forward,
it's one of them. We, as members, knows the ecosystem companies have
needs and I (for myself) understand perfectly the market pressure. But
here, as a member of TDF, we contribute with the ecosystem companies,
not for them.


I agree. you simply wrote what I was thinking to add. thanks.



Their is even no written proposal at the moment, but only a discussion
on the pros and cons and what it could bring to the project. But it
seems impossible to discuss because the ecosystem companies won't
allow it.
I'm sorry, I already wrote in a previous thread that TDF has failed to
have a balanced position during the pandemic, caring of the charitable
part of its duty, I hope we will not continue in that way because,
again as a member, this is not how I feel represented.



...and I fully agree again.

Cheers,
Marina

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Daniel,

On 10/02/2022 14:53, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote:

El 10/2/22 a las 08:30, Stephan Ficht escribió:
So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for 
the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.


Crystal clear, for some of us at least

This reminds me of a comment by MMeeks where he made reference to the 
fact that those who do not code have no say. Which is a total absurdity.


That has slipped my memory.

	Perhaps you could share a reference to this comment and its context to 
substantiate your summary.


	And it's rather unfair asking you this - when I get a blizzard of this 
sort of misrepresentation left & right from others, but I have come to 
expect better of you Daniel =)


Thanks !

Michael.

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Italo Vignoli]

On 2/10/22 17:27, Jan Holesovsky wrote:


Yes, but it looks like the discussion is blocked one step before
reaching a consensus on this very simple point. If the discussion
stays
as such, I have to say that I don't feel I am represented - as a TDF
Member - by any member of the just elected board of directors (of
course, those who have expressed their opinions).



This is very sad to hear :-(  I am afraid this is a product of the
unilateral & vigorous presentation of hiring developers as the only way
forward, regardless of what the ecosystem companies have to say.


I disagree. This is the result of BoD members pointing fingers to each 
other without even trying to start a discussion and reach consensus.


I would have applauded a reaction to the message that has opened this 
thread which was integrating the proposal with some additional thoughts 
and suggestions, to specify which could be the areas where a developer 
hired by TDF could work for the common benefit of the project.


Sorry, but I haven't seen anything like this so far.
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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Simon Phipps]

Hi Thorsten!

Thanks for your positive contribution which I agree with completely
(although I do have a comment, see below).

On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 5:09 PM Thorsten Behrens 
wrote:

> Hi *,
>
> with the lively discussion ensuing here, it is perhaps worth sharing
> my position ahead of the board call tomorrow:
>
> Paolo Vecchi wrote:
> > Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house
> developers
> > to address our donors specific needs
> >
> I think it is worth considering, whether TDF should employ dedicated
> developers. I'm not in general against it.
>
> It is putting the cart in front of the horse though, to start with:
>
> * we want TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice
>
> and then follow with
>
> * therefore we must employ two developers
>
> I believe it is more productive to start thinking about what we want
> to achieve, in order to fulfill our mission. It is therefore
> encouraging to read some good thoughts about that (RTL/CTL, a11y, and
> other under-developed areas with little ecosystem contributions).
>
> The board can then ponder what is the best way to achieve those goals,
> relative to other demands. It is possible, but by no means certain,
> that actually hiring specialised staff is indeed the most economic way
> forward (e.g. for an area like a11y).
>

For Accessibility, my preference would be to tender for a specialist
organisation to either triage accessibility bugs or implement capabilities
for a fixed period followed by a performance review and re-tendering
(possibly for a longer period). By doing that we would avoid having to also
develop in-house engineering management and product accessibility
expertise. This is beyond the current tendering practice in that we would
ask the successful applicant to also direct and design their work.


>
> It should be noted though, also to manage expectations, that mastering
> even a small area in LibreOffice takes many years to learn. So hiring
> for a role has long-term implications then on which kind of tasks,
> features or bugfixes can be done in-house.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- Thorsten
>

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*TDF Trustee*

Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Italo Vignoli]

On 2/10/22 17:53, Michael Meeks wrote:

 It would be deeply unfortunate if the above was read as questioning 
the legitimacy and composition of the new board - and that before they 
have been seated and/or taken a single decision. It would be good to 
clarify that reading.


I am not questioning the legitimacy and composition of the board, I am 
questioning the behaviour of its members.

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Michael Weghorn]

Hi Thorsten,

On 10/02/2022 17.55, Thorsten Behrens wrote:

Sole users (i.e. without contributing anything to the community) are
to my mind never part of a FLOSS project community.


Just to mention it, the KDE Code of Conduct [1] contains this:


Our community is made up of several groups of individuals and
organizations which can roughly be divided into two groups:

* Contributors, or those who add value to the project through
  improving KDE software and its services
* Users, or those who add value to the project through their
  support as consumers of KDE software


and I remember that the importance of users was emphasized at some 
in-person event I attended (probably Akademy) as well.


Of course, one could try to make a distinction between users that 
contribute something back and those who do not, but I don't know whether 
that would be particularly helpful, or even easy.
(E.g. is a user that only uses the software for themselves not part of 
the community, but one who recommends it to others is, because they 
"spread the word"? - And maybe one of those starts getting active in 
some "official" area in the LibreOffice project, or migrates their 
company from a proprietary office suite to an LTS version from an 
ecosystem company,...)


Best regards,
Michael


[1] https://kde.org/code-of-conduct/

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Alexander Thurgood]

Hi all,

I'd just like to comment on the exchange below, from my perspective:


Le 10/02/2022 à 15:27, Italo Vignoli a écrit :




Then there is a number of donors who ask to stop the recurring 
donation. Some of them provide a reason, which in some cases is that 
he wanted to donate once and not on a recurring basis, in some cases 
lack of money, and in some other because they don't use the software 
anymore (no bug or other technical reason provided).


A small number of donors block donations because the software doesn't 
fit their needs or is too difficult to use (again, without providing 
any technical reason or a bug).


You should always consider the fact that only a very small number of 
users is capable of spotting bugs, as for them the software always 
works as intended. It took me several years to get a marginal 
understanding of bugs, and I have been working in technology 
environments since 1982. The majority of users is technically dumb, 
including people who are supposed to be competent, and this is just a 
fact.



Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any
longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets for
such cases?




Since 2013, not a single user has related stopping donations with 
bugs, while some donors have related their donation to solving bugs.




Were I a recurring business donor, I would do this, in the event I 
wanted to stop donating and a particular bug or bugs were preventing me 
from using LibreOffice in my business. Mind you, to be honest, even 
then, I personally wouldn't have much expectation of the situation changing.


One of the reasons I'm not a recurring donor is because I have to ask 
myself why, as the manager of a small business, I would do that (I do 
use the "paid" versions from the Apple Store commercial entity though).


Do I feel the need for some kind of ROI ? I would argue that, yes, I do. 
After all, if I am prepared to pay a subscription to a business such as 
Microsoft for its online product offering, or take out a Google 
Workspace subscription, then for the amount I pay out for the small 
number of users in the business, I would argue that contributing a 
similar monthly amount to the LibreOffice project entitles me to 
something other than a free download for my OS of choice.


This is where the rationale of the well-wishing world of an OSS software 
foundation and its relation to small business users and potential donors 
hits the rails of reality hard.


Of course, I could give out of the kindness of my heart, and have done 
in the very distant past - but in business, and especially small 
business, my outgoings are not ruled by my heart, they are ruled by my 
bottom line.


I would then argue that if I perceived that any donation I might make 
might actually go toward fixing one of the bugs that affects me, I could 
see a stronger business case for repeat donations. Obviously, if a bug I 
reported 10 years ago is still laying around untouched, I might come to 
the realisation that no one is ever going to fix it and stop donating as 
a result.


Currently, I do not see that. It certainly isn't the case with the 
commercial entity, whose own business criteria and priorities are 
clearly not the same as mine. Fair enough, as a business we all have to 
make money, but then an inevitable decision will be taken to stop using 
the commercial entity's offering, and possibly, even probably, stop 
using LibreOffice altogether.


I also know we've had the discussion about bug bounties before and gone 
round and round - without result.


I wish there was some alternative that would appeal to people in a 
situation like the one I find myself in. Currently, none of the ways of 
financially contributing are appealing, save as a charitable benefactor 
with no expectations whatsoever. As an individual person, I might well 
do that - as a business with other more pressing demands on my pocket, 
not so much.


I'm not even sure that there is a solution to the above.


Alex









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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi *,

with the lively discussion ensuing here, it is perhaps worth sharing
my position ahead of the board call tomorrow:

Paolo Vecchi wrote:
> Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers
> to address our donors specific needs
> 
I think it is worth considering, whether TDF should employ dedicated
developers. I'm not in general against it.

It is putting the cart in front of the horse though, to start with:

* we want TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice

and then follow with

* therefore we must employ two developers

I believe it is more productive to start thinking about what we want
to achieve, in order to fulfill our mission. It is therefore
encouraging to read some good thoughts about that (RTL/CTL, a11y, and
other under-developed areas with little ecosystem contributions).

The board can then ponder what is the best way to achieve those goals,
relative to other demands. It is possible, but by no means certain,
that actually hiring specialised staff is indeed the most economic way
forward (e.g. for an area like a11y).

It should be noted though, also to manage expectations, that mastering
even a small area in LibreOffice takes many years to learn. So hiring
for a role has long-term implications then on which kind of tasks,
features or bugfixes can be done in-house.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Michael Weghorn]

Hi Italo,

thanks for your reply.

On 10/02/2022 16.31, Italo Vignoli wrote:

On 2/10/22 13:36, Michael Weghorn wrote:
Of course, in case the main intention were for TDF to provide more 
business-like services (like an LTS version or creating an impression 
of "donate a certain amount of money and your pet bug will be fixed"), 
I see very well how that might interfere significantly with the 
business model of ecosystem companies.


Totally agree. But I don't see the issue, as ESC and BoD members could 
easily stop any project before it starts, when there is a potential risk 
of conflict. AFAIK, major development activities are scrutinized by both 
bodies, as they are ranked in order of importance, suggested, approved 
and transformed to tenders, or not considered for tendering.


I totally agree, extending that process to cover significant tasks that 
internal developers would work on may be a solution.


Development activities which are not considered for tendering, or just 
ignored, could probably be developed by TDF without creating disruptions 
(or even discussions). 


To double-check nobody is "secretly" working on that as well or is 
planning to do so, discussing/mentioning larger items first certainly 
won't hurt.
(But that doesn't only apply for work done by TDF developers; e.g. the 
weekly ESC call already has a "What’s cooking" section where that would 
fit well.)


I am rather sure that in 7 million lines of code 
(plus the open bugs) there are enough challenges for everyone.


Definitely!

Of course, given my complete lack of understanding of development, is 
too easy to find a technical angle to disprove what I just wrote, [...]


At least from my developer's perspective, I totally agree with what you 
wrote.


Best regards,
Michael

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi Paolo,

Paolo Vecchi wrote:
> I was actually disagreeing with a statement saying that users are not part
> of the community.
> 
Then we have to agree to disagree.

Sole users (i.e. without contributing anything to the community) are
to my mind never part of a FLOSS project community.

The rest of your answer are mostly unproductive jabs at various
people, that I refuse to interact with.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten


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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Italo,

On 10/02/2022 15:31, Italo Vignoli wrote:

On 2/10/22 13:36, Michael Weghorn wrote:
I have the impression that a fundamentally important question is what 
the purpose/task of TDF-internal developers would be.


Yes, but it looks like the discussion is blocked one step before 
reaching a consensus on this very simple point.


	It seems reasonable to explore what people should be hired to do - 
before hiring them =) That has the benefit of working out what skills 
are needed in the job advert and/or interview process for example. The 
'discussion' here - I would not see as blocked, but problematic see later.


	There is a huge amount of need around LibreOffice development. It is 
easy to find a hundred different "top priority" issues each dear to the 
heart of a user, each user convinced that if only we had eg. 'Reveal 
Codes' in writer everyone would use LibreOffice.


	As for no-one listening to users - I spend my life listening to 
customers & partners & users - and trying to do what they want. Anyone 
jealous of some big pool of unconstrained money / development power in 
corporate contributors is mistaken. Nevertheless I still get impassioned 
complaints of why Collabora did X and not Y from intelligent, 
articulate, engaged community members.


	TDF in contrast while it has many constraints on what it can do - has 
few time constraints on its spending, which frees it to do more 
strategic long-term work. Thus it can invest more efficiently with some 
multiplying factor - via the educational / mentoring role into specific 
areas. I for one would support some targeted a11y / CTL mentoring - 
those seem like good areas that Sophie outlines - and ones where we can 
perhaps shine & grow the contributor community.


	However - there is a cliff-face of need here. It seems totally sensible 
to suggest that hiring internal developers without any plan of working 
out what they should work on seems premature. Part of why mentors are 
attractive is that their agenda is partly lead by what volunteers want 
to do. That can be steered of course by creating new easy-hacks / tasks 
/ projects in directions they want to go - and/or learning on the job 
themselves by hacking on things.


	For myself, I would want to see some sensible mechanism that includes 
the views of those who contribute via donations as to what is important. 
Then again if we dedicate donations solely in-line with what donors want 
- I suspect certain key functions: admin, marketing might not get the 
attention they deserve: so again, there is no obvious solution here 
beyond the board getting wide input and deciding (as they do now).



If the discussion stays as such, I have to say that I don't feel I
am represented - as a TDF Member - by any member of the just elected
board of directors (of course, those who have expressed their opinions).


and:

> Of course, given my complete lack of understanding of development, is
> too easy to find a technical angle to disprove what I just wrote, but
> it would also be disproving what many of the contributors - the
> community - think, and this would confirm my personal belief that
> TDF BoD does not represent the community as a whole, but only a
> portion of it.

	It would be deeply unfortunate if the above was read as questioning the 
legitimacy and composition of the new board - and that before they have 
been seated and/or taken a single decision. It would be good to clarify 
that reading.


	I would note that everyone who stood for the board was elected - and 
perhaps acknowledging the complexity of what might look like simple 
decisions from the outside - is real & not imaginary. I wish them the 
best as they try to find the local maxima in some multi-dimensional 
problem space.


	As for finding new board members on the list to express a view you feel 
represents you: these long threads packed with trolling and 
misrepresentation on board-discuss are not a great way to interact I 
suspect. Why would a new board member want to engage in them while they 
find their feet ? Lets not be quick to preemptively despair of sensible 
decision making.



But I don't see the issue, as ESC and BoD members could easily stop
any project before it starts, when there is a potential risk of conflict.


	These days the we have created rules to exclude people from such 
decision making - which has the potential to significantly exacerbate 
conflict and division I feel.


But you're right, in theory the BoD is sovereign.

Regards,

Michael.

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[sophi]

Hi Kendy,

Le 10/02/2022 à 17:27, Jan Holesovsky a écrit :

Hi Italo,

Italo Vignoli píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 16:31 +0100:


Yes, but it looks like the discussion is blocked one step before
reaching a consensus on this very simple point. If the discussion
stays
as such, I have to say that I don't feel I am represented - as a TDF
Member - by any member of the just elected board of directors (of
course, those who have expressed their opinions).


This is very sad to hear :-(  I am afraid this is a product of the
unilateral & vigorous presentation of hiring developers as the only way
forward, regardless of what the ecosystem companies have to say.


And I feel the same. Hiring developers is not the only way forward, it's 
one of them. We, as members, knows the ecosystem companies have needs 
and I (for myself) understand perfectly the market pressure. But here, 
as a member of TDF, we contribute with the ecosystem companies, not for 
them.



Of course, in case the main intention were for TDF to provide more
business-like services (like an LTS version or creating an
impression of
"donate a certain amount of money and your pet bug will be fixed"),
I
see very well how that might interfere significantly with the
business
model of ecosystem companies.


Totally agree. But I don't see the issue, as ESC and BoD members
could
easily stop any project before it starts, when there is a potential
risk
of conflict. AFAIK, major development activities are scrutinized by
both
bodies, as they are ranked in order of importance, suggested,
approved
and transformed to tenders, or not considered for tendering.


If assurances like these were part of the proposal, I am sure it would
be much easier to discuss - at least for me personally.  Thank you for
pointing this out!


Their is even no written proposal at the moment, but only a discussion 
on the pros and cons and what it could bring to the project. But it 
seems impossible to discuss because the ecosystem companies won't allow it.
I'm sorry, I already wrote in a previous thread that TDF has failed to 
have a balanced position during the pandemic, caring of the charitable 
part of its duty, I hope we will not continue in that way because, again 
as a member, this is not how I feel represented.




And also Michael (W.) - thank you for your great summary!


yes, thanks Michael to have broaden my proposal and my ideas.
Cheers
Sophie


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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Italo,

Italo Vignoli píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 16:31 +0100:

> Yes, but it looks like the discussion is blocked one step before 
> reaching a consensus on this very simple point. If the discussion
> stays 
> as such, I have to say that I don't feel I am represented - as a TDF 
> Member - by any member of the just elected board of directors (of 
> course, those who have expressed their opinions).

This is very sad to hear :-(  I am afraid this is a product of the
unilateral & vigorous presentation of hiring developers as the only way
forward, regardless of what the ecosystem companies have to say.

> > Of course, in case the main intention were for TDF to provide more 
> > business-like services (like an LTS version or creating an
> > impression of 
> > "donate a certain amount of money and your pet bug will be fixed"),
> > I 
> > see very well how that might interfere significantly with the
> > business 
> > model of ecosystem companies.
> 
> Totally agree. But I don't see the issue, as ESC and BoD members
> could 
> easily stop any project before it starts, when there is a potential
> risk 
> of conflict. AFAIK, major development activities are scrutinized by
> both 
> bodies, as they are ranked in order of importance, suggested,
> approved 
> and transformed to tenders, or not considered for tendering.

If assurances like these were part of the proposal, I am sure it would
be much easier to discuss - at least for me personally.  Thank you for
pointing this out!

And also Michael (W.) - thank you for your great summary!

All the best,
Kendy

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Paolo Vecchi]

Hi all,

On 10/02/2022 12:59, Thorsten Behrens wrote:

Hi *,

Paolo Vecchi wrote:

On 09/02/2022 15:57, Jan Holesovsky wrote:

It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as
opposed to "users".  "Users" are not part of the "community", until
they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under
the TDF umbrella, etc.

I'm sorry but I have to strongly disagree with your statement.


In fact Paolo wasn't disagreeing so much, just stressed that users
should be encouraged to become contributors.


I was actually disagreeing with a statement saying that users are not 
part of the community.



On the statement per se, that we (as in, TDF, and its board in
particular) predominantly need to care and listen to our contributors,
I would believe there's hardly any disagreement in the community.


Sure that we have to listen but that doesn't mean we have to do all what 
contributors say as some ideas passionately promoted by some 
contributors within the board turned out to be suboptimal and cost 
months of work and arguing.



I think that, as part of the on-boarding process, we should include a
session hosted by Florian and Mike Schinagl that clarifies to all why TDF
has been created, what its role is and what we should all keep in mind while
performing our duties as members of the board.


While it is important for the new board to know what TDF can, and
cannot do (and in fact Paolo will find an email in his inbox, where
Florian is announcing exactly such an onboarding), the role of the
board is the opposite - to lead, within the limits of the charitable
laws, where the community needs us to go.


From the exchanges I've seen it seems like it's really important to 
make clear what TDF is and what was set up to do.



Looking at the reasons why TDF was started almost 12 years ago
shouldn't be the sole guiding principle. Living in the past is not a
good board strategy.


While we should clearly evolve and grow, TDF has been setup for a 
specific reason and it has been incorporated on purpose as a Foundation 
(Stiftung) to preserve its guiding principles. It seems like it's more 
important than ever to remind ourselves of that and have a nice session 
with Florian and Mike Schinagl to tell us more about it.


The feedback we are receiving and the legal consultations we had confirm 
that employing developers to contribute directly to LibreOffice fits 
perfectly with TDF's purpose and objectives and allows to do more for 
our community.


Paraphrasing slightly what someone said quite a few years ago "Ask not 
what your community can do for you - ask what you can do for your 
community" so TDF should lead and do before expecting others to do.



I'll not comment on the quotes out of a press article, shown without
much context and lacking a link to the original source (which would be
good practice). The article
(https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/libreoffice_ecosystem_beyond_utterly_broken/)
was written in the context of the LOOL and MarComm plan discussions,
and the fallout around the LibreOffice Personal / LibreOffice
Community arguments. I recommend reading it in full.


I did not link the article on purpose as it really doesn't make the two 
person involved look good at all, it denigrates TDF, it reports 
misconceptions that have been clarified, it states that TDF cannot do 
things that are actually in the statutes and in general did not reflect 
the thoughts of the majority of the board.


It nearly got a quite strong public answer but some preferred to avoid it.


Finally, on the apparent contradiction between what Andreas (lawyer,
TDF founder, long-term board member) and Paolo state on what TDF is
permitted to do: this is part of an ongoing discussion with various
experts.

I would much prefer not discussing difficult legal matters on a public
list.


They are not difficult legal matters, they are just basic legal 
consultations that gave us confirmation that we can do much more that 
previously thought.


I'm quite sure that Andreas (lawyer, TDF founder, long-term board 
member) would agree with Paolo (nothing much apparently) if he were a 
board member in this term and participated to the legal consultations. 
There is also no contradiction as Andreas summarised well the final 
scope for the employment of the developers which is the same scope for 
our tenders.



Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Ciao

Paolo

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Andreas,

Andreas Mantke píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:58 +0100:

> once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a
> different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation
> in OOo project at that time.

I may be wrong, it is a long time ago, but from what I remember, the
problem was not the domination per se [though please don't understand
me as supporting domination ;-)], but the unwillingness to communicate
& seek consensus how to improve the situation for contributors.

[This is also why I insist that "community" means the contributors -
the situation was perfectly fine for the users; they were getting their
builds for free & were happy.]

At that time:

* There was the CWS system that was forcing contributors to go through
  a complicated process even for the simplest fixes

+ unless you have found a friendly internal engineer who was kind
  enough to include your patch into their CWS
+ not to mention that the access to CWS was restricted for the
  outside for a long time in the first place

* CVS was a disaster for version control

+ and I've created a working, usable git import

+ yet Mercurial was favored, even though not ready for the
  OOo size
+ so the conversion was postponed and OOo was converted to
  Subversion as a temporary measure
+ then 2 years later converted to Mercurial
- with a terrible penalty for the non-internal contributors,
  because Mercurial had to download 500MB of metadata for each
  branch [which might be OK'ish these days - but this was
  11 years ago and more]
+ only to be converted to Subversion again [at Apache]
+ and then finally to git

* the localization went through the .sdf files

+ I was not involved in this, so I have only vague memories it was
  a terrible pain for the l10n community

* the build system was a disaster by itself due to build.pl & dmake

+ and worse, the company had a different, internal one
- so no interest in improving it for the contributors
+ but at least Bjoern has invented the gbuild while being an
  internal engineer, regardless of the internal pushback

- he's a hero; and I have fond memories of other heroes who
  helped to make the contributing easier
- still - the general approach of the company was to make
  the contribution hard.

* I'm sure there's more; but luckily I forgot :-)

So if you see any sign of an ecosystem company trying to make
contributing harder (like the above), please do shout - contributing
must be as easy as possible for everybody who wants to contribute!

All the best,
Kendy

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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Italo Vignoli]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for summarizing my thoughts on your email (as far as I can 
understand from your message, we share exactly the same ideas).


On 2/10/22 13:36, Michael Weghorn wrote:

I agree here that there are several areas like CJK and CTL (and not 
only for bug fixes) or ally that should deserve much more love from 
TDF and I'm sure our donors would be happy that we invest in this area 
too.


That would help also to grow this part of the community, which is very 
complicated to achieve when our version is difficult to use.


Totally agree.

That sounds like a good approach to me, in particular for areas where 
there's currently no specific interest from ecosystem companies or 
volunteers and that are unsuitable for tenders, but considered important 
for the community.
I would see that in line with how TDF already employs non-developer 
staff to take care of other important aspects not (sufficiently) covered 
by other contributors.


Totally agree.

I have the impression that a fundamentally important question is what 
the purpose/task of TDF-internal developers would be.


Yes, but it looks like the discussion is blocked one step before 
reaching a consensus on this very simple point. If the discussion stays 
as such, I have to say that I don't feel I am represented - as a TDF 
Member - by any member of the just elected board of directors (of 
course, those who have expressed their opinions).


If larger topics that TDF-internal developers were to work on were first 
agreed on in the bodies where ecosystem companies are present as well 
(like ESC and/or the board), my expectation would be that the 
development work from different sides should work together nicely, 
rather than creating any kind of destructive competition.
(Ecosystem company products profit from contributions made to 
LibreOffice as well, and having a better overall product should in my 
opinion also increase the range of potentially interested customers in 
general.)


Totally agree.

Of course, in case the main intention were for TDF to provide more 
business-like services (like an LTS version or creating an impression of 
"donate a certain amount of money and your pet bug will be fixed"), I 
see very well how that might interfere significantly with the business 
model of ecosystem companies.


Totally agree. But I don't see the issue, as ESC and BoD members could 
easily stop any project before it starts, when there is a potential risk 
of conflict. AFAIK, major development activities are scrutinized by both 
bodies, as they are ranked in order of importance, suggested, approved 
and transformed to tenders, or not considered for tendering.


Development activities which are not considered for tendering, or just 
ignored, could probably be developed by TDF without creating disruptions 
(or even discussions). I am rather sure that in 7 million lines of code 
(plus the open bugs) there are enough challenges for everyone.


Of course, given my complete lack of understanding of development, is 
too easy to find a technical angle to disprove what I just wrote, but it 
would also be disproving what many of the contributors - the community - 
think, and this would confirm my personal belief that TDF BoD does not 
represent the community as a whole, but only a portion of it.


Assuming members in the involved LibreOffice/TDF bodies found a way to 
work together constructively, my current impression is that this 
approach could be for the benefit of all.


Again, totally agree. Best regards, Italo
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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Stephan Ficht]

Hi Italo, Kendy,

@Italo:
thanks for jumping in and your overview to answer Kendy's questions.

Cheers,
Stephan



Am 10.02.22 um 15:40 schrieb Jan Holesovsky:

Hi Italo,

Awesome, thank you so much for the summary!

All the best,
Kendy

Italo Vignoli píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 15:27 +0100:

On 2/10/22 14:56, Jan Holesovsky wrote:


Comes to my mind - as you deal with the donors daily, and
particularly
ask them why do they want to stop their recurring donations (in
case
they do), I wonder if there is an aggregated data available
somewhere?


The majority of recurring donations is stopped immediately after the
first donation by the donor, when he gets the receipt and realizes
that
he has triggered a recurring donation instead of a one off.

Then there is a number of donors who ask to stop the recurring
donation.
Some of them provide a reason, which in some cases is that he wanted
to
donate once and not on a recurring basis, in some cases lack of
money,
and in some other because they don't use the software anymore (no bug
or
other technical reason provided).

A small number of donors block donations because the software
doesn't
fit their needs or is too difficult to use (again, without providing
any
technical reason or a bug).

You should always consider the fact that only a very small number of
users is capable of spotting bugs, as for them the software always
works
as intended. It took me several years to get a marginal understanding
of
bugs, and I have been working in technology environments since 1982.
The
majority of users is technically dumb, including people who are
supposed
to be competent, and this is just a fact.


Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any
longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets
for
such cases?


Since 2013, not a single user has related stopping donations with
bugs,
while some donors have related their donation to solving bugs.

Best regards, Italo
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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Daniel A. Rodriguez]

El 10/2/22 a las 08:30, Stephan Ficht escribió:

Hello,

wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind:

"contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is 
subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives.


So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for 
the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.



Crystal clear, for some of us at least

This reminds me of a comment by MMeeks where he made reference to the 
fact that those who do not code have no say. Which is a total absurdity.



Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind 
these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading 
water and getting nowhere.


Cheers,
Stephan



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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Italo,

Awesome, thank you so much for the summary!

All the best,
Kendy

Italo Vignoli píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 15:27 +0100:
> On 2/10/22 14:56, Jan Holesovsky wrote:
> 
> > Comes to my mind - as you deal with the donors daily, and
> > particularly
> > ask them why do they want to stop their recurring donations (in
> > case
> > they do), I wonder if there is an aggregated data available
> > somewhere?
> 
> The majority of recurring donations is stopped immediately after the 
> first donation by the donor, when he gets the receipt and realizes
> that 
> he has triggered a recurring donation instead of a one off.
> 
> Then there is a number of donors who ask to stop the recurring
> donation. 
> Some of them provide a reason, which in some cases is that he wanted
> to 
> donate once and not on a recurring basis, in some cases lack of
> money, 
> and in some other because they don't use the software anymore (no bug
> or 
> other technical reason provided).
> 
> A small number of donors block donations because the software
> doesn't 
> fit their needs or is too difficult to use (again, without providing
> any 
> technical reason or a bug).
> 
> You should always consider the fact that only a very small number of 
> users is capable of spotting bugs, as for them the software always
> works 
> as intended. It took me several years to get a marginal understanding
> of 
> bugs, and I have been working in technology environments since 1982.
> The 
> majority of users is technically dumb, including people who are
> supposed 
> to be competent, and this is just a fact.
> 
> > Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any
> > longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets
> > for
> > such cases?
> 
> Since 2013, not a single user has related stopping donations with
> bugs, 
> while some donors have related their donation to solving bugs.
> 
> Best regards, Italo
> -- 
> Italo Vignoli - it...@vignoli.org
> mobile/signal +39.348.5653829
> GPG Key ID - 0xAAB8D5C0
> DB75 1534 3FD0 EA5F 56B5 FDA6 DE82 934C AAB8 D5C0
> 
> 

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Italo Vignoli]

On 2/10/22 14:56, Jan Holesovsky wrote:


Comes to my mind - as you deal with the donors daily, and particularly
ask them why do they want to stop their recurring donations (in case
they do), I wonder if there is an aggregated data available somewhere?


The majority of recurring donations is stopped immediately after the 
first donation by the donor, when he gets the receipt and realizes that 
he has triggered a recurring donation instead of a one off.


Then there is a number of donors who ask to stop the recurring donation. 
Some of them provide a reason, which in some cases is that he wanted to 
donate once and not on a recurring basis, in some cases lack of money, 
and in some other because they don't use the software anymore (no bug or 
other technical reason provided).


A small number of donors block donations because the software doesn't 
fit their needs or is too difficult to use (again, without providing any 
technical reason or a bug).


You should always consider the fact that only a very small number of 
users is capable of spotting bugs, as for them the software always works 
as intended. It took me several years to get a marginal understanding of 
bugs, and I have been working in technology environments since 1982. The 
majority of users is technically dumb, including people who are supposed 
to be competent, and this is just a fact.



Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any
longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets for
such cases?


Since 2013, not a single user has related stopping donations with bugs, 
while some donors have related their donation to solving bugs.


Best regards, Italo
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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Stephan,

Stephan Ficht píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 14:28 +0100:

> Yeah, on the one hand it's satisfaction, and from my POV dealing
> with 
> donors nearly every day, on the other hand, and in many cases, it's
> even 
> an incentive, a support, and an expectation to improve what the wide 
> community will provide and share in the future.

Thank you very much for that!

Comes to my mind - as you deal with the donors daily, and particularly
ask them why do they want to stop their recurring donations (in case
they do), I wonder if there is an aggregated data available somewhere?

Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any
longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets for
such cases?

All the best,
Kendy

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Stephan Ficht]

Hi Olivier,

+1

Am 10.02.22 um 13:50 schrieb Olivier Hallot:

One cent in donation is a manifest of satisfaction on LibreOffice.

It sums to ~1M yearly of users satisfaction.
Yeah, on the one hand it's satisfaction, and from my POV dealing with 
donors nearly every day, on the other hand, and in many cases, it's even 
an incentive, a support, and an expectation to improve what the wide 
community will provide and share in the future.




Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic 
stuff, documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels and 
regional meetings.


I wonder who is actually listening to users.

IMO, very important to do so.
"Users / not yet users" is the large total from which derives the 
subsets I mentioned previously.


Cheers,
Stephan

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi Olivier,

Olivier Hallot wrote:
> Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic stuff,
> documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels and regional
> meetings.
> 
I would consider those users contributors.

> I wonder who is actually listening to users.
> 
I believe many of us do?

It's just that in case of conflicting requirements, I would (almost)
always prioritize contributors' needs over (non-contributing) user
requests. That also creates incentives, for users to become
contributors.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten


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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Paolo Vecchi]

Thanks Olivier!

I'm pleased that you clarified the importance of users so well but I'm 
also worried about the fact that this clarification was needed in the 
first place.


Ciao

Paolo



On 10/02/2022 13:50, Olivier Hallot wrote:

Thanks for making it clearer.

I'd like to imagine LibreOffice with myriads of code contributors and 
no users. Better not.


Fact: users donate.

Currently donation is not tied to any TDF obligation, it is an 
expression of satisfaction or good will. Donation is a also pain that 
users go thru in spending time and money to express their satisfaction.


One cent in donation is a manifest of satisfaction on LibreOffice.

It sums to ~1M yearly of users satisfaction.

Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic 
stuff, documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels 
and regional meetings.


I wonder who is actually listening to users.

Olivier

Em 10/02/2022 08:30, Stephan Ficht escreveu:

Hello,

wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind:

"contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is 
subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written 
objectives.


So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic 
for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.


Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind 
these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading 
water and getting nowhere.


Cheers,
Stephan





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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Paolo Vecchi]

Hi Kendy,

On 10/02/2022 10:49, Jan Holesovsky wrote:

Hi Paolo,

Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:56 +0100:


He asked himself quite a few interesting questions:
"Without sharing too much, there are some moral questions popping up
for
me. Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what
matters
more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth? Is
ownCloud just another company or do we also have to answer to the
hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?"

Shouldn't we all ask ourselves the same questions?

Awesome - so now you finally understand how hard a decision it was for
us (Free Software lovers & contributors for decades) to move the LOOL
development to GitHub - because it was the result of asking & pondering
the same questions.  Thank you for that!


I'm not sure it's as awesome as you may think.

What NextCloud seems to have done is practically the contrary to what 
Collabora did.


I never talked with Frank about it, and even if it happened I wouldn't 
share it without his permission, but his own published thoughts seem to 
indicate that for him his Open Source ethos wasn't fully respected in a 
company that was going "too commercial" that's why I wondered "Was Frank 
feeling that the commercial drive was clashing with his Open Source ethos?"


I don't think I ever heard Frank saying that NextCloud users were not 
part of the community or complaining that there were too many 
freeloaders like others do.


We have any a couple of public threads that you may find useful to view 
the LOOL issue from both sides.

They are linked here:

https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00099.html 



The clear summary anyway is that LOOL, conceived as a project that 
should have been delivered to the community, has been forked as 
commercial interests prevailed regardless of the agreements in place, 
the negotiations that were still ongoing and the marketing plan, which 
included LOOL, being developed.


Particularly:

* TDF does not own the community, TDF is an organization designed to
   make the community (let me repeat, "community" = "group of
   contributors") strong & flourishing.

I reported verbatim Frank's questions.
He probably was wondering if a community should be "owned" by a 
commercial organisation.


Then see my previous email in regards to the definition of "community":
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00167.html


* TDF does not own LibreOffice itself; it owns the brand, but the code,
   translations, etc. is owned by the particular contributors (ie. by
   the community) - to the level of lines of code, strings of
   translations, icons painted, test cases provided, etc.


Also NextCloud GmbH doesn't own the code it produced or the code, 
translations, etc. produced by contributors.

It doesn't even own its brand as a foundation owns it.

TDF has been created as the home of LibreOffice and its community.

See the rest of the email you omitted, towards the end:

https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00164.html

* Long term responsibility & growth matter more - and when the LOOL's
   (sub-)community didn't grow under TDF, it was time to move on.  The
   decisions shouldn't be about donation money.


When in the early days a SUSE employee proposed to TDF the LOOL project 
he was developing more contributors came along.


It seems like at some point contributions stopped. We may need to 
investigate to help us understanding what went wrong and avoid similar 
mistakes in future.


Did some contributions stop because some thought that they were 
contributing to a company instead of a community?
Did the contributors get employed by Collabora so it looked like nobody 
else was interested in contributing?

Was the project too complex for many individual contributors to deal with?
Other factors at play?


And regarding the last one: "Is TDF just another foundation or do we
also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and
make it what it is today?" is for us, the new board, to improve -
Well, removing the name of a commercial organisation that Frank was 
leaving behind and replacing it with the non for profit and independent 
TDF frames things in a very different way.


Anyway of course we have to focus on the millions of users and hundreds 
of contributors that form our community and support us in various ways 
with code, localization, marketing, infrastructure, QA, design, word of 
mouth, events and activities, donations and in many more ways.



because from what I can see, TDF was not listening to the contributors
the last 2 years too much.


As Lothar said members of the board listened and had to work very hard 
to fix many issues and to get the relevant information showing that TDF 
can do much more that it has been thought including investing in developers.



Let's improve it together!


Yes but let's keep in mind that memb

Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Paolo Vecchi]

Thank you for your support Michael!

I confirm that my proposal does not contemplate at all offering LTS 
version or any other services in exchange for donations.


Ciao

Paolo

On 10/02/2022 13:36, Michael Weghorn wrote:

Hi all,

On 08/02/2022 17.01, sophi wrote:

Le 07/02/2022 à 19:16, Paolo Vecchi a écrit :

  * Members of the ecosystem and others also suggested that we should
    spend more money in development
  * Bugs, a11y issues and features can be harder to taken care of by
    volunteers and are not always addressed by the ecosystem
  * We need to build up internal skills and development capabilities to
    speed up innovation


I agree here that there are several areas like CJK and CTL (and not 
only for bug fixes) or ally that should deserve much more love from 
TDF and I'm sure our donors would be happy that we invest in this 
area too.


That would help also to grow this part of the community, which is 
very complicated to achieve when our version is difficult to use.


That sounds like a good approach to me, in particular for areas where 
there's currently no specific interest from ecosystem companies or 
volunteers and that are unsuitable for tenders, but considered 
important for the community.
I would see that in line with how TDF already employs non-developer 
staff to take care of other important aspects not (sufficiently) 
covered by other contributors.


I have the impression that a fundamentally important question is what 
the purpose/task of TDF-internal developers would be.


If larger topics that TDF-internal developers were to work on were 
first agreed on in the bodies where ecosystem companies are present as 
well (like ESC and/or the board), my expectation would be that the 
development work from different sides should work together nicely, 
rather than creating any kind of destructive competition.
(Ecosystem company products profit from contributions made to 
LibreOffice as well, and having a better overall product should in my 
opinion also increase the range of potentially interested customers in 
general.)


Of course, in case the main intention were for TDF to provide more 
business-like services (like an LTS version or creating an impression 
of "donate a certain amount of money and your pet bug will be fixed"), 
I see very well how that might interfere significantly with the 
business model of ecosystem companies.


Assuming members in the involved LibreOffice/TDF bodies found a way to 
work together constructively, my current impression is that this 
approach could be for the benefit of all.


However, I must admit I don't know the ecosystem company perspective 
first-hand, so would be interested in learning more about specific 
concerns.


Best regards,
Michael




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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Olivier Hallot]

Thanks for making it clearer.

I'd like to imagine LibreOffice with myriads of code contributors and no 
users. Better not.


Fact: users donate.

Currently donation is not tied to any TDF obligation, it is an 
expression of satisfaction or good will. Donation is a also pain that 
users go thru in spending time and money to express their satisfaction.


One cent in donation is a manifest of satisfaction on LibreOffice.

It sums to ~1M yearly of users satisfaction.

Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic 
stuff, documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels and 
regional meetings.


I wonder who is actually listening to users.

Olivier

Em 10/02/2022 08:30, Stephan Ficht escreveu:

Hello,

wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind:

"contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset 
of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives.


So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for 
the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.


Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind 
these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading 
water and getting nowhere.


Cheers,
Stephan



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Re: [board-discuss] Re: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Michael Weghorn]

Hi all,

On 08/02/2022 17.01, sophi wrote:

Le 07/02/2022 à 19:16, Paolo Vecchi a écrit :

  * Members of the ecosystem and others also suggested that we should
    spend more money in development
  * Bugs, a11y issues and features can be harder to taken care of by
    volunteers and are not always addressed by the ecosystem
  * We need to build up internal skills and development capabilities to
    speed up innovation


I agree here that there are several areas like CJK and CTL (and not only 
for bug fixes) or ally that should deserve much more love from TDF and 
I'm sure our donors would be happy that we invest in this area too.


That would help also to grow this part of the community, which is very 
complicated to achieve when our version is difficult to use.


That sounds like a good approach to me, in particular for areas where 
there's currently no specific interest from ecosystem companies or 
volunteers and that are unsuitable for tenders, but considered important 
for the community.
I would see that in line with how TDF already employs non-developer 
staff to take care of other important aspects not (sufficiently) covered 
by other contributors.


I have the impression that a fundamentally important question is what 
the purpose/task of TDF-internal developers would be.


If larger topics that TDF-internal developers were to work on were first 
agreed on in the bodies where ecosystem companies are present as well 
(like ESC and/or the board), my expectation would be that the 
development work from different sides should work together nicely, 
rather than creating any kind of destructive competition.
(Ecosystem company products profit from contributions made to 
LibreOffice as well, and having a better overall product should in my 
opinion also increase the range of potentially interested customers in 
general.)


Of course, in case the main intention were for TDF to provide more 
business-like services (like an LTS version or creating an impression of 
"donate a certain amount of money and your pet bug will be fixed"), I 
see very well how that might interfere significantly with the business 
model of ecosystem companies.


Assuming members in the involved LibreOffice/TDF bodies found a way to 
work together constructively, my current impression is that this 
approach could be for the benefit of all.


However, I must admit I don't know the ecosystem company perspective 
first-hand, so would be interested in learning more about specific concerns.


Best regards,
Michael


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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Stephan,

Stephan Ficht píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 12:30 +0100:

> wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my
> mind:
> 
> "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is
> subset 
> of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives.

Thank you!  Unfortunately it is not as easy, when you look at that as
"sets".

"contributors of code" is definitely a subset of "contributors of
anything".  "Contributors of anything" could be a subset of "community"
(though I argue "contributors of anything" equals to "community" - but
that is an unimportant detail here).

But the "community" is not a subset of "TDF" - there are many
contributors ("community" by the above definition) who are not TDF
trustees.

So from the sets point of view, "TDF" is a subset of "community" too.

[Of course, that is assuming the Membership committee does not allow
non-contributors to became TDF trustees (but I believe that's the case
:-) ) - because then the "TDF" and "community" would only have an
intersection.]

> So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic
> for 
> the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.

Definitely, I agree with you, and I believe listening to others &
seeking for consensus is key.

All the best,
Kendy

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[sophi]

Hi Stephan,
Le 10/02/2022 à 12:30, Stephan Ficht a écrit :

Hello,

wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind:

"contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset 
of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives.


So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for 
the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.


Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind 
these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading 
water and getting nowhere.


Really thank you, I was feeling the same and didn't know how to write 
it, you did it perfectly :)


Cheers
Sophie

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi *,

Paolo Vecchi wrote:
> On 09/02/2022 15:57, Jan Holesovsky wrote:
> > It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as
> > opposed to "users".  "Users" are not part of the "community", until
> > they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under
> > the TDF umbrella, etc.
> 
> I'm sorry but I have to strongly disagree with your statement.
> 
In fact Paolo wasn't disagreeing so much, just stressed that users
should be encouraged to become contributors.

That's indeed a very important, and perhaps an under-used approach to
increase overall contributions in the project!

On the statement per se, that we (as in, TDF, and its board in
particular) predominantly need to care and listen to our contributors,
I would believe there's hardly any disagreement in the community.

> I think that, as part of the on-boarding process, we should include a
> session hosted by Florian and Mike Schinagl that clarifies to all why TDF
> has been created, what its role is and what we should all keep in mind while
> performing our duties as members of the board.
> 
While it is important for the new board to know what TDF can, and
cannot do (and in fact Paolo will find an email in his inbox, where
Florian is announcing exactly such an onboarding), the role of the
board is the opposite - to lead, within the limits of the charitable
laws, where the community needs us to go.

Looking at the reasons why TDF was started almost 12 years ago
shouldn't be the sole guiding principle. Living in the past is not a
good board strategy.

I'll not comment on the quotes out of a press article, shown without
much context and lacking a link to the original source (which would be
good practice). The article
(https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/libreoffice_ecosystem_beyond_utterly_broken/)
was written in the context of the LOOL and MarComm plan discussions,
and the fallout around the LibreOffice Personal / LibreOffice
Community arguments. I recommend reading it in full.

Finally, on the apparent contradiction between what Andreas (lawyer,
TDF founder, long-term board member) and Paolo state on what TDF is
permitted to do: this is part of an ongoing discussion with various
experts.

I would much prefer not discussing difficult legal matters on a public
list.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten


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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Regis,

Regis Perdreau píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 11:21 +0100:

> Some parts of LibreOffice are not covered by the ecosystem...
> Although we  sometimes have customers who ask for improvements :

If you talk about customers - it sounds like there is a company willing
to pay to fix those.  With my Collabora hat on, I'd love somebody from
our company to talk to those customers to see what we can offer them.

But with my TDF hat on - why should TDF, paid by donations from real,
living people, use those donations to employ developers to fix stuff
for enterprises?

> May be those topics below are not fashionable but they contribute to
> give some credibility to LibreOffice
> 
> - VBA compatibility 
> - Basic bugs 
> - Base enhancement 
> - Python support
> - Math equation
> - Slide transition
> - documents signature support (CNG api)
> - All most annoying bugs...

I didn't check how many of these were proposed for tendering - but I
think some of these were.  Can you please add the missing ones as
proposals, so that it is possible to rate them & see which of them are
in line with the TDF goals & TDF can tender them?

Thank you very much!

All the best,
Kendy

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Paolo Vecchi]

+1

Maybe the only thing missing is "users" as subset of community.

I guess that the "contributors of anything" are also "users" of 
LibreOffice and that any "user" is a potential "contributor of anything" ;-)


Ciao

Paolo

On 10/02/2022 12:30, Stephan Ficht wrote:

Hello,

wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind:

"contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is 
subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives.


So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for 
the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.


Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind 
these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading 
water and getting nowhere.


Cheers,
Stephan



--
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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Stephan Ficht]

Hello,

wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind:

"contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset 
of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives.


So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for 
the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.


Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind 
these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading 
water and getting nowhere.


Cheers,
Stephan

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Regis Perdreau]

Hi,

Some parts of LibreOffice are not covered by the ecosystem...
Although we  sometimes have customers who ask for improvements :
May be those topics below are not fashionable but they contribute to give
some credibility to LibreOffice

- VBA compatibility
- Basic bugs
- Base enhancement
- Python support
- Math equation
- Slide transition
- documents signature support (CNG api)
- All most annoying bugs...

All the best

Régis Perdreau



Le jeu. 10 févr. 2022 à 11:30, Jan Holesovsky 
a écrit :

> Hi Lothar,
>
> Lothar K. Becker píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 11:12 +0100:
>
> > It was one of my first and foremost task as chair - and let me add it
> > was hard time consuming  work - that everybody was heard and could
> > speak, it is simply not true, that contributors wasn't heard.
>
> I am sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.  I've seen it myself in the
> public parts of the calls I were attending how hard a job it must have
> been for you given the conditions, and I am sure you *yourself* made
> everything to listen very carefully - thank you for that!
>
> And the same way - I want thank everyone who were carefully listening &
> considering, instead of just pushing their agenda.
>
> All the best,
> Kendy
>
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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Lothar,

Lothar K. Becker píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 11:12 +0100:

> It was one of my first and foremost task as chair - and let me add it
> was hard time consuming  work - that everybody was heard and could
> speak, it is simply not true, that contributors wasn't heard.

I am sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.  I've seen it myself in the
public parts of the calls I were attending how hard a job it must have
been for you given the conditions, and I am sure you *yourself* made
everything to listen very carefully - thank you for that!

And the same way - I want thank everyone who were carefully listening &
considering, instead of just pushing their agenda.

All the best,
Kendy

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Lothar K. Becker]

  
  
Hi Kendy,


Am 10.02.2022 um 10:49 schrieb Jan
  Holesovsky:


  because from what I can see, TDF was not listening to the contributors
the last 2 years too much.


sorry to step in here but at this point I have to take part: 

It was one of my first and foremost task as chair - and let me add
it was hard time consuming  work - that everybody was heard and
could speak, it is simply not true, that contributors wasn't heard.

It is a different issue, if all of that got a majority in deciding
in the board or was convincing everybody, there you could certainly
be different opinion, but not for the pure fact if contributors
wasn't heard.

I think this is worth to differentiate. Nevertheless there is always
room for improvement, for which the new board certainly should reach
out.
Thanks
Lothar


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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Paolo Vecchi]

Hi Kendy,

On 09/02/2022 15:57, Jan Holesovsky wrote:

Hi Paolo,

Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 15:09 +0100:


The community and our valuable members of the ecosystem have been
asking us to invest more in development

It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as
opposed to "users".  "Users" are not part of the "community", until
they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under
the TDF umbrella, etc.


I'm sorry but I have to strongly disagree with your statement.

"contributors" are not opposed to "users" as users, which are/could 
become contributors at any time, are amongst the main beneficiaries of 
all TDF does as from our statutes and mission as a Foundation.


We do encourage users to contribute in any way they can even with simple 
things like filing a bug or simply promoting LibreOffice to their 
friends and family helps our community. Even the simple fact that they 
use LibreOffice can be part of fulfilling our goals as it helps with the 
"distribution of FLOSS philosophical and cultural ideals".


On libreoffice.org we can also read:
"LibreOffice is Free and Open Source Software. Development is open to 
new talent and new ideas, and our software is tested and used daily by a 
large and devoted user community."


Even Collabora's own forum includes users in their own community 
"competent community of users, integrators, and developers"


I think that, as part of the on-boarding process, we should include a 
session hosted by Florian and Mike Schinagl that clarifies to all why 
TDF has been created, what its role is and what we should all keep in 
mind while performing our duties as members of the board.




With that in mind - can you please point us to those requests?


There are plenty of examples in board's public and private meetings and 
even in articles that have been published quoting members of the ecosystem.


Eg:
'TDF has around €1.5m in the bank, Meeks said, but something that may 
surprise outsiders is that the foundation cannot and does not use that 
money to employ developers.'


'Thorsten Behrens, IT lead for LibreOffice at CIB, told The Register he 
was "99 per cent in agreement" with Meeks, adding: "The TDF is a 
charity; it's not in the business of developing software and actually 
cannot, because that would put it in competition with the commercial 
ecosystem," as well as threatening its charitable status.'


or

'Turning TDF donations into feature/function improvements is not only a 
process that at best is approximately 10% of that total development..."


These clear calls, from 2020, for TDF to invest more in developers have 
been listened to and some misconceptions, which have been holding back 
TDF for a long time, have been clarified.


Some comments are very odd as we know that "The objective of the 
foundation is the promotion *and development* of office software 
available for use by anyone free of charge." and it isn't clear at all 
how improving LibreOffice could be in competition with the commercial 
ecosystem, the commercial ecosystem partners focus on their own market 
segment with their own services which TDF doesn't provide.


So, as things are much clearer, we can now get to work to make TDF an 
active code contributor which will help in making LibreOffice better for 
all.



Thank you!

All the best,
Kendy

Ciao

Paolo

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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Paolo,

Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:56 +0100:

> He asked himself quite a few interesting questions:
> "Without sharing too much, there are some moral questions popping up
> for 
> me. Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what
> matters 
> more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth? Is 
> ownCloud just another company or do we also have to answer to the 
> hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?"
> 
> Shouldn't we all ask ourselves the same questions?

Awesome - so now you finally understand how hard a decision it was for
us (Free Software lovers & contributors for decades) to move the LOOL
development to GitHub - because it was the result of asking & pondering
the same questions.  Thank you for that!

Particularly:

* TDF does not own the community, TDF is an organization designed to
  make the community (let me repeat, "community" = "group of
  contributors") strong & flourishing.

* TDF does not own LibreOffice itself; it owns the brand, but the code,
  translations, etc. is owned by the particular contributors (ie. by
  the community) - to the level of lines of code, strings of
  translations, icons painted, test cases provided, etc.

* Long term responsibility & growth matter more - and when the LOOL's
  (sub-)community didn't grow under TDF, it was time to move on.  The
  decisions shouldn't be about donation money.

And regarding the last one: "Is TDF just another foundation or do we
also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and
make it what it is today?" is for us, the new board, to improve -
because from what I can see, TDF was not listening to the contributors
the last 2 years too much.

Let's improve it together!

All the best,
Kendy

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