Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2023-03-20
d with all members of the ecosystem. Especially those that are members of the board must show that they are not more equal than others. If the founding members wanted to create an entity where companies could exert pressure and push their own interests without having their representatives being in constant conflict of interests then they could have chosen a simple association or a cooperative. If you and others are of the opinion that that should happen, please be clear and work on a sensible discussion around the topic. But please do stop behaving as something that one would associate with a troll rather then a member contributing our work. Please stop saying that if we follow laws and regulations we violate the principle of the foundation as it is far away from reality. Some of the founders are also members of the ecosystem and members of the board of directors affiliated with those companies, they accepted and supported the fact that a Stiftung follows rules that are very different from a cooperative and should accept that in their position their actions should be under even more scrutiny than others to avoid showing even a perceived conflict of interest. As a member of the board of directors affiliated with a member of the ecosystem you should be the first to show that you are not more equal than others as that could have a negative effect on those that might want to join the ecosystem as they feel they wound be treated as equal. Having had this type of discussions too many times I expect that the chairman will instruct an impartial and objective CoI evaluation for all the members of the board and the adoption of clear fiduciary duties that all board members must follow to remove the doubts that members of the board of trustees are expressing. Thanks, Cor Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2023-03-20
themselves and other directors. As doubts have been raised, not only within the board but also from members of the board of trustees for a quite a while, I'm sure our chairman will call for the application of the same methodology and retroactivity for the collection of evidences that was applied to myself and fully evaluate in a transparent, impartial and objective way if there are and were undeclared personal interests and actual conflict of interests. It is an act of transparency and continuity with its past decisions for which the whole board will surely want to show its immediate commitment. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, April 3rd, 1800 Berlin time (UTC+2)
Hi all, On 31/03/2023 02:16, Thorsten Behrens wrote: 2. Status Report, Discuss: Update on formalising board fiduciary duties (Paolo Vecchi, Cor Nouws, 5 mins) if anyone would like to read the draft of the proposal and related documents here's the link: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/FZKYSkyPZZfty5L Don't hesitate to share your feedback. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2023-03-20
Hi Cor and all, On 29/03/2023 15:58, Cor Nouws wrote: Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke wrote on 29/03/2023 12:04: 7. Status Report, Discuss: TDF 2023 Budget Planning (tdf-board, 5 mins) Thorsten and Gabor declared a personal interest on the above topics (see above). I ask if they both attended the call and the discussion during this three topics of the private part of the meeting. Who lead the meeting as chair during this three topics? A personal interest is not a conflict of interest which in general is not a reason to abstain from discussing topics. Just a comment about the last statement as I believe we discussed the matter extensively within the board and also on board discuss: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01015.html In previous discussions I took as an example the "Code of Conduct for the Members of the European Commission" (not to be confused with our use of Code of Conduct) as IMHO is the standard we should aim at in regard to the first 7 articles. There we can read (Art. 2(6)): " A conflict of interest arises where a personal interest may influence the independent performance of their duties. ..." and then: "Members shall recuse themselves from any decision or instruction of a file and from any participation in a discussion, debate or vote in relation to a matter that falls under Article 2(6)." It is very simple and clear. Some argued that TDF is not an EU institution but that should not stop us to aim for very high standards in demonstrating independence, objectivity and impartiality when performing our duties. Taking in consideration the various interests within the community of course a member of the board that has declared a personal interest can put on the table a detailed proposal but then he/she should stay completely out of of the discussion and refrain from influencing in any way the decision process. I presume it is common knowledge that a conflict of interests isn't confirmed only when directors with a personal interest cast their vote, the perceived/actual conflict of interests materialises also along the whole decision process if the directors influence the process and other non conflicted members. Just like a supplier, after having presented a quote for services/products then only those that have no personal interests on the matter should be present and discuss the merits of the proposal and ask questions if necessary. If the "supplier" has reasons to object on the decision then naturally the non conflicted members will would discuss the merits of the objections separately. It might seem convoluted but that's, IMHO, a good way to have all the opinions heard while taking decisions in an independent, impartial and objective way which shouldn't lead to perceived or actual conflict of interests. Those that still don't have made their mind up in regards to what conflict of interests are, and how affect also the private sector, will find this document very useful: https://www.agence-francaise-anticorruption.gouv.fr/files/files/AFA_Guide_conflits%20interets_EN_juin%202022.pdf It contains quite a few examples/definitions which could help us in having a common understanding of personal interests, conflict of interests and how to deal with them leading by example from within the board. Dealing with perceived conflict of interests is a team effort: "Importantly, a conflict of interest exists even where the conflict in question is merely apparent, since the individual in question is neither required nor expected to be able to judge situations in which they are involved with an impartial, objective and independent eye." So when someone spots a potential issue it is good that the board is notified so that we can review our decisions and improve our processes. Then: "In order to shield themselves against conflict-of-interest risk, organisations must widen their prevention measures beyond actual conflicts of interest to include apparent conflicts of interest, which can also harm their image and erode trust." That's absolutely true and seeing yet another notification of perceived impropriety it's a signal that we need to further improve on our transparency, processes and a common understanding of how to deal with personal interests so that we provide no reasons for doubts. Further question: why didn't declare Cor also a personal interest about this three topics? Sorry if it is not there. IIRC I said the same applied for me - as is usually the case - so my name should be there in the minutes too. Cheers, Cor Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] Re: [Vote] hiring external communication expert
Hi all, I have to admit that I haven't checked the vote totals when published internally and only now I realise that the totals are wrong. While I notified the board that in my opinion the expenditure is unnecessary as we have the relevant resources, communication expert and a CoC team, within TDF I've voted -1. A member of the board made me noticed that I might be in conflict of interest as the proposed expenditure is, for the best part, related to my complaint that the case was not handled with the due impartiality and objectivity, I agreed with the comment and I revoked my vote. The final vote should be: A total of 6 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote. The vote is quorate. A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 4 votes. Result of vote: 5 approvals, 0 abstains, 1 disapprovals. Also one deputy supports the motion The result doesn't change as the majority of the board think that we should spend a large amount of money for something that could have been solved months ago with our own resources and without this expenditure but I believe it's important to remove my vote from this decision. Ciao Paolo On 20/01/2023 19:00, Florian Effenberger wrote: Hello, the following decision, which was taken in private on 2022-12-22, is now made public in accordance with our statutes. Cor Nouws wrote on 17/12/2022 11:59: Hello all, Another topic on which we need to make progress urgently IMO. Not only to check the handling, impartiality and objectivity of the CoC case against Paolo, but also get (a first?) external advise on our communication etc. From the comments on the topic - thanks! - there is a clear preference to go with the offering from Central Consultancy & Training. And since we're voting anyway, please cast your vote (+1/-1/0) for this one too by **Monday, 17:00 UTC / 18:00 Berlin time**. –-%<-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-– The board resolves: * Accept the offering from Central Consultancy & Training to execute 'Review handling CoC complaint against board member' as decided on October 17 2022 * As can be found here [redacted, internal link] * The cost for TDF are approx. 14.000 € The vote runs 54h from now. The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote. The vote is quorate. A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 4 votes. Result of vote: 5 approvals, 0 abstains, 2 disapprovals. Also one deputy supports the motion. -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Re: [VOTE] New proposal for hiring in-house developers.
Hi all, On 02/12/2022 23:42, Cor Nouws wrote: Hi, Until someone can explain me that it is beneficial to TDF to compete with contributing members of the ecosystem, I see this attempt from Andreas as not at all interesting. Nobody can explain to you "that it is beneficial to TDF to compete with contributing members of the ecosystem" because it isn't and TDF doesn't do it. Now that that is sorted. Does Article 8 of our statutes sound more interesting to you? Isn't your and Thorsten's behaviour leading to think that there is a potential conflict of interests? Cheers, Cor Ciao Paolo Andreas Mantke wrote on 02/12/2022 23:38: Hi all, Am 02.12.22 um 13:52 schrieb Thorsten Behrens: +1 (thanks a lot for all the good feedback, feels great to get this moving!) this vote was done by an owner and executive director of a software company who /which have an declared interest to influence the direction of the LibreOffice development by the in-house developers. The in-house developers will remove a lot of advantage from the tendering budget and could work on parts of the code, that otherwise could be a tender in the future, on which his company might bid. Thus the voter has a non arguable Conflict of Interest on the topic of this vote. Because of this he has to abstain from this vote. His vote is null. Because of his Conflict of Interest on this topic he cannot vote and should not unduly influence the decision. The comments on this list and the attacks are very problematic. Regards, Andreas -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [VOTE] New proposal for hiring in-house developers.
iciency and accountability. Then there is also the small issue of Article 8. Having Thorsten, Gabor and Cor declared an "interest" on the matter but regardless of that rammed through this proposal and voted +1 on it, doesn't it make it quite problematic in terms of potential/perceived conflict of interests? Because of my bad habit of pointing out issues and trying to fix them I'm being put in a condition of not being able to perform my role of director in these matters so I have little hope that those issues will be solved. I only hope that new boards will evaluate things in a more comprehensive way and avoid pushing forward decisions that down the line will create issues and debates, as I believe this will bring. Considering the above and hoping that somehow fixes will be implemented if this vote passes, I abstain. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] fast ahead soon...
Hi all, On 01/12/2022 14:05, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi Marina, all, Marina Latini wrote: I'm still struggling to understand why there was the need to trash 9 months of work for presenting a new text that sounds more like just the "abstract" of the previous document [...] Sorry for not having explained this in a proper way. The work is not trashed, as you say it's living on in the new proposal. As we can see from the few lines of the new proposal one of the issues was still present until Jean-Baptiste pointed out the same issue I managed to get Jan to understand. The other crucial bit of the proposal that gives away the real logic around it is this: "- for whom as the initial areas of work, the board identifies improving RTL/CTL writing support and accessibility *for LibreOffice** ** core*; as well as mentoring new volunteers in these specific areas. *After that, depending on skills available, Writer tables,** ** Base, general regression fixing, Draw, and Math are the next focus** ** areas;* " That's another very crafty way to get the same result as this sentence: "TDF in-house developers will not compete with commercial contributors and will not develop alternative implementations of Open Source projects actively maintained by LibreOffice volunteer or corporate contributors – like Collabora Online, mdds, or cppunit." There was nothing else that caused controversy in the proposal with Jan as with the legal review we ironed out everything else. Why was it shelved? Because Kendy resigned over it, A chairman repeating a false statement and ignoring the proof of the contrary doesn't look good. Kendy even kindly told Cor to stay out of it when he wanted to propose a similar version of his "KISS approach" as we were progressing very well. Kendy resigned when he has seen he could not find ways to justify the above sentence to impose a limitation that apparently was essential to him. Cor practically confirmed that commenting: " * properly created agreement on such limitations nightmare * from legal aspects and organizational wise" and by trying to impose the same limitation in a different way. As both our chairman and Cor relay on opacity to keep going on with unfounded accusations and false statements I've asked the board to release the relevant emails. At least we could settle the matter and get back to the original proposal, vote it and let the team do the rest. and he and Paolo worked over many details. The board would need to restart that, from a relatively early stage. In his various comments our chairman has shown that he prefers to go with a new proposal put together in, probably half an hour, which has created and will created more controversies down the line than evaluate the one that has already covered many of those issues. What has been proposed anyway still point to the original proposal: "Footnote: for a requirements analysis on the need for hiring developers, please refer to information on the pages 3-8 of the abandoned dev proposal" So the rationale I wrote and the focus areas I collected are OK to be recycled in this other proposal? Why excluding the "Mentoring and TDF’s educational mission" which all must know is very important? Why also excluding 10 to 12 which are the parts on which we put most of the efforts to find all the compromises that would make everyone happy? Why not keeping everything apart from page 13 which seems the most controversial one? The fact that for a majority of the board, the proposal was not acceptable in its current state, was I think made clear. Actually the board never explained what is not acceptable. Then stating "* seems number of people disagree" and seeing that the number is 2 doesn't make it a majority of the board. Seeing the the complaint from Cor is related to the same limitation for which Jan allegedly resigned then some doubts start coming up. Didn't I read something somewhere in relation to directors that have a declared interest should not influence the decision process on a specific item? How is called if that interest is declared after having influenced a decision? Maybe we should find the answer to those questions before carrying on with this "new proposal"? Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Re: Off-topic character assassinations - do we really need moderation again?
On 01/12/2022 09:51, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: Come on!!! Anyone can set up an email on their mobile, at this point, that's a completely ridiculous excuse. ... and I still never had a logical explanation on why it was so urgent to do it on a Friday when the complaints about LOOL archival stopped. True there was a strongly worded email from Franklin at 01:07 CEST complaining about Thorsten censoring Daniel but after that things were quiet. Anyway, let's keep constructive criticism civilised and avoid NSFW remarks to avoid providing excuses for moderating the list again. Ciao Paolo El 30 de noviembre de 2022 8:52:34 p. m. GMT-03:00, Thorsten Behrens escribió: Hi Daniel, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: And that does not look like a board decision to me. The vote was to document an earlier decision on Friday, July 8th, that happened via phone, messenger and chat. Mind that it was vacation time, and several directors had no immediate access to their email. Cheers, Thorsten -- -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Re: Off-topic character assassinations - do we really need moderation again?
Hi all, On 30/11/2022 11:39, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi Daniel, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: Previous moderation, as you named, was not based on a board decision but yours. Of course it was a board decision. Please stop spreading falsehoods. Not sure if this will surprise anyone but I was not even aware that the decision was being taken so I've been completely excluded also from that one. From a procedural point of view I don't think what has been done is valid as there was no actual emergency for do it. Unless, as it seems to be standard procedure, I've been excluded also from evaluating something else that required immediate moderation. I realised moderation has been decided and implemented at about 16:30 of the 8th of July as one of my emails bounced back. As we all remember it was during a heated discussion about archiving LOOL or not and rediscovering the Foundation roots. "Fun fact": the last message I received before moderation was activated seems to be the one from Daniel complaining about being harassed by "the supervisor" Cheers, Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] the importance of shepherding this list & TDF
unity which will create also new contributors. It's a virtuous circle that bring benefits for all. - but his integrity is something I can rely on. His patience when dealing with controversy, his balance and desire to find a workable solution is legendary. Well... comments from current and ex fellow members of the board seems to feel left out from enjoying a few of Thorsten's qualities then. I personally failed to enjoy his objectivity since the beginning of 2020 when he was accusing me of "vandalising a document" and didn't want to understand why those changes were necessary. One of the too many to count "I told you so" moments followed. I've also missed much of his impartiality at every single opportunity he had. Only once he admitted he might be perceived as not being impartial, that's when Caolan took on the CoC case against me and I believe it happened only because Caolan was there and Thorsten refrained to express his feelings to openly. Once Caolan (unfortunately) left the board then Cor took the case over and they went wild on it, like the CoI and... well just check the mailing lists. More than that - we are a statutory meritocracy - and Thorsten has contributed an incredible amount of do-ing to the project not just coding (and apparently cloning himself[3] =) - but innumerable small acts of kindness and nurturing behind the scenes. He repeatedly encourages me to think that: "everyone is really just trying to do what they think is best" when I loose faith in that. He's great in many things and I'm honestly saddened that several current and ex fellow members of the board haven't managed to see his more positive sides. It is also sad that I didn't managed to get him to approach issues from a different point of view and "I told you so" will be the only thing left to be said at the end. Oh - and did I mention his positive input on the ESC, serving from our founding on the Board, doing the jobs that no-one wanted to eg. as an example all the donation book-keeping for many years - which was done with great probity. I would have loved to meet that Thorsten as well. Maybe the issue is that he feels the weight of his position as a chairman and that makes him all grumpy? Did I mention his personal investment in allotropia - which contributes lots of LibreOffice code - this could go on and on but this E-mail is already an example of the over-long E-mails we have on the list and I just got started. I don't think anybody denies how good Thorsten is good in coding and how good is company is in fulfilling customers requirements that turn in good code for all. Let me summarize it this way: Thorsten rocks. I guess nobody denies that either. I'm sure he's also a fun guy in non board related situations. If anyone plans to attack and/or exclude him from TDF - they better bring a large-ish team of people to try to replace the immense good he does here. AFAIK nobody wants to attack or exclude Thorsten. That doesn't mean he should not be criticised if some think that among the many good things he does there are others that are actually quite negative. Then naturally you can't expect people to be quiet when he has secret meeting with some members of the board with the purpose of killing 9 months of work done in public. Regards, Michael. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] fast ahead soon... Re: [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi Emiliano, thank you for clarifying your position and for trying yet again to get some members of the board to understand that what they are doing is not only ethically wrong but very likely also against our statutes. Last night Thorsten, Cor and Gabor declared an "interest" in relation to the "Hiring TDF developers" while derailing the current proposal and imposing a new one. There are strong indicators that what is going on could be seen as a conflict of interest and the board should start an official investigation. What concerns me is that I haven't seen any reactions from Laszlo, Gabor, Ayhan or Gabriel in any of the other cases during this term where you reported to the board that what they were doing was deeply wrong. I hope they start realising that they should start questioning more what they are being told by Cor and Thorsten. Ciao Paolo On 28/11/2022 22:55, Emiliano Vavassori wrote: Hi all, Il 27/11/22 17:41, Cor Nouws ha scritto: Then, I've been busy recently, among others working on another proposal of course with great support from others. Let me clarify that I did NOT take any part on the drafting of such proposal, nor I do approve or support it or even part of it. I clearly wrote to the other directors involved to IMMEDIATELY STOP that process and that I didn't want to be involved with it. Willfully and actively excluding *just one single* legally elected director without *any whatsoever valid reason* for this exclusion is IMHO, at the very least, highly debatable and, for sure, it does not fit my general approach on making everyone, even with different opinions than mine, engaged over non-consensual items and endeavors. In fact, I find it disgusting in a democratic setup and added I was not engaging furthermore on the topic as I was appalled by the whole behavior. I was even asked to reconsider and be part of the group working on that proposal, basically ignoring my previous words whatsoever. The proposal was even sent to me privately on an instant messaging platform, ignoring my words to leave me out of the entire endeavor, basically forcing me to have a look over it, even if I stated clearly I didn't want to be involved. I am deeply saddened, frustrated and nauseated on being constantly ignored, abused, mistold and misrepresented in so many different and articulated ways, even when I'm trying to stay balanced and try hard to fulfill my role as vice-chairman by giving voice to everyone. Regards, -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] fast ahead soon... Re: [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi Andreas, On 28/11/2022 17:19, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi Cor, hi all, if a community member points on the last board meeting minutes and tell you that it could not read any objective reasons (from you) why the inhouse-dev proposal 3.1 not fit the purpose, it is really inappropriate and impertinent to point in the answer only on this meeting minutes. It shows no respect face to face with the members. If this is your understanding of the communication with the members you needn't think about the strategy for the future of TDF, but about an advanced training to improve your skills. recent emails and declarations during BoD meetings seem to have created some uncertainties in regards to what is going on with the developers proposal so I've asked the board to release an email thread, which also contains some recommendations from our trusted legal counsel, that should clarify the situation once and for all. I'm sure the board will be very pleased to release those emails so that we can remove any doubt and move forward with the original proposal. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo Am 27.11.22 um 23:40 schrieb Cor Nouws: Hi Sophie, Thanks for expressing your concerns on the matter. Given the situation, I can only understand that. Although I think it is not needed to expect something weird or bad to happen. Wrt my comments: see the minutes of the meeting at 2022-11-14: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01063.html It's a nice coincidence by the way that Uwe mentioned KISS, earlier this evening. The new proposal indeed will be simple and understandable. Then again: whatever others may tell you, I was never against in house developers. So clearly the idea is not to deny the work of you and other team members and so on. Maybe we only make sure that it actually comes to work? Cheers, Cor sophi wrote on 27/11/2022 21:50: Hi Cor, all, Le 27/11/2022 à 17:41, Cor Nouws a écrit : Hi all, I could not join this vote. As all that read my mails and hear my spoken contributions can know, I've always supported the idea for hiring developers. The proposal brought to vote by Paolo however, was IMO not fit for purpose - I've mentioned that on this list and explained it before in e.g. the recent board meeting. I was not in the board meeting, but what I read was to point at people and not to the background of the document. I'm still waiting for an explanation of what in this document after the feedback from the community, the team, and the 9 months work of the board plus the legal review should still be problematic. Then, I've been busy recently, among others working on another proposal of course with great support from others. I'm really surprised to learn about another proposal worked by _others_ supported by _others_. Who in the Board are those _others_? New Board members, community members? I promise that will be posted soon - ultimately tomorrow - allowing us to start the process of hiring by the end of the week, I hope. With a review by the community and the lawyers too? And who will wrote the hiring proposal? Why is this a different process than the one in place currently with the team involved at all stage? Also I expect that this mail is sufficient answer to all questions (and more ..) brought to me on this list. But if there's anything essential I missed, please let me know and I'll try to answer. I don't understand this last paragraph, which questions? I really don't understand what is going on with this proposal to have in-house developers. First you were against, now you're not against but deny all the work done on the past months with input from the community, the team, the board and the lawyers. We have all read this document, line by line, I know a bunch of people who were really happy with it and it has the support of the team (who will be the one working with those two developers on a daily basis). Please explain what is wrong with the background of this document (not the people behind it - I really don't care who wrote it) but please cite line by line what is wrong and doesn't fit with TDF mission, doesn't pursue TDF vision, and doesn't help the community at large. Thanks. Sophie -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] fast ahead soon... Re: [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi all, On 28/11/2022 12:06, Cor Nouws wrote: Dear people, Cor Nouws wrote on 27/11/2022 17:41: I promise that will be posted soon - ultimately tomorrow - allowing us to start the process of hiring by the end of the week, I hope. In the mean time, there is a mail 'New proposal for hiring in-house developers' on the list tdf-internal. Members that want to have a look for possible feedback, but are not subscribed to that list, can file a request to be added there. See: https://lists.documentfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/tdf-internal That's a peculiar proposal that should not be hidden to others that have followed the progress of the proposal that failed to reach the quorum for some "odd" reasons. The proposal seems to have been written by someone blissfully unaware of the legal advice that invalidates this "new" proposal on various points and that the mistakes been repeated here were already fixed during the negotiations with Jan. You can find the various versions of the proposals with comments here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zfoRygFbBgJZZcj See if you can spot the various changes that need to be implemented to make the proposal below acceptable of any organisation and legally sound. -%<-- ## TDF Developer Hiring Resolution 2022 "Whereas, - with TDF stewarding, among other things, a well-working symbiosis of various companies and volunteer developers inside of the LibreOffice community; - given that in the current situation, there are certain areas where extra developers can add value with additional activities, that complement the existing contributions; - with this being an ongoing need; Therefore the board resolves that: - TDF will seek to hire a developer(s) reporting to the ESC; - who will work in such a way, that both volunteer and ecosystem peers regard them as helpful, supportive and complementing their own work; - for whom as the initial areas of work, the board identifies improving RTL/CTL writing support and accessibility for LibreOffice core; as well as mentoring new volunteers in these specific areas. After that, depending on skills available, Writer tables, Base, general regression fixing, Draw, and Math are the next focus areas; - thus, there will be two job postings, with requirements matching the initial focus areas listed above, and one or two developers will be hired initially; - after 6, and after 9 months following the developers starting their work, the board will do an assessment of the situation and results. Requirements for the candidates: * Very good C++ development skills; * Proven experience with Accessibility and/or RTL/CTL, additional CJK experience is a strong plus; * Love for open source; * Team players; * Experience with LibreOffice development is a plus. Footnote: for a requirements analysis on the need for hiring developers, please refer to information on the pages 3-8 of the abandoned dev proposal: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB " -%<------ Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DISCUSS] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi Uwe, On 27/11/2022 18:55, Uwe Altmann wrote: Hi Andreas While you don't like answers in private mail I post it on this list. Am 27.11.22 um 16:44 schrieb Andreas Mantke: I'm curious to read own statements from the 'several of the community' here. Maybe most of us follow the golden rule of mailing lists not to feed trolls? ;-) Who are you calling trolls? It's probably an acceptable term in mailing list where some people use anonymity to disrupt a community. What we have seen in this thread is an ex-director interfering with a vote with proven false statements and our chairman jumping on that message and embracing that false statement to influence the vote as well. If they were "simple trolls" we could just try to ignore them but the situation is a lot more serious than that. Seriously: I feel we all are tired of this discussion and I may imagine many of us don't even follow them in detail any more - not out of a lack of interest but mostly because of the way it was and is conducted. Then I wonder if there is any point for me to invest so much time in providing the community with information they could and should check to evaluate if the board is taking the right decisions. This is one of the many examples where the community could, in a few minutes, check the facts and express an informed opinion about what is happening. Coming to the controversial part of the proposal: In my pov it's sheer nonsense to write such statements like those discussed here into a job description or even a contract. Not only the person concerned hardly is in the position to decide on these issues; its also in the full responsibility of his or her boss to decide what they are working on - and no way in the developers own consideration. And I'm rather confident that this also was part of the legal advice the board has got. I guess it's obvious to most that the legal advice would have gone that way. I've tried to explain it in many ways but Jan preferred to resign than accept that it was "sheer nonsense", that's the same "sheer nonsense" that our chairman wants and he's ready to support false statements to make the vote fail. On top of it we can now read another proposal presented by Cor and prepared with "others" which repeats once again the same "sheer nonsense". In a benevolent view on this document it may at best serve as a board's internal letter of intent. But I'm sure - however (if ever) it is voted, when it comes to concrete decisions, the same discussion will arise with new energy. So it's most probably in no case worth all the fuss we see today. Taking in consideration this additional example of disregard for facts and legal advise a simple "internal letter of intent", IMHO, would not be worth they bytes used to store it. My advice emphases the KISS rule (we always should kiss more): Keep it simple, st... :-) I'd love to do that but we've seen a few times that not defining things clearly it leaves room for abuses. Then even when the processes are defined and agreed false statements are used to kill a proposal. It would be great if you could invest a bit more time in evaluating the facts so that you could fine tune your advice do a situation that doesn't seem to fit with the behaviours expected in most boards. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] fast ahead soon... Re: [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi Cor, On 27/11/2022 17:41, Cor Nouws wrote: Then, I've been busy recently, among others working on another proposal of course with great support from others. odd that AFAIK there was no other proposal being worked on within the board. Who are the "others"? Why did you decide to work with "others" while you had your colleague working with me? Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DISCUSS] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Dear all, On 27/11/2022 17:56, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi all, a vote was called under the pretense of consent, for a proposal that did not leave the assigned working group with an approval. The vote has been called on a proposal which followed the agreed at LibOCon and in various email exchanges within the board and with our legal counsel. That is in violation of good practice (to say the least), and it was perfectly ok for directors to leave it on the table (instead of working through 16 pages of text, without change history, to make an informed decision). The chairman is still trying to use false information to justify his appalling behaviour. The notes in the various version of the documents show that what Jan says and what our chairman uses to derail the process is false. The chairman is also ignoring the deputy chairman confirmation that the process has been followed as agreed. If the chairman is sure of what he states then he would have no issues in releasing the exchange of emails we had with our legal counsel where he never challenged the steps we should follow and that the sentence that Jan wanted to add was actually against laws and regulations. Best, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] Fwd: [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi all, just a reminder that the voting window expires in about half an hour. Members of the board that have a personal/business interest in budgeting and tendering, as they know, should vote "abstain" and not abstain from voting. Making also this vote fail based information which have been easily proven to be false, IMHO, would show a clear successful attempt by Jan and our chairman to unduly influence a vote. I guess that the board and the community will have to evaluate how to deal with this. Ciao Paolo Forwarded Message Subject:[board-discuss] [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1 Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2022 17:35:08 +0100 From: Paolo Vecchi To: Board Discuss Dear board and all, during LibOCon it has been agreed that we would iron out the divergences about the last few sentences, we would have the proposal discussed with our legal counsel and then proceed with the vote. As we went through all these stages I'm proposing the following vote: -%<-- - Approve the In-House Developer Proposal v3.1 https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB - Instruct the members of our staff led by our ED to draft the job description for 2 developers - Publish the job description - Task the members of our staff led by our ED to proceed with the interviews and selection of the best candidates - Task our ED to propose to the board the best candidates for confirmation of contracts - Task our ED to prepare and sign the relevant contracts -%<-- The vote runs 72h from now. If all full board members voted before, the vote can be concluded earlier. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DISCUSS] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi all, I have the impression that some live in a different reality or simply don't check things before coming up with statements. On 26/11/2022 13:02, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi all, Paolo Vecchi wrote: On 25/11/2022 14:04, Florian Effenberger wrote: We believe that would do a lot of good for TDF, its mission, and the LibreOffice community at large. It's been taking a long time, so if the board is ready to vote and trusts the team to handle the project, my teammates and I would be more than happy to support these efforts. As pointed out (I believe at considerable length) during the board call on Monday, November 14, this proposal is not ready to vote on. Monday the 14 you have shown disrespect for the work put on it for several months by several people including Jan. As agreed at LibOCon we went to the process and the proposal is ready to be voted: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00993.html You got a full explanation that you fully ignored. Your statements look or purposefully misleading or the result of lack of validation of what you say. All directors also expressed their support for the proposal which, as agreed, has been finalised by both myself and Jan so I'm sure the community is expecting that they follow through with their votes. It is frankly shocking to read this statement. There has been support for the idea in general, but certainly not for this specific version. It is frankly shocking that we have a chairman so disconnected with reality and that doesn't even check facts before coming out with comments that could influence the voting intentions of other directors. So you are fully aware that the final version went to our legal counsel, you even popped up with a very peculiar comment to our legal counsel in support of changes that turn out not to me aligned with laws and regulations and as agreed the version that came out of the legal consultation was the version to be voted. * not ready for vote (Thorsten) * Kendy resigned because no compromise was reached It seems you are supporting a false statement without even checking the facts. If you support that then it means you are supporting the fact that he resigned because I tried to convince him that what he wanted was against laws and regulations. Legal consultations also confirmed that. Your email to our legal counsel has shown that you were interested in getting some very problematic sentences into the document and that's not a behaviour an objective and impartial chairman should have. * stop here and restart, from a clean slate You had 9 months to provide your input and you imposed Jan so that we could spend months in reviewing a document that Jan wanted to change completely to satisfy the desires of a member of the ecosystem and then we finally worked to to make it more "balanced" (while I was trying to show him that it had to be also legally sound). * if quick action is required instead, tender out as contracted work? How about recognising that your understanding of the proposal is way out of date and just vote on it so that we can move on? Your actions and statements make it look like that you had no intention of having this proposal passing and it makes it look like you intervene on a matter on which you have little understanding about its progress. Then we also have statements from Cor: * I'm still missing information (Cor) Where were you in the past 9 months and what information? * asked comments from Mike Then you should read the answers we have been provided before complaining. You asked 2 questions. One is obvious to all and I've answered again here in an easier way to read it as you didn't understand or missed the legal advice provided: I tried in various way to point out that if any third party organisation, being members of the ecosystem or not, want to impose limitations on TDF's employees or other general activities then an employment proposal is not the best place to put that limitation. The second question has been discussed back in April 2021 and it's marginally linked with potentially serious issues raised in tdf-internal for which I'm still waiting your feedback but they are not related to the proposal. * what he wrote on relations between TDF and companies * looks very limited in the light of TDF It's years that you keep saying that even if you are fully aware of laws and regulations. * and I had expected a negative advice on the text on page 1 * properly created agreement on such limitations nightmare * from legal aspects and organizational wise * very different from contract on properly tendered project And here you confirm that you prefer an easy but legally troublesome sentence in an employment proposal than a clear win-win situation for both parties. It seems like unfortunately we have a chairman and a director that failed to check the i
Re: [board-discuss] [DISCUSS] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi all, On 25/11/2022 18:17, Jan Holesovsky wrote: That is not true. That version is not balanced, and Paolo’s unwillingness to find balance there was one of the main reasons to my resignation. That's a very interesting statement which doesn't seem to be supported by publicly available facts and evidence. Last public comments for version 2.9 show that we were making good progress in a very civilised way: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00993.html As agreed we had the proposal checked by our legal counsel, fixed very amicably a few more things and up to that point all was fine. There was only one last sentence left which created some discussions: "TDF in-house developers will not compete with commercial contributors and will not develop alternative implementations of Open Source projects actively maintained by LibreOffice volunteer or corporate contributors – like Collabora Online, mdds, or cppunit." I tried in various way to point out that if any third party organisation, being members of the ecosystem or not, want to impose limitations on TDF's employees or other general activities then an employment proposal is not the best place to put that limitation. There is also the issue that you can't just impose limitations on TDF just like that and by doing it while being affiliated by the interested party of that limitation and specifying the product in questions doesn't really look good either. You tried several variants of sentences that were trying to achieve the same results and you even received clear legal advice against it. I've also pointed out that we agreed months ago on the relevant text necessary to handle these exceptions. As from page 1 of the proposal: "Eventual limitations related to tasks, areas, projects or bugs on which the in-house developers should not work, eg. third parties are already engaged with them, shall be regulated through separate agreements and relevant communications between TDF and the third parties." It seems like a win-win agreement between TDF and a third party that tackles the specific issues was not what you were looking for. Between our constructive discussions and your resignations there were only those 2 sentences. If the above is the reason why you resigned then it's quite sad as, while we had some very frank exchanges of opinions, we generally found ways forward and workable compromises. It is also sad that you came out with that comment as your own emails and comments in the document clearly contradict you. All the previous versions with comments can be seen here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zfoRygFbBgJZZcj The latest version is here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB For many years, TDF was celebrated as an organization that is always able to find balance of many interests. This developer proposal shows that it has been hard and it took a disproportionate amount of time but at the end the document is quite balanced. The "many interests" that cannot and should not be included in such a proposal will be discussed and drafted in separate dedicated documents as we agreed months ago. I’m afraid this is not true any more - which is very sad :-( I'm afraid that one's belief that some clauses make a document more balanced is a legal minefield for someone else. If your definition of "balanced" is to add rules and limitations that make some third parties more equal than others then it seems like you skipped meetings that clarified concepts about fiduciary duties and regulations. Fortunately you had a fellow member of the board that helped you out in seeing these issues even if you didn't seem to have appreciated it. Seeing the lack of votes from directors that publicly supported the proposal and agreed on the way forward it seems like you email had the effect to get directors to pause their vote while checking if your statement had any connection with reality. By now directors should have verified and confirmed that what I stated is correct and they'll show their support with their votes. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DISCUSS] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi Andreas, I was actually about to send out an even clearer explanation of what was left to do. Your comments anyway show that the information is readily available to all to disprove the accusation. Ciao Paolo On 26/11/2022 11:18, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi Kendy, hi all, Am 25.11.22 um 18:17 schrieb Jan Holesovsky: Hi all, I have unsubscribed from this mailing list, but it was brought to my attention that Paolo claims that I have signed off the latest version of the Developers proposal. That is not true. That version is not balanced, and Paolo’s unwillingness to find balance there was one of the main reasons to my resignation. I looked into the latest version, of the proposal for the in-house developer, you and Paolo worked on together (version 3.0) (https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zfoRygFbBgJZZcj?dir=undefined=1138204) and I couldn't find a valid reference for your claim. If I didn't overlook one of the many comments in the document there was only an incongruity about the addition of one sentence in the paragraph about the concerns expressed by commercial contributors. Your and Paolo's comments in all other paragraphs of the document showed that you agreed on the text. Regards, Andreas -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DISCUSS] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi Florian, On 25/11/2022 14:04, Florian Effenberger wrote: Hello, me and many others from the team would be very happy to finally see the developer proposal come to life. We believe that would do a lot of good for TDF, its mission, and the LibreOffice community at large. It's been taking a long time, so if the board is ready to vote and trusts the team to handle the project, my teammates and I would be more than happy to support these efforts. I'm very pleased to see that the team supports the efforts that many of us put in this proposal. All directors also expressed their support for the proposal which, as agreed, has been finalised by both myself and Jan so I'm sure the community is expecting that they follow through with their votes. Florian Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] Re: [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
+1 Paolo On 24/11/2022 17:35, Paolo Vecchi wrote: Dear board and all, during LibOCon it has been agreed that we would iron out the divergences about the last few sentences, we would have the proposal discussed with our legal counsel and then proceed with the vote. As we went through all these stages I'm proposing the following vote: -%<-- - Approve the In-House Developer Proposal v3.1 https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB - Instruct the members of our staff led by our ED to draft the job description for 2 developers - Publish the job description - Task the members of our staff led by our ED to proceed with the interviews and selection of the best candidates - Task our ED to propose to the board the best candidates for confirmation of contracts - Task our ED to prepare and sign the relevant contracts -%<-- The vote runs 72h from now. If all full board members voted before, the vote can be concluded earlier. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] Re: [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Hi all, just a gentle reminder that the following vote has been started. Paolo On 24/11/2022 17:35, Paolo Vecchi wrote: Dear board and all, during LibOCon it has been agreed that we would iron out the divergences about the last few sentences, we would have the proposal discussed with our legal counsel and then proceed with the vote. As we went through all these stages I'm proposing the following vote: -%<-- - Approve the In-House Developer Proposal v3.1 https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB - Instruct the members of our staff led by our ED to draft the job description for 2 developers - Publish the job description - Task the members of our staff led by our ED to proceed with the interviews and selection of the best candidates - Task our ED to propose to the board the best candidates for confirmation of contracts - Task our ED to prepare and sign the relevant contracts -%<-- The vote runs 72h from now. If all full board members voted before, the vote can be concluded earlier. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] [VOTE] Approve in-house developers proposal v.3.1
Dear board and all, during LibOCon it has been agreed that we would iron out the divergences about the last few sentences, we would have the proposal discussed with our legal counsel and then proceed with the vote. As we went through all these stages I'm proposing the following vote: -%<-- - Approve the In-House Developer Proposal v3.1 https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB - Instruct the members of our staff led by our ED to draft the job description for 2 developers - Publish the job description - Task the members of our staff led by our ED to proceed with the interviews and selection of the best candidates - Task our ED to propose to the board the best candidates for confirmation of contracts - Task our ED to prepare and sign the relevant contracts -%<-- The vote runs 72h from now. If all full board members voted before, the vote can be concluded earlier. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Re: Progress on Inhouse-Developer Proposal?
Hi all, just a few comments. On 19/11/2022 22:10, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi all, Andreas Mantke wrote: I read about the decision to create a new CoC committee from community members (https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01000.html). Just to insert here, that the new CoC process is, in my mind, unambiguously positive, and I'm very happy about the enlarged group of people handling it. And the board really decided instead of involving this own CoC committee to throw a lot of _donation_ money on contracting an external 'communication expert' (they are regularly very expensive)? That is not what happens. That is actually what happened. A CoC verdict was not accepted by one of the parties, so the board is now getting neutral, external expertise. I'm the party that didn't accept the verdict as this case has been handled directly by the boar and led by a director that hasn't demonstrated a great deal of objectivity and impartiality toward me. There are 2 votes related to this issue that haven't been published yet. I believe they should be published ASAP to clarify a bit the situation and to allow the board to provide some explanations. There's added value, in that arguably a completely external view on our interactions (board and elsewhere) can only improve how we collectively work. I've actually requested to have the case reviewed by the new CoC Team to serve as a good learning exercise also for the board, which handled the case against me, to recognise and avoid the mistakes made. That's where the added value is. Rest assured, I would have preferred to avoid both the challenging situation, as well as any extra work (or expense). You had the option of supporting my request of handing over the case to our trusted CoC Team but for some reasons you refused. I'm curious about a detailed explanation from the board, why the own TDF CoC committee is incompetent for the handling of the situation. That framing is untrue, and offensive towards the volunteers in the committee. I've asked for clear explanations for the board's behaviour as well but never got a meaningful answer. Looking forward to understand more about what has driven some members of the board in taking that odd and unexplained decision. Best, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Progress on Inhouse-Developer Proposal? (was Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, November 14th, 1800 Berlin time (UTC+1))
Hi all, On 18/11/2022 10:27, Thorsten Behrens wrote: But if there is not yet (after nine month of work) a final proposal that could be voted on, what is missing to get to this state. What is still missing, is a proposal that gets a majority behind it. With Kendy's resignation, that work just got dealt a massive set-back. It seems like Thorsten hasn't been following the progress, might have forgotten what has been agreed at LibOCon and might have forgot what has been said during the board meeting on Monday. As agreed with all the board the proposal has been sent to our legal counsel for a final verification before the vote. With that done there was only once sentence left to discuss: "TDF in-house developers will not compete with commercial contributors and will not develop alternative implementations of Open Source projects actively maintained by LibreOffice volunteer or corporate contributors – like Collabora Online, mdds, or cppunit." I proposed to remove that from the "Concerns expressed by the commercial contributors" section as we agreed months ago that eventual scope limitations linked to commercial contributors is covered by the text in page 1: "Eventual limitations related to tasks, areas, projects or bugs on which the in-house developers should not work, eg. third parties are already engaged with them, shall be regulated through separate agreements and relevant communications between TDF and the third parties." Then Jan resigned. Thorsten's statements may lead some to think that reality is perceived in different ways by different people: " * Kendy resigned because no compromise was reached * stop here and restart, from a clean slate * if quick action is required instead, tender out as contracted work?" (I won't comment much on the perceived attempt of delaying this proposal further as my comments on a similar thread led to my "conviction" for a CoC offence by the board. As I complained about the fact that the case has been handled by someone that didn't demonstrate much objectivity and impartiality in my regards, the board decided to spend time and money to find an external "communication expert" to deal with the case. Apparently I'll be actively censored if I discuss the case further, internally or externally, so I'm not sure if I can comment more about it. For those that forgot, this was the public accusation: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00554.html) The board agreed on the process and has access to all the versions being created, the document has been vetted by our legal counsel and the last sentence is covered by previously agreed text so I believe this version is ready to be voted on: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, October 31st at 1800 Berlin time (UTC+1)
Hi all, On 07/11/2022 10:53, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi *, just a few thoughts, since I seem to be mentioned in the email. ;) Paolo Vecchi wrote: On 05/11/2022 00:04, Stephan Ficht wrote: Sorry, Simon, but IMHO I don't think this is the right wording. PI and, if there are, resulting CoI's are clearly defined and written down in all the paperwork TDF has established and agreed to or in binding German laws. Not explaining a conflict, IMO, doesn't mean that it does not actually exist. Otherwise that would be too trivial. I kind of side with Simon in the specific example of the investigation against me in relation to LOOL. I think that's a comment where perhaps we can start a constructive discussion upon. Stepping back and looking at the feedback from all corners, over the past year on the topic - it seems that almost all sides are unhappy about the way the CoI policy is applied (to them personally). Actually I'm not unhappy not about the investigation itself. If it were well researched, used for events happened since the implementation of the policy and was discussed openly in public as requested then I'd have no issues with it. I complained about non declaration of personal interests and influences from potentially conflicted members of the board several times as others did also on board-discuss. Potentially conflicted members of the board just dismissed my complaints. eg. https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00745.html Some might have had the feeling that the investigation against me was more a retaliatory action for my requests to look at what seemed to me obvious PIs than anything else. I anyway welcome the investigation as at least it started the discussion. Using individual frustration as a stepping stone to iterate how we deal with this (instead of fuel to fight) - wouldn't that be desirable? It would be desirable and that's why I proposed the adoption of a clear text listing our Fiduciary Duties to make it even easier for directors to recognise what they should do while performing their duties: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/FZKYSkyPZZfty5L Maybe there is something there that could help in clarifying things? I found it very odd that our chairman started the investigation against me while he's the director of a company reselling LOOL's fork and 3 others, 2 representing the vendor and 1 is his employee, voted to start the investigation and spent a considerable amount of time focusing on me without looking at their own position. But here we are again, using perceived interests as a means to de-legitimize or exclude. If my company were a reseller of LOOL's fork then I would need to abstain from influencing decisions around LOOL as, IMHO, it would give out the impression that my decisions wouldn't be completely impartial. So in a way a CoI could be "weaponised" by dragging on an investigation for 3/4 months, I don't know when they actually started it, to censor a director. Paolo has not been censored, nor excluded. At the last board meeting I've also stated that I couldn't talk about LOOL's future as I was being investigated about it and I recommended to the board not to talk about it until personal interests have been properly declared and evaluated. Fortunately at LibOCon we didn't have to take decisions about LOOL or I would have had to leave the room and vote abstain if a vote was required. Anyway it's nearly 2 months I'm waiting for a decision from the board about the investigation so I hope there will be a deliberation soon so we start clarifying my position and start looking at the position of other directors. Finally - Paolo Vecchi wrote: It is a start which helps in refining standard procedures, which are generally handled by you Stephan, so that all members of the board follow their fiduciary duties by preparing for the meeting reading and evaluating the relevant information so that they can also start sending the list of their personal interests and avoid influencing the relevant discussions/votes. I'm glad people seem to generally like this addition to the board meeting boilerplate (I had added the general affiliation update at the start of this term, and the 'state my interests on the agenda' one (after suggestions from Simon), at our Milano in-person meeting). Thanks to Simon, therefore, for interacting constructively with an otherwise sadly over-heated topic. Odd to learn now that all the requests for clear declarations from fellow members of the board have been ignored but accepted when the suggestion comes from outside the board. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, October 31st at 1800 Berlin time (UTC+1)
Hi Stephan, thank you for your comments. It's good to see that we have staff members that are actively participating in discussion to help improving processes within TDF. On 05/11/2022 00:04, Stephan Ficht wrote: Hi Simon, Am 31.10.22 um 01:38 schrieb Simon Phipps: I would suggest you "look down the telescope the other way" and ask what the Board's actions (or rather the lack of them) tell us about the existence of a CoI. With regard to PI/CoI (personal interest / conflict of interest) it's an interesting approach to "abuse" a telescope that is originally designed to see things more clearly. Being a child I had fun to see things far away "having looked down the telescope the other way round". Nowadays I prefer to use it the right way in order to get the macro effect without neglecting the whole picture. What a telescope can't help in seeing, as Simon said, is the lack of some actions that finally started appearing since a couple of BoD meeting with a basic declaration of personal interests. It is a start which helps in refining standard procedures, which are generally handled by you Stephan, so that all members of the board follow their fiduciary duties by preparing for the meeting reading and evaluating the relevant information so that they can also start sending the list of their personal interests and avoid influencing the relevant discussions/votes. weaponising CoI Sorry, Simon, but IMHO I don't think this is the right wording. PI and, if there are, resulting CoI's are clearly defined and written down in all the paperwork TDF has established and agreed to or in binding German laws. Not explaining a conflict, IMO, doesn't mean that it does not actually exist. Otherwise that would be too trivial. I kind of side with Simon in the specific example of the investigation against me in relation to LOOL. I found it very odd that our chairman started the investigation against me while he's the director of a company reselling LOOL's fork and 3 others, 2 representing the vendor and 1 is his employee, voted to start the investigation and spent a considerable amount of time focusing on me without looking at their own position. So in a way a CoI could be "weaponised" by dragging on an investigation for 3/4 months, I don't know when they actually started it, to censor a director. It seems clear that the process needs to be improved so that personal interests that are obvious are declared straight away and in case of doubts investigations should not last longer than a month unless the reasons for the delay are clear and documented. Someone in the past said that they always acted as if they had a CoI Policy already but it seems we needed to implement an actual one to get the right processes in place. I'm sure all directors will slowly adjust to the new procedures as they are eager to show they want to remove any doubts about potential conflicts of interest. Feel free to suggest any improvements that will help streamlining the processes. Cheers Stephan Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, October 31st at 1800 Berlin time (UTC+1)
Hi Andreas, thank you for you valuable feedback. As I've been under investigation for potential personal interests on LOOL, by potentially conflicted members of the board, for a few months I will refrain from influencing the discussion and until the investigation is over to vote on any decision. Just a reminder of a summary of what happened at the time as unfortunately we experienced once again the presentation of a one sided version of the LOOL discussion during LibOCon: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00029.html On 29/10/2022 22:07, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi all, Am 28.10.22 um 17:05 schrieb Stephan Ficht: Dear Community, find below the agenda for our TDF board meeting with a public part, and followed by a private part on Monday, October 31 at 1800 Berlin time at https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/TDFBoard For time zone conversion, see e.g. https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converted.html?p1=37=49=107=20221031T18 ## AGENDA: ### Public Part (...) 7. Status Report, Discuss: Atticization of Online (tdf-board, 10 mins) * ESC provided evaluation * discussed briefly on the dev list: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-October/089485.html * conclusion seems to be: not enough activity to keep out of the attic for the moment * auto-atticize according to https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00744.html ? because there are four board members with a direct link to the product Collabora Online (staff of Collabora Productivity or staff/owner of Allotropia, which has a contract for the distribution of Collabora Online), there are only three board members without CoI on this topic. 2 until the investigation against me reached its conclusion. (https://blog.allotropia.de/2021/08/25/allotropia-and-collabora-announce-partnership/) (https://www.collaboraoffice.com/about-us-2/) (https://www.allotropia.de/ ; section team) If board members (with a CoI themselves on this topic) think, another board member has a CoI on this topic too, then only two board members are left. If you have a look into the statutes of TDF you'll find out that it is necessary that at least the half of the board could attend the meeting. The half of the board are four members. Thus the board is not quorate and could not decide on this topic. If the at least four members with a direct link to the product Collabora Online didn't leave the meeting before this topic or/and vote on this topic this vote is invalid. And such a behavior of this board members would be a violation of the foundation rules and a damage of the foundation and its reputation in public (with very likely consequences in relation to attraction of volunteers in any areas and the stream of donations). And such a behavior would plasticize that this members follow their own financial and personal interests first, but not the ones of TDF. A behavior like this is not in accordance with the special fiduciary duty of board members. In additon: I reviewed the whole process about sending a project to the attic again. The proposal for the process seemed to neutral text, but it was only written and voted on for one subproject: LOOL. The only four members, which participated in the vote and agreed on the proposal, had all a CoI on the LibreOffice Online topic, except one. The three members had to stay away from the discussion and decision on this proposal, because of their CoI. Thus there were only one effective participation and vote on the proposal. Thus the proposal was not approved. Conclusion: there is also no approved basis for topic 7. That would be my take but it seems the majority of the board disagrees. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2022-10-17
Hi all, On 23/10/2022 14:19, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi *, Andreas Mantke wrote: it would help much more to read through the document from the European Commission, which was linked in the mail from Paolo in this thread. We are a free software community, not a supranational, state-like entity like the EU. A free software community is regulated by policies and internal regulations, TDF is a legal entity regulated by laws . I would prefer we return to a sense of proportion & pragmatism, rather than arguing arcane cases (again, there wasn't even a disagreement in the meeting, so I _really_ wonder what this is all about). There actually were disagreements as I've been denied the right of a public hearing related. The example reported about the EC CoI rules and procedures isn't that different from ours but they apply them consistently so it isn't an arcane case at all. It would be great to finally discussing constructively this kind of issues in public instead of dismissing them like that making progress much longer than needed. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2022-10-17
Hi all, Simon said that he blocks my emails so his answer unfortunately misses some, I believe, easy to understand concepts I tried to explain previously. It would be great if someone notified him about potentially useful information so that we don't have to go around in circles stating the same things again. On 22/10/2022 19:36, Simon Phipps wrote: Hi! On Sat, Oct 22, 2022 at 5:50 PM Andreas Mantke wrote: If there is only the chance of a _possible_ CoI in front of a discussion/decision/process the ones with such a possible CoI has to leave the meeting (You could get that really clear from the above European Commission document). All the directors present in the meeting gave useful information relating to their interests, which everyone present took into account. I actually had to remind some to think harder about their personal interests and finally a half declaration came out also from them. They each personally judged that they did not cause an actual or apparent conflict. Unfortunately the chairman forgot to check also for personal interests related to LOOL/COOL as the investigation about personal interests on LOOL was in the agenda and apparently none of the board member personally judged that being affiliated with the vendor of LOOL's fork or a reseller of it could lead to an actual or perceived conflict. There was no indication of any conflict with the business of the meeting arising from those interests (for example, Thorsten's "interest" was having published LibreOffice Vanilla on behalf of the Foundation in the past). The rebranded app is still there but we have been told that his company is not selling it at present. Both Cor and Jan declared an interest, after being pushed for it, only in relation to the Apple store but failed to do the same for the Microsoft store. The business of the meeting proceeded and consensus was reached. This is the normal way business is conducted everywhere. It seems others remove actual and perceived CoIs more transparently and efficiently: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01015.html Taking the position you are describing would lead to obviously unreasonable outcomes for a community such as ours. For example (and to get away from the usual suspects), as the owner of a successful cloud hosting business that apparently deploys NextCloud and OwnCloud for clients, using your logic Paolo Vecchi should have removed himself from any and all conversations about LibreOffice Online and take no part in any future discussion about them, as he clearly has a related interest. I am not expecting that; are you? Why do you make it look like you don't know I'm actually under investigation for potential personal interests in regards to LibreOffice Online? You even supported our chairman in censoring me and remove my right to be heard in public: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01007.html I agree that it was appalling to see the chairman imposing a censorship on the discussion and wanting to deal with it in secret. Our chairman falsely stated that there were legal element in the board reply to my defence while there were clearly none and that's not a behaviour we expect from a chairman. Some might have the impression that this is a retaliatory action against my demands for transparency and clear interest declarations from board members but I welcome the investigation as it has at least opened up the discussion. It would be great to actually investigate all directors in public and clarify what personal interests could become conflicts of interest so that we clear out all doubts. We are a community-of-interest and we can expect many people to have interests to declare in our work - and not just arising from employment. Yes that's correct and in some cases people have to choose between a personal interest or a job as it happens in some institutions. The Board needs to know and understand each director's interest, and directors need to make realistic and honest decisions about when they are unable to participate due to an actual conflict That's what the whole process of writing a CoI Policy was also about. Article 8 of our statutes has always been there, some stated that they always worked as if we already had a CoI Policy, but it seems some didn't have a clear idea of how to recognise when their actions and decision would be perceived as being tainted by a conflict of interest. It is a decision for each individual and we have to trust each other that is being made. Actually, no. Trust is OK but verifying is better IMHO. As a director I have fiduciary duties and liabilities so I hope you don't mind if I choose who I want to trust and base my decisions on information supported by evidence. IIRC in the past a director had to apologise to the members for taking for granted what a deput
Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2022-10-17
Hi all, On 21/10/2022 15:34, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi all, Am 21.10.22 um 15:18 schrieb Simon Phipps: Hi! On Fri, Oct 21, 2022 at 1:54 PM Andreas Mantke wrote: if I read the minutes correctly there are four board members with a CoI, because they provided or were involved in providing LibreOffice in the app stores within their company / brand. No, you do not read the minutes correctly. No-one declared a conflict of interests. The directors involved declared an interest, but did not feel that it was in conflict with their duties as directors and consequently there was no conflict of interest. This is the same approach the European Commission takes to the presence of interested parties in meetings we are not at the Commission but at TDF! In this case the European Commission is actually providing an excellent example on how directors should behave (thanks Simon): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1555073876165=CELEX:32018D0221(02)#d1e270-7-1 "6. *Members shall avoid any situation which may give rise to a conflict of interest or which may reasonably be perceived as such.* A conflict of interest arises where a personal interest may influence the independent performance of their duties. Personal interests include, but are not limited to, any potential benefit or advantage to Members themselves, their spouses, partners (9) or direct family members." As members of the board are affiliated with organisations active in the app stores, would that create a perceived conflict of interest while taking decisions for TDF in relation to the same subject? One may argue that some directors are very good at switching hats but some would perceive that decisions might be anyway influenced by their day job and corporate mindset to some degrees. The members declared an interest in the app store topic and thus has a possible Conflict of _Interest_ (CoI) And at TDF it is only necessary to have a _possible_ CoI. If the potential is there then it might create the perception that the CoI is actually there so: "Members shall recuse themselves from any decision or instruction of a file and from any participation in a discussion, debate or vote in relation to a matter that falls under Article 2(6)." I agree with Simon that the European Commission makes it very clear how members should behave and we should take that as a further example of what a CoI is, how to recognise it and how to behave if a CoI is perceived. Members of the board could also keep in mind what their fiduciary duties are to make it even easier to deal with potential and perceived CoIs. I started putting together some notes so that new members of the board could familiarise themselves with the concept: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/FZKYSkyPZZfty5L Maybe we should finalise it so that members of all the bodies and committees can check it when unsure about what their basic fiduciary duties are. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, October 17th at 1800 Berlin time (UTC+2)
Hi Cor, On 17/10/2022 11:09, Cor Nouws wrote: Hi, Paolo Vecchi wrote on 17/10/2022 10:13: I'm the one being accused of something so I believe it's my right to have that session in public. We're still talking about an investigation. We are talking about a public investigation as accusations, defence and previous session were public. Of course there is and will be all room for you to give your input. I've already provided my input and up to now there has been no feedback from the board. That's why I created that public item so that Thorsten can provide some updates. And IIRC you defended yourself at the previous meeting. IMO not at all as quick and clear as you promised, but.. I did and as promised it was a quick introduction to my defence that responds in a clear way to all the accusations. You wrote your explanation on the investigation. There will be a reply and then it's good to talk again. I'm still waiting for the reply and that's why I created an agenda item for Thorsten to provide us with some updates in public. This is an important matter as all directors should explicitly declare their personal interests and CoIs which should anyway be made public as from art. 8 of our statutes. AFAIK there have been no CoI declarations during the 2 terms I've been in the board so maybe we should look at the situation to make sure there are no doubts at all that directors and deputies acted in a proper way. For some reasons the process started with me but it would be great if all directors were showing their willingness to be under same public scrutiny. Who wants to be next? You Cor? Greetings, Cor Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, October 17th at 1800 Berlin time (UTC+2)
Hi all, On 17/10/2022 05:09, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi all, Andreas Mantke wrote: if the person concerned (like in this case) has no issue to discuss the topic in public there shouldn't be any reason to handle this in private. There are good reasons to have a quick private discussion on the matter. If there were good reason to have the meeting in private I would have expected to see supporting evidence shared with the board before the agenda was set. As of this morning nothing has been shared that would justify having even part of it in private. I'm also the one that asked for that item to be put in the agenda and in the public section to get Thorsten to provide an update on the case. Of course, if the rest of the board agrees, we can move all, or part of that discussion to the public part. Why should this excuse be used again for the same matter? I'm the one being accused of something so I believe it's my right to have that session in public. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, October 17th at 1800 Berlin time (UTC+2)
Hi all, On 14/10/2022 15:52, Thorsten Behrens wrote: 8. Status Report: Status of prelim CoI investigation (Thorsten Behrens, tdf-board, 5 mins) Reason for privacy: legal topics the above item is the CoI investigation against myself for which both the accusations and the defence have been made public. It is my right to have the public being informed about the progress of this investigation and to demonstrate that TDF's board is willing to be open and transparent even about these issues. There is no reason for it to be discussed in private as, even after repeated requests, no new elements surfaced and there are anyway no sensitive legal topics attached to the item. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] [DECISION] Adopt the new CoC Policy
Hi all, the following decision, which was taken in private the 06/10/2022, is now made public in accordance with our statutes. Motion: - Adopt the CoC Policy proposed by Sophie as made available in the document "CodeofConduct-v0.odt" - Instruct Sophie to select an initial team of at least 3 members - Ask Sophie to be part of the initial team to follow up with organisational tasks and implement eventual improvements in the Policy The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote. The vote is quorate. A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 4 votes. Result of vote: 7 approvals, 0 abstain, 0 disapprovals. Decision: The proposal has been accepted. Two deputies supports the motion. Best regards, Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Updated Code of Conduct - blind-sided
space - I'll try to work out if there is any genuine willingness to engage with improving the text. From a quick skim some details look quite problematic. In general there is substantial scope for mis-use (or even just the damaging appearance of it) around CoC enforcement and we need to build confidence that we will get this right. At a bare minimum I would expect each individual behind this, -particularly- if they are on the new CoC committee, to at least -try- to repair the situation by re-assuring the community that (despite apparently excluding people & views during the process of creating and pushing this initiative through) - that when actually enforcing the CoC they will respectfully listen to all views and act in an inclusive and balanced way. Regards, Michael. [1] - the latest Contributor Covenant is rather less problematic than in the past -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Final version of the developers proposal [was: Board of Directors Meeting 2022-09-05]
Hi all, I think we finally reached a document with quite a few compromises with version 2.9, which is available in the shared folder. There are a few elements that should be checked by our legal counsel especially from an HR/ESC relationship point of view and limitations about working on specifically mentioned projects. Once our legal counsel evaluated the document and suggested the needed modifications we should be ready to vote it into action. Ciao Paolo On 22/09/2022 23:37, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v So 10. 09. 2022 v 15:45 +0200: I am happy to share the folder (read-only) to the general public too, but I'd like to have Paolo's OK before I do - Paolo, is it OK for you? I'm totally fine with sharing the folder to all so that they can see how it changed over time. Thank you, it can be seen here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zfoRygFbBgJZZcj I've uploaded version 2.8 with some comments. I've accepted several changes even if don't satisfy me fully but a decent compromise today is better than nothing at all. It took a very long time to get here so I hope that the long discussions haven't put off potential candidates. I believe this version (2.8) should now be sent to our legal counsel for verification and the result should be voted on. Would you agree? I've added answers to your comments as: TDF-In-House-Developers-Proposal-v2-8-Merged-answers.odt For many of them, it is just an "OK, accepted"; just few bits around the ESC are controversial or even not acceptable for me - but I've outlined those already in the call on Monday. Can you please have a look? Thank you in advance! All the best, Kendy -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Conflict of interests - Agenda for TDF board meeting on Monday, September 19th at 1800 Berlin time (UTC+2)
Hi all, On 16/09/2022 12:37, Florian Effenberger wrote: ### Private Part 7. Discuss: Hearing wrt LOOL/COOL CoI for Paolo (Paolo Vecchi, 15 mins) Some members of the board alleged that I was in Conflict of Interests (CoI) in regards to LibreOffice Online (LOOL) and Collabora Office Online (COOL). I wouldn’t mind to have this discussed in public. As a director, according to our statutes, a CoI would have to be made public so a public discussion of the matter would make sense. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [NO DECISION] TDF to change composition of legal oversight group
Hi Jan, On 15/09/2022 11:41, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v Čt 15. 09. 2022 v 11:27 +0200: Andreas' email is polite I am sorry, but "It shows that there is no will of cooperation from five members of the board." does not sound polite to me. That comment might seems to be pushing a bit the boundaries of politeness but it's probably reflecting the impression that the inaction by some members of the board sends out to the public. I have a lot of will to cooperate with everyone, including people I don't agree with, so a statement like this is very offensive to me. I'm sure you would be due an apology if you wrote that you would have participated but urgent matters didn't allow you to vote for 3 days and what Andreas said hurt your feelings but have any of the directors not participating to the vote evaluated if they were going to hurt the feelings of those that proposed the vote? The vote has been discussed internally, before re-running it due to Caolan's departure from the board, good reasons to perform this change have been documented and "the conditions that brought to it are persisting". So of course what happened hurts the feelings of the 2 directors, doing a lot of hard work in the legal group, to see that other directors did not comment, explicitly abstained or even voted against it maybe providing legitimate reasons for doing so. All the best, Kendy Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [NO DECISION] TDF to change composition of legal oversight group
Hi Thorsten and all, On 14/09/2022 23:56, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi Andreas, all, for the moment, this is a members-only discussion. The result of the vote is public and AFAIK there have been no requests to limit the discussion to members only. If I'm not mistaken there is a specific list for members where I noticed that a reply to Andreas has been posted but as Andreas is not a member he cannot interact with it. Andreas' email is polite and is just stating verifiable facts in reply to a legitimate conversation started by a member of our team, it seems odd to see that you apply a discrimination never seen before. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [NO DECISION] TDF to change composition of legal oversight group
Hi Andreas, On 14/09/2022 19:53, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi Heiko, Am 14.09.22 um 06:56 schrieb Heiko Tietze: On 13.09.22 17:07, Andreas Mantke wrote: It shows that there is no will of cooperation... Don't paint it black. We are all humans, there is a conference ahead, and at least one has sick children at home. It's not painting anything black. The situation speeks for itself and shows a lot to the public. There was this email one week before the vote starts: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00898.html It has the sign [VOTE] in its subject (used to allert all board members to act). It was also the second time the vote about this topic has to be started for some reasons. The board has seven members at this time. Only to member were able to follow this message and cast their vote. The other five members of the board stayed calm for about eleven days. Nobody of this five wrote a message to this list, that the proposal needs some more discussion or asking to shift the vote for some days. This five members stayed calm and seemed to do nothing. the description of the sequence of the events seems quite accurate. The vote ends with: "Members of the Board of Directors who are in conflict shall explicitly declare their abstention." Could it be that some directors got confused and thought it means they should abstain from voting? I'm baffled as you are. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2022-09-05
Hi Kendy, Andreas and all, On 09/09/2022 19:44, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke píše v Pá 09. 09. 2022 v 16:50 +0200: Thus it would be great, if you could make the current state of the documents (maybe with the changes done) available for the interested community. It is still all developing in the same folder as before, available for all the TDF members: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/apps/files/?dir=/Developers It contains all the versions since 2.0, and most of them have change tracking turned on. I am happy to share the folder (read-only) to the general public too, but I'd like to have Paolo's OK before I do - Paolo, is it OK for you? I'm totally fine with sharing the folder to all so that they can see how it changed over time. I've uploaded version 2.8 with some comments. I've accepted several changes even if don't satisfy me fully but a decent compromise today is better than nothing at all. It took a very long time to get here so I hope that the long discussions haven't put off potential candidates. I believe this version (2.8) should now be sent to our legal counsel for verification and the result should be voted on. Would you agree? All the best, Kendy Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Disappointing trademark pieces
Dear Michael Meeks, Emiliano and me, as members of the special working group of the legal oversight group, [1] have just wrote you an extensive reply to the e-mail you sent to the board and the lawyers in private just a few hours ago. As a board member you regularly (and rightfully) reminded members of TDF’s bodies to not talk about legal topics in public or semi-public channels. We value the long term synergy between TDF and Collabora Productivity and we hope you will make yourself available to discuss the issues you raise and to correct a range of incorrect statements. Me and other members of the board are available for this anytime. Thanks a lot, Paolo and Emiliano [1] https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00837.html On 08/09/2022 17:29, Michael Meeks wrote: Hi there, Recently at Collabora we received a set of demands from a subset of TDF's board with a short deadline to 'correct all possible findings' and to correct "on the indicated pages and on all pages that might contain these or comparable 'infringements'". These demands cover a number of topics that the community has discussed here, and will be of general interest to all Trustees of TDF, they will impact the use of the LibreOffice trademark for the future too, and may be generally interesting for other projects, so we should probably discuss the policy pieces (but not the specific legal aspects) publicly here. I will go over the substance of these findings below, as I understand them, and make the complete original mail available to Trustees. This came from a small subset of TDF's board, along with excerpts of a letter from Chestek Legal. This form of legal disputation is unusual to find next to a claim to be 'friendly' along with a one week deadline. It also had a really unhelpful means of notification, and a requirement to acknowledge receipt. Legal concerns should be sent by TDF to le...@collaboraoffice.com - and not via individual board members who are not responsible for the relevant decisions. * Protecting and nurturing TDF Of course, it is important to protect TDF's LibreOffice trademarks. It is also important to ensure that TDF's resources and trademarks are used to serve TDF's mission: there is no question of that, and we support that. Indeed it is hard to find an entity that supports TDF more than Collabora - we are privileged to be LibreOffice's largest code contributor[1], one of the largest donors, and we help to provide a significant chunk of the mentoring, technical input, volunteer assistance, sponsorship and so on that makes LibreOffice possible. Its safe to say we've contributed substantially to LibreOffice the product, LibreOffice the project, the LibreOffice API (and Kit), the LibreOffice community, LibreOffice as a technology, the LibreOffice file-format across many versions, and many other incarnations of LibreOffice including LibreOffice the product TDF will now sell. Given that - it is curious then to hear the language of legal threat used to make demands - the reasonableness of which we'll examine below. Was that tone really intended ? Normally if there is something wrong, we'd expect a friendly discussion and request. It is well worth pointing out that (in my inexpert, IANAL opinion) Pamela is an excellent lawyer in our domain whom I have commended to others. However, the advice can only be as good as the instruction & brief. That brief & what is subsequently done with the advice would (I imagine) be provided by this (self-appointed?) small board sub-group including: Paolo Vecchi from the legal committee, and Emiliano Vavassori who mailed - I would expect in conjunction with Mike Schinagl as counsel, and Florian Effenberger as Executive Director. * First a little history: Initially (in ~2014), Collabora decided to build and invest in a co-branded product under license from TDF: "LibreOffice-from-Collabora". However this brought with it an unusual level of board criticism / input on our marketing: color schemes, requirements for front-page links to "LibreOffice available for free", and so on - that were sufficiently burdensome, unpredictable and unhelpful that we re-branded to "Collabora Office" in 2015. That change also attracted criticism. Now we come to a similar, but more serious inflection point with a yet wider scope. * The findings: I quote a subset of the points here for brevity and to avoid repetition; though we dispute all of the findings - I will quote the text as if sent by E-mail thus: Chestek Legal writes: Apple app-store: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/collabora-office/id918120011 ** An enterprise version of LibreOffice: The description says "Collabora Office is an enterprise version of LibreOffice, the world’s most popular open-source office productivity suite." It is im
Re: [board-discuss] Re: "Documents Pro - Write & Edit" & others on Mac AppStore
Hi Alex, we have been looking at the issue in general both in terms of use of "LibreOffice" and the promotion of LibreOffice based apps without links to the relevant licence and source code. We have already issued take down notices in the past so we will keep the situation monitored and act accordingly. Please feel free to forward to me links to other examples so that we can complete our list of action items. Ciao Paolo On 08/09/2022 10:42, Alexander Thurgood wrote: Hmm, trawling the App Store shows that there are other similar looking products that also do not reference the underlying FOSS source, code, or licences. For example (with search string "libre office" : Ace Office:for word processing (Cynoble Technology Limited) - in app purchases GO Office 2021 (Xiaoqin Chen / HNBSoft Team) - 9,99 € DOC Mate:for MS Office (Cynoble Technology Limited) Alex Le 08/09/2022 à 10:15, Alexander Thurgood a écrit : Hi everyone, I just wanted to draw the Board's attention to the existence of the products "Documents Pro - Write & Edit" and "Office PDF Suite - for Word, Spreadsheet, Slides & Adobe PDF Docs Editor" These products are being sold respectively for 14,99 € and 39,99 € on the AppStore, which in and of itself is not a surprise. More surprising to me is that the products look like LibreOffice from the screenshots that are available (or maybe OpenOffice.org, I haven't done a detailed comparison as I don't have OOo anymore). Again, this wouldn't be a great surprise per se. However, nowhere do I see any recognition in the AppStore blurb about the product being derived from, or produced with, LibreOffice (or OpenOffice.org) code, nor any mention of a licence, opensource or otherwise. There is a copyright mention, but it glibly states "(C) Word Documents Processor" The only reason I found the product in the first place is because I put the keyword "ODF" in the AppStore search filter and this was one of the results. Does anyone have any further information about who is behind these products, and if so, why they are failing to recognize the contribution of the FOSS community behind it, the licence(s) under which it is distributed, and seemingly, a link pointing to the availability of the source code ? Is the Board going to do anything about it, and if so, what ? Alex -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] Re: [VOTE] TDF to change composition of legal oversight group
+1 Paolo On 31/08/2022 23:46, Emiliano Vavassori wrote: On 2022-03-07 areas of oversight were assigned to members of the Board of Directors. It named Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi and Jan (Kendy) Holešovský for the legal oversight group regarding the topics “contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks” (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_rules). Thorsten Behrens is the Chairperson of the TDF as well as Managing Director of allotropia, one of TDF's contractors. Kendy is in the “Management Team” of Collabora Productivity, the other major tender contractor to TDF. The tasks of the legal oversight group have further on instead been handled by the “special working group” consisting of Caolán McNamara, Paolo Vecchi and Emiliano Vavassori. This declaratory vote makes the change public, following the TDF transparency rules. Therefore the working group decided unanimously to start a vote to that regard, sent out by TDF's Deputy Chairperson Caolán McNamara on July 21, 2022 (https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00837.html). The actual composition of the legal oversight group is identical to the members of the special working group, Caolán McNamara, Paolo Vecchi and Emiliano Vavassori. The following day Caolán McNamara stepped down from the Board of Directors (https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00849.html). The vote could not take place as TDF first had to complete the Board of Directors with Gábor Kelemen (affiliation: allotropia) and decide on the next Deputy Chairperson to be Emiliano Vavassori. The working group decided to now restart that vote, as the conditions that brought to it are persisting. According to standard procedure (§ 3 Rules of Procedure), changes are made public (§ 8 subsection 3 Statutes). The Rules of Procedure can be modified "at any time", but the "draft of amended rules ... need to be made available at least one week in advance" (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_rules). Formal procedure does require to make the draft available to the Directors, but not to the public, as the public has to be informed at a later stage. To avoid formal difficulties, this vote is all the same started after making the draft public first. This is not considered or legally advised to be necessary, but in a previous vote (regarding the conflict of interest policy), Thorsten Behrens claimed this to be necessary. VOTE: We hereby call for the following VOTE, which will start on Thursday, 2022-09-08 00:00 UTC+2/CEST; it will then run for 72h and thus will end on Sunday, 2022-09-11 00:00 UTC+2/CEST. We hereby make available the draft of an amendment to the Rules of Procedure of the Board of Directors (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_rules). The amendment is to change the internal delegation of responsibilities (“areas of oversight”) in § 3 Rules of Procedure only regarding “contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks”. The members of the legal oversight group regarding “contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks” are Emiliano Vavassori (Deputy Chairperson of the Board of Directors) and Paolo Vecchi. All other oversight groups remain unchanged. Members of the Board of Directors who are in conflict shall explicitly declare their abstention. Regards, -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Lets sort out the patch review before continuing here (was: Merging Of Contributions)
Hi Andreas/all,
On 06/09/2022 18:44, Andreas Mantke wrote:
Hi Paolo, hi all,
Am 06.09.22 um 13:39 schrieb Paolo Vecchi:
Hi Andreas,
On 05/09/2022 17:50, Andreas Mantke wrote:
(...)
This new patch was merged as signed by me. I wasn't asked if I was fine
with the new patch and I never signed this new patch (and are not fine
with it).
thanks for your summary of the events which, by reading emails and
comments in gerrit, seems accurate.
I see this as a violation and ask TDF to de-merge the patch.
Not being a developer I can't judge if there is a violation of any
rules (BTW are there any standard rules?), maybe others can check the
sequence of events and tell us if that's the best way to manage these
situations.
It's really not fair to turn ones commit into the opposite and sign this
new patch with the original author (of the opposite).
I personally haven't understood the logic of it as I'm not a developer
but I would have thought that when the involved people realised that
they forgot to deal with the initial the scope of the request then they
would have done something about it.
I would have also thought that there were some processes to deal with
misunderstandings and disagreements between developers but even the
intervention of one board member directly on gerrit didn't seem to help
in clarifying things.
I'm sure he will soon realise that your fix has been forgotten and he
will do his best to objectively and impartially deal with it.
How would you
describe such a behavior in the 'analog' live?
I take the fifth (as some say the other side of the pond)
I haven't been involved directly in development for the past 20+ years
but following the logic of the patch that has been pushed through,
which doesn't fix Andreas issue, this kind of makes sense to me:
SlideShow.prototype.exitSlideShowInApp = function()
{
if (window.webkit !== undefined &&
window.webkit.messageHandlers !== undefined &&
window.webkit.messageHandlers.lok !== undefined)
window.webkit.messageHandlers.lok.postMessage('EXITSLIDESHOW', '*');
// FIXME remove this in a follow-up commit
if (window.webkit !== undefined &&
window.webkit.messageHandlers !== undefined &&
window.webkit.messageHandlers.cool !== undefined)
window.webkit.messageHandlers.cool.postMessage('EXITSLIDESHOW', '*');
// FIXME notify the community about the standardisation to lok and
remove in 6 months
if (window.webkit !== undefined &&
window.webkit.messageHandlers !== undefined &&
window.webkit.messageHandlers.lool !== undefined)
window.webkit.messageHandlers.lool.postMessage('EXITSLIDESHOW', '*');
}
I thought that the developer that pushed through and merged the
current patch could have thought about it to fix the original requests
but if it helps then please do merge it in.
I think about submitting a new patch and let's see if this will not be
turned into the opposite again.
Please do that. I'm sure everyone understood the situation and they'll
look after you much better.
In addition: in my opinion there is much space for improving the
interaction with volunteer developers inside the LibreOffice community.
But maybe this only my opinion and everyone else is fine with the
current process.
Maybe it was just a misunderstanding and the delay in answering back
due to the fact that you couldn't login into gerrit might have led
some to believe that you didn't want to interact with the issue and
the proposed changes.
I don't judge about this. I find the work with Gerrit sometimes not very
intuitive.
You know a lot more than I do I see ;-)
I thought about submitting that patch myself but I gave up before
starting as it isn't a tool I ever used or that I will generally use.
I'm sure everyone involved will look objectively at what happened and
will help in improving communication and processes.
I think it is in the interest of the board to foster a good
communication behavior inside the LibreOffice developer (volunteer and
paid) group. And I hope it also a goal that every developer (independent
from his role and skills) will be treated sympathetically, thus she/he
felt very welcome inside the community.
In addition I think it is also in the best interest of TDF/LibreOffice
community to establish such behavior/environment between volunteers of
different areas of contribution too. In my view there is no superior
group of volunteers. All talents and a different sort of contributions
are needed to drive LibreOffice and it community forward and make the
project successful.
Thanks for your very useful suggestions that I'm sure will be seriously
considered to improve the experience of those that make their first
steps in contributing code to LibreOffice.
Regards,
Andreas
Ciao
Paolo
--
## Free Software Advocate
## Plone add-on developer
## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog
--
Paolo Vecchi - Member o
Re: [board-discuss] Lets sort out the patch review before continuing here (was: Merging Of Contributions)
n please do merge it in. In addition: in my opinion there is much space for improving the interaction with volunteer developers inside the LibreOffice community. But maybe this only my opinion and everyone else is fine with the current process. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding and the delay in answering back due to the fact that you couldn't login into gerrit might have led some to believe that you didn't want to interact with the issue and the proposed changes. I'm sure everyone involved will look objectively at what happened and will help in improving communication and processes. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Lets sort out the patch review before continuing here (was: Merging Of Contributions)
Hi Thorsten and all, On 03/09/2022 11:24, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi Andreas, all, Andreas Mantke wrote: Am 02.09.22 um 18:47 schrieb Andras Timar: Just for the record, the incriminated code is used solely by the iOS app (Collabora Office). Are there other iOS apps that broke because of the lool->cool change? As far as I'm concerned there aren't any. It's good that we discussed the issue at length, and will have a vendor neutral message handler name finally. ;) I'd appreciate if you read my message completely. And I'd be curious if there is common opinion among you and your colleagues. Currently I'm a bit puzzled. Let's please assume good intentions on all sides. We surely assume good intentions from all and that wasn't at all put in doubt. TTBOMK, there's indeed currently only Collabora providing binaries for iOS. OK so there is a misunderstanding? Reading Andreas emails I had the impression that the handler (lool/cool/lok) in question isn't only used by Collabora's iOS products but also other "downstream consumer projects". Did I get it completely wrong? But honestly, that's all besides the point, and this entire thread is dealing with the issue from the wrong end. I surely do not have the skills and the experience to deal with the development end of this thread but it's good to learn more about the interaction between LibreOffice core and other projects. There is probably a code/technological side but also a policies/projects interaction end that the board might need to evaluate so that downstream projects do not suffer if changes in core aren't properly notified and coordinated. And **only** if that fails, it's justified to consume more board & member's time here. Right now, there's purely technical matters to be solved. As above, it doesn't seem to be purely a technical matter so, unless I missed some documents/policies, there seems to be a need to have a clear coordination so that changes do not affect current and future projects and LibreOffice Technology's based consumers/providers. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi Andras,
On 02/09/2022 18:47, Andras Timar wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Sep 2, 2022 at 5:38 PM Andreas Mantke wrote:
Hi all,
Am 01.09.22 um 23:16 schrieb Paolo Vecchi:
> Hi all,
>
> On 01/09/2022 22:47, Michael Meeks wrote:
>> I would expect the ESC should intervene and cut out the
>> politics.
>
> I believe that politics have nothing to do with what happened.
>
> Your grep shows that there aren't that many "lool" that could be
> renamed "cool" by mistake so I guess it's unlikely for it to happen
> again.
>
> I've noticed the very positive and prompt review of this incident by
> Thorsten so it's nice to see that solutions that work for all can be
> found quickly when the will is there ;-)
>
I try a bit to give an overview on the latest changes of the file in
discussion:
The naming in the source code contains 'lool' in it until it was
changed
five month ago to 'cool'. Thus the original naming was:
window.webkit.messageHandlers.lool !== undefined)
window.webkit.messageHandlers.lool.postMessage('EXITSLIDESHOW', '*');
The change from 'lool' to 'cool' created a break for at least two
known
downstream consumer projects.
Just for the record, the incriminated code is used solely by the iOS
app (Collabora Office).
Apparently not?
Are there other iOS apps that broke because of the lool->cool change?
Isn't Andreas saying that it broke two downstream consumer projects?
As far as I'm concerned there aren't any.
It seems to transpire that at least 2 other projects were concerned by it.
It's good that we discussed the issue at length, and will have a
vendor neutral message handler name finally. ;)
It would have been great to have a discussion before the "lool" handler
was changed to a "non-vendor neutral" one.
If I understood well a change to "lok" would break even more projects so
what about reverting it to a vendor neutral name like "lool" so that the
issue is fixed for 3 downstream consumer projects?
Regards,
Andras
Ciao
Paolo
--
Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi all, On 01/09/2022 22:47, Michael Meeks wrote: I would expect the ESC should intervene and cut out the politics. I believe that politics have nothing to do with what happened. Your grep shows that there aren't that many "lool" that could be renamed "cool" by mistake so I guess it's unlikely for it to happen again. I've noticed the very positive and prompt review of this incident by Thorsten so it's nice to see that solutions that work for all can be found quickly when the will is there ;-) Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi Andreas, On 01/09/2022 20:22, Andreas Mantke wrote: I think there should be clear rules that there should not be any barriers or something similar in the LibreOffice vanilla code. But once I saw the changes from 'lool' to 'cool' in the source code I wonder why the ESC didn't discussed and stopped it. I've noticed your suggestion after I sent my other answer. I'm surprised that the ESC didn't contact the board to notify us that some changes were more like a "branding" changes that actual improvements necessary in LibreOffice core. I don't know if the ESC could have done anything about it, I guess it's hard to spot a cool among many lool but then we'll have to notify all developers that branding, which on top of it break things for other projects, in core is not or should not be allowed. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi all, On 01/09/2022 19:31, Simon Phipps wrote: TDF's Board is not expected to intervene in the ESC's work beyond its recent approval of ESC appointees. The request here is out-of-order. I was wondering as well why Andreas would send a request to board-discuss for a patch. While delays are frustrating - my own bug reports remain unfixed after a decade - it is also very frustrating to see a contributor circumvent TDF's well-tested processes, especially for political ends. [Communication issue: I'm very surprised to see that you are accusing someone of having "political ends" as if it was the most normal thing to say. This is not just a "passive aggressive insinuation", it's an actual direct accusation and if you have evidence of mal-intent you should present it together with the accusation. Keep in mind that some got a CoC complaint for a lot less than that (sorry I can't disclose names as complaints should be kept private).] Looking at the request, then at the patch and the latest description provided I understood that Andreas is working on a project that has a very short window of opportunity set by the Board itself and he's doing his best to get some results as fast as possible. So in a way I kind of understand the attempt as the board itself was involved in setting limits that make what is doing very time sensitive even if it's hardly a justifiable excuse to bypass standard procedures. While I agree that the ESC should be involved in code related matters this seems to go beyond that as variables in LibreOffice core have been changed to represent the initials of a project not hosted at TDF (LOOL -> COOL) and if I've understood well the change breaks other projects that use the initials of the project still hosted at TDF (LOOL). That, IMHO, isn't just matter of "code" as a change that introduces a commercial product name in LibreOffice core should have been cleared with the board which I believe would have not agree to it as LibreOffice should be "brand neutral" and create a level playing field for all contributors being voluntary or commercial. Not being a developer I might get things mixed up but I guess the board should evaluate if the necessary policies and checks are in place. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi Andreas, On 01/09/2022 18:48, Andreas Mantke wrote: I remember variable changing going on when LOOL has been forked into COOL, and the removal of "This file is part of the LibreOffice project :-(, but I thought that it was affecting only their own repository, not LibreOffice core so I'm surprised we have references within LO code to a product that isn't hosted at TDF. I thought the same, but ... This was the first such thing I stumbled upon. I guess we'll have to understand if that is something that should be monitored or not. Changes like that might affect others that are working on other platforms linked to LibreOffice core and to me it's not clear if there is or there should be a policy for that. Not sure if any other project can/should do that and if that affects others eg. does that variable change create issues to those that are still using LOOL or something similar? Does that create issues for you? It creates issues on slideshow touch gestures in the mobile app. The Android and the IoS apps are also part of the online repository. So that is a change in LibreOffice core that breaks your attempt of creating a LOOL derived implementation? Wondering if it affects also others like OSSII or similar similar projects based on LibreOffice Technology. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi Andreas, On 01/09/2022 17:36, Andreas Mantke wrote: It is this patch (only a small one with two lines of code): https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/138884 I see a comment "The correct naming for LibreOffice is lool" and a request to change a variable ending with cool into lool in LibreOffice core. I remember variable changing going on when LOOL has been forked into COOL, and the removal of "This file is part of the LibreOffice project :-(, but I thought that it was affecting only their own repository, not LibreOffice core so I'm surprised we have references within LO code to a product that isn't hosted at TDF. Not sure if any other project can/should do that and if that affects others eg. does that variable change create issues to those that are still using LOOL or something similar? Does that create issues for you? Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi Andreas, On 01/09/2022 17:13, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi Paolo, Am 01.09.22 um 16:47 schrieb Paolo Vecchi: Hi Andreas, On 01/09/2022 16:34, Andreas Mantke wrote: I wonder if it is useful to open a second (or more than that) communication channel for this with Gerrit for code review (with an email messaging) in place. I thought that Gerrit has been set up to make the communication about patches more easy and help (volunteer) developers. But maybe that's not intended with that project resource. I'm not a developer so I probably cannot help directly but I'm interested to know what issues you are experiencing. I kind of understand you have submitted a patch to fix an issue and you are waiting for it to be merged. yes. Is the waiting caused by the patch itself that has something wrong, the tooling or simply someone has been busy and it hasn't been reviewed yet? The patch was reviewed by Jenkins and marked by a developer with +2 and is marked ready to be merged. OK so if it's ready to be merged what is stopping it from happening? Sorry for probably asking silly questions but having more details might help me and others understand how to avoid that issue. I think there are no silly questions. Hope my answer helps to better understand the situation. Sorry but it kind of made it more difficult to understand for me. You seem to say that it's all fine and ready to go but then something is still not right. Is there an issue with merging patches in general or with merging patches related to specific components? Can you share a link to it so that maybe someone looks at it and spots the issue? Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merging Of Contributions
Hi Andreas, On 01/09/2022 16:34, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi Thorsten, hi all, Am 31.08.22 um 21:28 schrieb Thorsten Behrens: Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke wrote: I wonder what is the usual time slot it needs to merge a reviewed and ready patch into the LibreOffice repository. Answering as a developer here (and not as board member) - I think you will get better answers & suggestions what to do, on the LibreOffice developer list, or on IRC (see [1] for details). Please also include a link to your concrete submission, so people can jump right in. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GetInvolved#Connect_to_our_communication_channels I wonder if it is useful to open a second (or more than that) communication channel for this with Gerrit for code review (with an email messaging) in place. I thought that Gerrit has been set up to make the communication about patches more easy and help (volunteer) developers. But maybe that's not intended with that project resource. I'm not a developer so I probably cannot help directly but I'm interested to know what issues you are experiencing. I kind of understand you have submitted a patch to fix an issue and you are waiting for it to be merged. Is the waiting caused by the patch itself that has something wrong, the tooling or simply someone has been busy and it hasn't been reviewed yet? Sorry for probably asking silly questions but having more details might help me and others understand how to avoid that issue. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] Delayed atticization for LibreOffice Online
Hi Andreas, thanks for keeping us up to date. On 30/07/2022 18:56, Andreas Mantke wrote: Here are the 'numbers' for July, 2022: - 1 volunteer - work done: small css fix and a typo fix in a markdown file. Any progress on your version of LOOL? Is there a repository where the community can check the progress and start contributing to? Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [VOTE] TDF to change composition of legal oversight group
Hi all, as I'm not sure I'll have connectivity where I'll be next Friday I'll vote now: +1 Ciao Paolo On 21/07/2022 15:22, Caolán McNamara wrote: Hello, the special working group of the legal oversight group hereby makes available the draft of an amendment to the Rules of Procedure [1] of the Board of Directors. The amendment is to change the internal delegation of responsibilities (“areas of oversight”) in § 3 only regarding “contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks”. The former members of the legal oversight group regarding “contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks” shall be replaced by the new members Caolán McNamara, Emiliano Vavassori and Paolo Vecchi. (All other oversight groups remain unchanged.) We hereby call for the following VOTE, which will start Friday, 2022-07-29 00:00 UTC+2/CEST and will then run for 72h. This vote is proposed by all members of the special working group of the legal oversight group: Caolán, Emiliano, Paolo. Members of the board who are in conflict shall explicitly declare their abstention. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_rules -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] [VOTE] TDF to change composition of legal oversight group
Hi Cor, On 21/07/2022 23:18, Cor Nouws wrote: Hi, This vote was brought in discussion on the directors@ few hours before posting here, without any discussion taking place there. So I think it's best if I go back to that list to learn something more first. the vote will start in a week leaving an adequate amount of time for the board and the community to evaluate and discuss the vote. Cheers, Cor Ciao Paolo Caolán McNamara wrote on 21/07/2022 15:22: Hello, the special working group of the legal oversight group hereby makes available the draft of an amendment to the Rules of Procedure [1] of the Board of Directors. The amendment is to change the internal delegation of responsibilities (“areas of oversight”) in § 3 only regarding “contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks”. The former members of the legal oversight group regarding “contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks” shall be replaced by the new members Caolán McNamara, Emiliano Vavassori and Paolo Vecchi. (All other oversight groups remain unchanged.) We hereby call for the following VOTE, which will start Friday, 2022-07-29 00:00 UTC+2/CEST and will then run for 72h. This vote is proposed by all members of the special working group of the legal oversight group: Caolán, Emiliano, Paolo. Members of the board who are in conflict shall explicitly declare their abstention. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_rules -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] no obvious double-standards (was: List Moderation - Apply Double Standards?)
Hi Cor, On 19/07/2022 17:49, Cor Nouws wrote: that is spreads misinformation about what the CoI policy is for please do explain to us what you think the Conflict of Interest Policy is for as some might have got it completely wrong then. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] no obvious double-standards (was: List Moderation - Apply Double Standards?)
Hi all, On 15/07/2022 11:52, Thorsten Behrens wrote: It looks like if some of the board members, which support the list moderation, have the intention to ban uncomfortable discussions in terms of content and the process from this list. The fact that your email passed moderation should be testament to this not being the case? It is a good example showing that as long as we all express our opinions without using offensive language then moderation isn't really needed. Opinions might be controversial at times but it's good to evaluate all point of views. This is a typical behavior in locked groups of organizations. It shouldn't be appropriate to open source projects which delineate themselves as open for everyone (and as open minded). An appropriate & friendly way to phrase the above, would be to first assess whether your assumptions are correct (which apparently they are not), and then recommend changes. Stereotypings like yours are a negative, not a positive way to interact. Unfortunately recent emails give Andreas reasons to worry and to express his opinion. I believe his assumptions come from the following statements: "Therefore I really think that it is needed that this type of mail is not moderated through." and "So again, I regret that it has been moderated through in this form. I will further discuss this in the board internally." These statements from a member of the board do give the impression that he wants to censor the opinions of another member of the board. The content of the email is highly controversial, disregards the right of expressing one's opinion and instigates censorship but it has gone through. If that is still below the level required for moderation then, looking at board-discuss mailing list, the moderation put in place is of no use and it should just be removed to stop giving the impression that some members of the board don't want uncomfortable, but sometimes needed, discussions in public. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] Offer AppStore LibreOffice for a fee
Hi all, just to let you know that this time I'm the one that voted -1 for quite a few reasons. As for the LOOL archival vote, for which I refused to vote, I see similar issues: - discussion period of 24h too short as it covers one working day where people are busy with their day job - Objection and comments disregarded by the proponent during the discussion period - Objection and comments disregarded by the proponent also in the vote process - Most push backs from objections coming from representatives of publishers of their own products based on LibreOffice - No evaluation or statements of potential CoIs have been made so not clear if publishers should have voted abstain - IMHO the chairman, as director of a company publishing its own products based on LibreOffice, should have declared a potential CoI and let the vice-chairman deal with the evaluation and inclusions of comments to make sure the process is seen by all as fully impartial regardless of actual CoIs being present or not. Here we have also the additional issue that it is not clear what we have voted for as there hasn't been a proper discussion on the implications of the vote. Eg. is the price set by previous licensees right for TDF, what entitlements does it include, shouldn't we have done at least some testing with a free version, etc.. I have shared many questions with the board which hopefully will soon receive answers so that the situation will be clearer. While it's since 2020 that I push for TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores, and I believe we should have (also) a paid version, I can't +1 that text as the issues it might bring have not been clarified. Ciao Paolo On 13/07/2022 11:53, Florian Effenberger wrote: Hello, the following decision, which was taken in private on 2022-07-11, is now made public in accordance with our statutes. The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 5 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote. The vote is quorate. Result of vote: 4 approvals, 0 abstain, 1 disapproval. **Decision: The proposal has been accepted.** Participants to the vote were (in alphabetical order): Caolán, Cor, László, Paolo, Thorsten Thorsten Behrens wrote: Dear board, thanks for the feedback, was good to let the discussion run for a bit longer. I'm putting this for an email vote now, lasting the usual 72 hours from now on (such that directors on vacation can participate): Motion: TDF to offer LibreOffice as a paid product in both Apple's Mac Store, as well as Microsoft's Windows Store. Initial prices to be taken from the last offers the ecosystem licensees had set, with regular reporting and reviews to the board (at least quarterly). This is the first step to get the apps out. Oversight group, further work, marketing & development needs we should discuss in the following weeks. Florian -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] Re: [tdf-internal] Open letter for revive LOOL, add your +1 if you agree
+1 Paolo On 10/07/2022 22:42, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: We, the undersigned, would like to express our great concern regarding the definitive closure of the repository of what was LibreOffice Online. Considering the mission of facilitating access to information and communication technologies as a fundamental and strategic achievement of inclusion and exercise of digital sovereignty. As a foundation committed to eliminating the digital divide in society by giving everyone free access to office productivity tools, the most important thing is to demonstrate that we are committed to offering alternatives to all those individuals and organizations that lack the resources to hire corporate services. We intend with this message, an absolute rethinking of the vote that established the current condition of the repository, which belongs to the community and should welcome improvements from all over the community, as we consider it goes against the objectives outlined by The Document Foundation. To avoid the process of atticization, as the clock is already ticking, and, at the same time, emphasize the global nature of the foundation we urge full consideration of the two proposals that have been made so far. Support Andreas Mantke's effort to revive the LOOL project. Who has already succeeded in upgrading the pre-fork code base to current libraries and dependencies versions. (https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00684.html) Implement the OxOffice On Line Community Version fork that already has several improvements before the LOOL version has been frozen, including those implemented in the commercial versions, and bugs fixed by them as they see fit. (https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00694.html) In any case, since this is a community version TDF must show its commitment to its core values and do everything in their power to grow LOOL community in order to continue development. Sincerely yours, LibreOffice Community Members and Activists around the world. -- Uso LibreOffice, por privacidad, seguridad y control de mis datos. Da un vistazo a la mejor suite de oficina: https://es.libreoffice.org O únete a la Comunidad Hispana: https://matrix.to/#/#hispanos:documentfoundation.org -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] LibreOffice in app stores free, paid or both?
Hi Laszlo, On 11/07/2022 17:38, laszlo.nem...@documentfoundation.org wrote: Hi Paolo, Hi All, On 2022-07-11 15:52, Paolo Vecchi wrote: Hi all, I just wanted to ask the community how they think LibreOffice should be published in the various app stores. Should it be: a. available at a cost b. free More precisely, free of charge. LibreOffice could remain free with the first option, too. See also https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html (It starts with "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.") Naturally we all know that and that's why "free" in this context I didn't think it needed explaining. c. both As this is one of the items that will be discussed during tonight's board meeting, it would be great to have comments in writing and also having you in the meeting to share your point of view. Today topic of the board meeting is only the initial publication, according to the agenda sent last week: "2. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores (Florian Effenberger, Paolo Vecchi, Thorsten Behrens, 15 mins) Status report and various ongoing discussions: * current status & timeline * publishing 'LibreOffice' free of charge initially? * publish 'LibreOffice Supporter' stating that users should buy that to support TDF"? * withdraw the free version if donation flow impacted? * update cycle, and how to move people to new versions? * should previous buyers (from licensed offers) get vouchers on request?" The issue is that an agenda has been sent out after the vote about the things we should have discussed started. The questions you see there are a good part of the objections I made for which no answer or debate has been made. The wisest thing, IMHO, would have been to debate those, come to an agreement on how to handle those issues and then run a vote for something that had at least the resemblance of a plan. It's worth speaking about the possible future options later (which could be more). Moreover, as you well know, the board is going to do that after a few months, based on the experience with the initial publication. Well... I mentioned the strategic benefits of starting with the free version and that we could have published it much earlier but we are still stuck with paperwork for the paid version. Now the only urgent task was to decide about the initial publication, so your question was misleading a little bit. Sorry but there was no "urgent task to decide about the initial publication", we would have done that if there was an actual debate with various options and strategies on the table. Would have made a difference to ask for feedback from the community last week, talk about it during the week and today and then go for a more structured vote where we could all have taken a more informed decision? Now we are still stuck as we should decide if we want to use only "LibreOffice" or use "LibreOffice %something", decide on the eventual duration of upgrades and decide on potential use of vouchers to start with so I guess that it doesn't make sense to publish until we decided what to offer and that pushes the decision to next week or the one after. If objections were being listened to maybe today we could have announced an actual strategy and that this week LibreOffice would have been published with a clear message. Best regards, László Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] LibreOffice in app stores free, paid or both?
Hi all, I just wanted to ask the community how they think LibreOffice should be published in the various app stores. Should it be: a. available at a cost b. free c. both As this is one of the items that will be discussed during tonight's board meeting, it would be great to have comments in writing and also having you in the meeting to share your point of view. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] Re: [tdf-internal] Board Discuss being moderated
Hi Cor, On 08/07/2022 19:17, Cor Nouws wrote: Hi Paolo, I consider it a very wise decision that the list is put on moderation right away. So you consider it wise to moderate a director without even informing him? Why I've seen that only your emails have been released by someone but not mine which contain nothing controversial? Is there some preferences being applied? I guess whomever did that, has the idea that there is sufficient support for it and/or takes proper responsibility to do the right thing for TDF. So a our chairman takes full responsibility for this behaviour which AFAIK does not include any official votes as I haven't been informed and I haven't seen any decision email in our mailing list. It makes little sense to continue acting like little children in public. Could you point out when you think board directors have behaved like little children in public. And yes, I'm all for discussing it in the board carefully now first. Obviously. So what was the point of asking the community if it would be OK to do it if it has been already done? Cheers, Cor Ciao Paolo Paolo Vecchi wrote on 08/07/2022 19:13: not sure if this email is going to go through as someone has decided to ask if would be OK to activate moderation on board-discuss (not sure about tdf-internal) but at the same time (about 16:10 CET) actually already enabled it. I have not been included in the discussion within the board for some reasons even if I suspect that it is related to the CoC complaint made against me by Jeremy Allison and Simon Phipps. Further discussion is necessary to understand if it's acceptable that moderation is being applied while being asked about it and if it is acceptable to have a director blocked on board-discuss. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Whether technical moderation of this list is needed
Hi all, my short answer is: no. On 08/07/2022 15:04, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Dear list, it seems a number of appeals to get the discussion on this list to become friendly and constructive again have failed. Over the time, me and others have tried (in public and in private) to nudge people to be considerate, and also to moderate discussions (in the sense of balancing positions - if anyone's interested in my private suggestions, there's no problem to share them. Though they're quite boring references to the communication best practices). I find the most recent escalation unbearable, and don't want to be exposed to that sort of language, even less so in public. Others have expressed similar sentiment. Additionally the board has their hands full with tasks working for the future of TDF. It would be great, if in our volunteer time, we would be able to concentrate on positive topics. The only practically effective solution I currently see, for that problem, is to put this list on moderation. We all share a collective duty to keep TDF & LibreOffice a friendly and fun place. Longer answer: True that some used some colourful language, they will be told to avoid that, but that doesn't really happen that often. Others are open exchanges of point of views and often useful information that should be taken in consideration when developing policies and decisions. People have different way of communicating which can be seen sometimes as "passive-aggressive" if sentences are not understood in their context and with a bit of background information. Following long discussions might be a bit of a pain but one can take informed decisions only if has a wider understanding of the issues. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] Delayed atticization for LibreOffice Online
Hi Andreas, On 07/07/2022 20:54, Andreas Mantke wrote: It's odd you say that as IIRC Mr Meeks said that since they move the project to Microsoft GitHub they had more contributors. Are you by any chance able to substantiate your statement? I made a short research on the commits of about the last four month (the board decision has also only a three month period in mind). So lets have a look on the commits of the last four month of the fork (without the localization work, copied from Weblate): * March 2022: - 4 volunteers, one of them was already for long time active in the LibreOffice design team - work done: two lines in a readme, some lines of JS, CSS and icons * April 2022: - 4 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member, another one is a current member of the board with an JS one liner - work done: unify ui naming menubar js file, docker image build script, CSS and the one line in a JS file * May 2022: - 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member - work done: CSS * June 2022: - 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member - work done: CSS and an icon That doesn't seem like much to me. If that would be the level necessary to avoid to archiving LOOL then it would be very easy. Noticeable: except the long time LibreOffice design contributor the volunteers committed only a very few patches and were only in one month active (without one of them, who submitted another patch in a second month, a further icon). I guess we could set this a baseline metrics for keeping LOOL repository open. It seemed there is a big interest to set high barriers in that area and to block initiative. The condition applied are IMHO unfair as it sends out a message that could discourage many to even trying. The fact that the promoters of the vote in the ESC and the board didn't even sent out a notification about what was about to happen surely doesn't sends out the message that they wanted supporter of LOOL to have a fair chance of reviving the project. Even the number of voters in favour of that decision are fewer than those required to pass the barrier ;-) Yep. As stated in my answer to the "decision", it just needs to be re-run with a text that would allow the community a chance to do something. Are you anyway continuing to prepare a version of LOOL that could be presented a candidate to start creating a community around it? I'm working on that too, but that need some more time. I'm happy, if someone wants to join me and create e.g. a docker build from the source. Do you need technical help, computing resources, both? I wouldn't know from where to start in building it from source (sorry can't do everything) but maybe some community members with more experience than me could help out? Happy to lend you some resources on my infrastructure if that's what you need. And what I've learned within the communication during the last week(s). There is no open communication and part of the game is to lead you by the nose. Could you elaborate on that? I'm not sure I fully grasp the meaning of the above sentences. The last part of this 'communication strategy' reached me in private on July, 3rd at 7.29pm, when I was told that I should contribute objective reason / points to the debate around LOOL and the decision about its atticization for LibreOffice Online. And just some hours later on July, 4th, 3.11am the results of the decision were published on this list. I had also the impression that I'm in a extra supervision here (and with private emails). Odd that also Daniel said he received similar emails. Not sure if it's someone being overzealous in applying the 'communication strategy' or a way of sending another type of message. And as we are saying in Germany: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her. That's the same saying we use in Italy but it's not clear what you mean with it or to what/whom you are referring to. Hope the above helped a bit. It's very useful information but what would help even more is for the wider community to tell us clearly what they want. ... and naturally to see the result of your effort. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] Delayed atticization for LibreOffice Online
Hi Daniel, On 07/07/2022 22:04, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: The long arm of the supervisor reaches several of us who dared to support the proposal to reopen the repo. In my case, trying to point out what can be said and what cannot. That's not good at all. Have you received these types of notifications previously? Do you know of others that received communications that are meant to dissuade people from expressing their legitimate opinions? Would you, and anyone else that received similar communications, be willing to send a complaint to the CoC team or a trusted director for evaluation? Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] Delayed atticization for LibreOffice Online
Hi Andreas, On 06/07/2022 20:08, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi all, Am 04.07.22 um 03:11 schrieb Thorsten Behrens: Dear community, the following vote happened after our Monday board call, on request as a private email vote: The board sees positive & constructive news around renewed developer interest in LibreOffice Online. To further encourage initiatives to collaborate on a single, TDF-hosted repository, the board resolves to postpone formally atticizing Online for three more months. Unless the de-atticization requirements [1] (3 different developers contributing non-trivially) are fulfilled by then, and/or if necessary binding corporate commitments are not made by 2022-10-01, Online will be automatically moved to the attic. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic#Deatticization_requirements it is very interesting to read this criteria and compare it with the git log of COOL. It seemed even this Github repo (project) didn't attract the number of volunteers, which are requested in the decision proposal. It's odd you say that as IIRC Mr Meeks said that since they move the project to Microsoft GitHub they had more contributors. Are you by any chance able to substantiate your statement? It seemed there is a big interest to set high barriers in that area and to block initiative. Even the number of voters in favour of that decision are fewer than those required to pass the barrier ;-) As stated in my answer to the "decision", it just needs to be re-run with a text that would allow the community a chance to do something. Are you anyway continuing to prepare a version of LOOL that could be presented a candidate to start creating a community around it? And what I've learned within the communication during the last week(s). There is no open communication and part of the game is to lead you by the nose. Could you elaborate on that? I'm not sure I fully grasp the meaning of the above sentences. And as we are saying in Germany: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her. That's the same saying we use in Italy but it's not clear what you mean with it or to what/whom you are referring to. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] re-discovering the Foundation roots?
Hi Uwe, On 04/07/2022 18:22, Uwe Altmann wrote: Hi Am 28.06.22 um 20:39 schrieb Emiliano Vavassori: I support that and I would love to hear a speech at the conference, possibly followed by a constructive discussion. Uwe, are you candidating yourself? I'm willing to prepare and moderate a session (similar to the one in Brno) If there is some interest within the community because it doesn't make sense to do this with three to five Persons new at the project as we had in Rome. I believe it's important even if only the board is present as I have the impression that there are different views that are sometimes the cause of conflicts in the interpretation of what TDF should or should not do. Then it would be great to have the sessions that I proposed for the board meeting in Berlin to explain a few things: - the reasons why we have a CoI Policy and how it intersects with board decisions and charitable status - the duty of the member of the board to take decisions for the benefit of TDF and not third parties - what fiduciary duties are and how they affect board members from a point of view procedures, tasks and legal liabilities - the duty of the member of the board to take informed decisions not just sending a +1 without checking potential issues related to a proposal - maybe also a link to the announcement of the creation of TDF may provide a hint about the ideas behind the Foundation and its ethos (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2012/02/20/the-document-foundation-officially-incorporated-in-berlin-germany/) That could help new members of the board in understanding what they have to take in consideration while performing their duties. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] Delayed atticization for LibreOffice Online
Dear community, for the record my rejection of the proposal as formulated has not been counted. I repeatedly asked for various elements to be considered and to amend the text before being able to vote on it but that unfortunately hasn't happened. My opinion is that the text doesn't take in consideration feedback and other issues which include: - discussion period of 24h too short as it covers one working day where people are busy with their day job - vote started after less than 21h at 18:53 when people coming back from work could have had time to rush in a comment - comments made during the meeting and in the mailing lists were not considered for inclusion in an actual compromise text - attempts to have an evaluation of the concerns expressed in time met no considerations - some managed to provide their opinion only in the vote reply but still no corrective actions have been taken - IMHO the chairman, as director of a company reselling COOL[0], should have declared a potential CoI and let the vice-chairman deal with the evaluation and inclusions of comments to make sure the process is seen by all as fully impartial regardless of actual CoIs. I could have simply voted against and found ourselves once again in the same split situation we had in the original vote and that's what I wanted to avoid. The main issues and missing elements I see in this proposal are: - LOOL should not be automatically archived, a full evaluation of the situation after a fair period of time should be done - the time frame is too short for a community to form (holiday season making it even more difficult) so 12 months could be a fair period of time - reopening of the repository with due warnings until LOOL is safe to use and activities show a healthy community forming - marketing to promote the creation of a community around LOOL - get more feedback from the wider community at LibOCon about the future of LOOL - finishing evaluating with commercial stakeholders the mutually Without the above IMHO the proposal will lead only to one outcome. Having said the above I ask to reconsider the decision and add it to the public part of the agenda for the next board meeting. Ciao Paolo [0] https://blog.allotropia.de/2021/08/25/allotropia-and-collabora-announce-partnership/ On 04/07/2022 03:11, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Dear community, the following vote happened after our Monday board call, on request as a private email vote: The board sees positive & constructive news around renewed developer interest in LibreOffice Online. To further encourage initiatives to collaborate on a single, TDF-hosted repository, the board resolves to postpone formally atticizing Online for three more months. Unless the de-atticization requirements [1] (3 different developers contributing non-trivially) are fulfilled by then, and/or if necessary binding corporate commitments are not made by 2022-10-01, Online will be automatically moved to the attic. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic#Deatticization_requirements The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote. The vote is quorate. Result of vote: 2 approvals, 3 abstain, 1 disapproval. **Decision: The proposal has been accepted.** Two deputies support the proposal. Participants to the vote were (in alphabetical order): Ayhan, Caolán, Cor, Emiliano, Gabriel, Kendy, László, Thorsten -- Thorsten -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Work On Update LOOL (was Re: LOOL is about to be archived)
Hi all, On 03/07/2022 00:21, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi Andreas, all, Andreas Mantke wrote: Thus the board has to amend the result at least. And if the vote of the member with a CoI was decisive the proposal was rejected. Our current CoI policy makes some helpful distinctions between an interest in something, and the determination of an actual conflict of interest. It does even if IMHO is not yet fully understood especially by new members of the board. It would have been great that during the weekend, where unfortunately I was not present, the board took as first item the presentation of what is TDF as intended when it has been created, the explanation of the statutes and principles that should be the basis for understanding the role of BoD members and the CoI policy so that members could recognise when their actions and decisions are influenced by external factors and/or interests. I've proposed that as I think it's essential for all members of the board to use that information as the basis on which to shape their debates and decisions. Unfortunately it seems like no time has been made for it so we'll have to find time for a session where we should invite the founders and those that wrote the statutes to explain to us again what their vision was. Then naturally we should have another session with our legal counsel which helped shaping the CoI Policy to explain in clear terms what it means and how it works. At the time, the vote was called & the decision published & acted upon (so apparently there was no CoI determined). Actually Andreas raised the issue of CoI but at the time we didn't have a clear definition of it: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2020/msg00660.html Apart from the debate about the chairperson decisive vote, this comment would be totally correct today: "In addition: as far as I know two members of the board have a CoI on this topic. But only one board member abstained from voting (correct behavior). The second approved the proposal, instead of abstaining. This could be seen as a violation of his duties as a member of the board or his loyalty for TDF. Thus his vote had to been rejected (and not counted in)." At the time I was not yet sure what to think about it as the rule wasn't clearly defined in the statutes and internal comment seem to indicate that we could not strictly consider it CoI. When Collabora Productivity's general manager decided to fork LOOL he added at the end of his statement: "Clearly Collabora participants would want to abstain on any board vote to ship competing Online products, but do expect to be included in the discussion around that." That might induce some to think that he was aware that a vote on LOOL related items by person affiliated with Collabora Productivity would have triggered a CoI but he didn't, as member of the board, point out that the vote from his marketing manager should have been removed. It is probably too late to invalidate that vote but it is not too late to do the right thing today and give LOOL another chance. IMHO it is today clear that Collabora Productivity's employees and partners should be excluded from such vote and also from imposing their own proposals on how to deal with LOOL's future. Non conflicted members should review the proposal that has been summarily put together by our chairman, whose company is a Collabora's partner, during the public part of Monday's board meeting and implement the relevant changes that would allow the proposals received to stand a chance to develop into an active community. I don't think it is constructive to revisit the details of a decision the previous board took in 2020. It is important to look at the past to try to correct eventual mistakes and avoid repeating them. If you want to change the status quo, I suggest you pledge your case to the current board, with arguments not attacking an old vote, but why the actual change would be needed. I believe that's what Andreas has been trying to do. Sometimes it is also important to understand what led to a specific situation to evaluate the measures that should be implemented to correctly deal with issues and proposals. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Work On Update LOOL (was Re: LOOL is about to be archived)
Hi Marco, thanks for your clarifications. On 29/06/2022 22:29, Marco Marinello wrote: Il 27/06/22 13:31, Jan Holesovsky ha scritto: Now the question is - does TDF want to be in a business of rebranding other well behaving open source projects? Yes. Specifically since a company decided to name after herself a project that was - up to that moment - under TDFs umbrella. I want to put it in black and white: being the most committing contributor does not allow anyone to pick the source and move it away, while have previously agreed to develop under a non profitable foundation umbrella. I suppose many read the same message and have been let to understand that it was the case. Even Collabora's own website used to convey the same message at the time: "Will it be hosted by The Document Foundation? Yes: It will be hosted by The Document Foundation, and contributed to the LibreOffice project in the normal way, as was done for the Smoose / Collabora LibreOffice Viewer for Android, in accordance with Collabora’s open-first development policy. Who will maintain LOOL after launch? Collabora will maintain it alongside the LibreOffice community, and all are welcome to contribute to development." https://www.collaboraoffice.com/community-en/libreoffice-online-questions-answered-what-who-how-and-when/ And for years also TDF invested on it and supported it with its own staff and infrastructure together with contributions from the wider community: "Today’s launch of the first LibreOffice application for Android pushes our community into exciting new waters. As we speak, new infrastructure is being prepared by Document Foundation Staff for documentation, translation, and bug reporting of the new app, laying the foundations for a busy future. This is just the beginning." https://www.collaboraoffice.com/community-en/libreoffice-on-android-one-less-barrier-to-public-sector-open-standards/ Looking at the communication and the promotion that LOOL had also from TDF, well before I joined the board, made me believe that LOOL should have been made available to the community and that's why I published my proposal 2 years ago: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2020/msg00091.html The subsequent threads and board minutes provide a very interesting reading for those that want to understand more about what happened after I presented my proposal. Regarding the freeze in my opinion should have never happened but at the time we didn't have a clear CoI Policy so a single vote from a what now would be considered a conflicted member of the board made that happen: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2020/msg00648.html Emiliano had a very good take at the time which also explained why we haven't seen a lot of requests to contribute to LOOL up to now: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2020/msg00632.html So it seems like there is more work needed to give LOOL an actual chance to restart as a proper community project under the TDF umbrella. And - when you find out that COOL / LOOL is just the editing bit, in other words, it does nothing without a file sync & sharing solution, will you rebrand eg. Nextcloud or ownCloud to "LibreOffice Cloud" next? No need to answer, I guess, since TDF is "The Document Foundation" and not "The Cloud Foundation". True. I don't think TDF should get into services provision, we promote our members of the ecosystem to do that, but I did propose at the time to have also TDF branded connectors for NextCloud, ownCloud, Univention, etc. so that users would have a choice (naturally notifying that supported/enterprise version were available from our members of the ecosystem) but unfortunately that choice has been removed from them. All the best, Marco Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Another "merged" proposal of in-house developers
Hi Kendy, On 29/06/2022 10:00, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Can you please check the 2.3 once again, and merge those bits that are acceptable for you, and I'll see how can I rephrase the rest, so that we can finalize this, please? I was hoping that the extensive rationale I provided when I sent out version 2.2 of the proposal helped in understanding that it would have been very difficult to read a document where I had to remove a lot of text and move back a lot of sentences to bring it back to an acceptable version. In the version where you brought back in the text that in my opinion should not be there in the first place I've written many comments to help out in further understanding what I think is wrong with version 2.3. If we now take as a base the merged v 2.2 without all the problematic text you reintroduced then we should be much nearer to a finished document. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Another "merged" proposal of in-house developers
Hi Kendy, On 27/06/2022 17:38, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Thank you very much for that! I've once again rebased the changes on top of yours, but I see we are getting much closer; so in the TDF-In-House-Developers-Proposal-v2-3-Merged.odt I've accepted your changes where we both agree, to avoid confusion in change tracking, hope that's fine. The differences are not that many apart from those that I could not accept as they impose limitations that have no place in an employment proposal. In the document v. 2.3 you just merged back the issues that will cause TDF to incur more costs and issues in finding the developers we need so we should not accept those changes- If commercial contributors seek limitations on who employees should be and what they should do then the reasons should be made clear, they should be negotiated in public and should be valid for current and future commercial contributors. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Work On Update LOOL (was Re: LOOL is about to be archived)
Hi Sophie and all, On 25/06/2022 01:44, sophi wrote: Hi Andreas, all Le 25/06/2022 à 00:05, Andreas Mantke a écrit : Hi all, FYI: I wrote a short blog post about my work. And for those who like visuals, I added two ones. https://amantke.de/2022/06/25/work-on-revival-of-libreoffice-online/ Thanks a lot for your work on this, I really appreciate and welcome the efforts :) Maybe what we should do is to have an online meeting between you, Franklin, Daniel, Paolo and of course who in the community is interested to follow-up. I'm very much in favour of it. It is also important that you express your opinion during the board meetings. Coincidentally LOOL was put in Monday's agenda just to confirm its "disposal" so come to tell us what you think about it. The new online version is a really good news for me (thanks a lot Franklin and Andreas for that), and I guess for a large part of the non European community (as well as for students, SMEs and so on). There is a clear interest in the community to have this online version. There is still no "new online version", there are a couple of proposals on the table but it's up to all of us to make it happen. This is for me rejoining part of the Foundation roots. We might need a meeting dedicated to re-discovering the Foundation roots as I have the impression that some have different understanding of why TDF was created and what its role should be. But we also have to think about the ecosystem and the value they have built upon this version and for us. I'm also concerned about this. We should not ignore it. I fully agree with you but as TDF has grown and got more complex it is essential to set clear rules of engagement between TDF and the ecosystem. I'm really happy that TDF come back in this dynamic, however I think a serious discussion have to take place between the ecosystem and TDF, not to stop TDF in acting like it was in the past, but to find a fair place to live for everybody. I'm sure this place exists if all parties are ready to make an effort to reach a common goal. You may have noticed some decisions that have been recently published, and there are more to come, showing that lots of work is being put into it so that we can ensure that there is a fair and predictable environment for current and future members of the ecosystem. It takes time for a bunch of stubborn guys to get to some agreements but we are getting there. It would be great if we could have more diverse future boards to bring in different approaches to problem solving ;-) I ask, if I may, everybody taking part to the discussion to have a deep thought to the international community we, at TDF, are committed to represent. True and it would be great to have more feedback from other parts of the world. Hopefully once Decidim is up and running we'll have an easier way to collect feedback and ideas from the various community so that it will be easier to help each others. Cheers Sophie Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Work On Update LOOL (was Re: LOOL is about to be archived)
not point to commercial versions of it. As CODE/Collabora Online are LibreOffice Technology (TM), and for the healthy long-term LibreOffice development, I would like to see more contribution with Collabora Productivity. We should actually evaluate if those product should use the "LibreOffice Technology" branding. When Collabora Productivity moved LOOL's code from TDF's repositories to GitHub the first thing that it has done was to remove the header "This file is part of the LibreOffice project" from all the files. Subsequently even the variables names have been renamed from LOOL to COOL. This, and other changes, show the intention of removing any indication that the product COOL actually originated from LOOL and every indication that the project was a result of a common effort which included TDF and the wider community. In my opinion, as LOOL was, CODE is still the key for the survival of LibreOffice. CODE is now a product fully managed by a commercial contributor that decided to sever all links from TDF in regards to that product so unless they finally agree to join forces again and backport the code to LOOL there is nothing much we can do about their product. On-line drafting tools are surely useful for many uses and users but there are still billions of people that cannot/do not want to rely on Cloud services to edit their documents so LibreOffice desktop with lots more features and better usability will still be very much relevant for many years to come. LOOL, and products based on it, is just one of the ways to offer on-line collaborative editing so we may also want to investigate other ways to make LibreOffice available on-line. In the spirit of a successful free software contribution, respecting the decision of Collabora Productivity, TDF must help CODE development, as much as possible, for the sake of LibreOffice! Respect is a two way street, TDF kept its promises but the other party decided to fork regardless. TDF invests in other Open Source software as it's the right thing to do and we could evaluate joint investments if we had a LOOL to give to our community but this time the rules of engagement should be very clear so that the third party does not walk away after having benefited from TDF's and our community's investments. As a first step, we shouldn't hijack future CODE users and as described above, future (and recent) LibreOffice users and contributors with false hopes and misleading information. When I accused people of creating false hopes and providing misleading information in regards to LOOL, that pushed me to propose to have a properly structured offering in collaboration with the major code contributor, I have done it with lots of supporting evidence. You will find all the evidence in the board-discuss archives, in public board meeting minutes and, as now you are a board member and you should take decisions based on objective data, in board email exchanges that I'm very happy to share with you. I do understand that you are a new member of the board and if you check your emails you will notice that one of my first recommendations was not to limit your choices on what you have been told but to verify things by looking for the relevant objective data or you risk being mislead by narratives that could be slightly biased. Best regards, László Ciao Paolo Ciao Paolo On 21/06/2022 21:14, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi all, only a short info that I'm currently working on an update of the LOOL source code with the latest patches. Because I have an issue with my newly bought hardware I had to migrate my environment (etc.) to another hardware (will need some hours of spare time). Thus I was not able to finish my work during this week. If someone wants to join me, feel free to send me an email. Once the necessary bits are done, I'll come back and try to make a proposal for the further process to get LOOL back under the TDF umbrella. Regards, Andreas Am 21.06.22 um 14:15 schrieb Paolo Vecchi: Hi all, just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line. As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF's repository. At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then. Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1]. The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC's choice. It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your
Re: [board-discuss] Re: LOOL is about to be archived
Hi Andreas, it's great to see this types of cooperation offers. I might be biased but I would prefer to see the project on TDF's infrastructure and covered by the appropriate agreements so that we can ensure we invest on a project that will clearly provide long term benefits for the wider community. Ciao Paolo On 24/06/2022 12:23, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi Paolo, Franklin, all, it would be great, if we could work together on a process to merge both branches together and get the community versions in sync. I think this could be done most easy on Github. Regards, Andreas Am 24. Juni 2022 11:29:16 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi : Hi Franklin, thanks for the great proposal. As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I'll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your' and Andreas' proposal. There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again. Ciao Paolo On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote: Hi, Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite: https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community <https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community> OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into "NDCODFweb": https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb <https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb> which is also mainly supported by OSSII. Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ). OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community. I'm not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version. In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL: 1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts. 2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I'll say that it is actually a "fast forward" from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way. Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from *any* ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository. Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too). Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL. Details can be discussed with OSSII. Regards, Franklin Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道: Hi all, just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line. As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF's repository. At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then. Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1]. The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC's choice. It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would
Re: [board-discuss] Re: LOOL is about to be archived
Hi Simon, thanks for bringing up those points. On 24/06/2022 11:49, Simon Phipps wrote: Hi Franklin,. Why is this better than working with the version Collabora (who actually contribute to TDF's work) maintain? I believe that Collabora has been explicitly asked a few time if they were available to contribute back to LOOL but we never received any answer or signs of goodwill. OSSII has been working on a fork of LOOL for quite a while and is kindly offering to share it back for the community to enjoy it. They also offer a commercial version so it will be important to set clear rules to avoid the conflicts we have seen in the past. Why should TDF hire developers to maintain code for the Taiwanese government? IMHO, unless we are talking about quick fixes, in-house developers should not focus on LOOL. However there could be opportunities to develop synergies with OSSII and the Taiwanese community on CJK issues as together with RTL bug fixes will enable a couple of billion people to use LibreOffice properly in their own languages. Sincerely. Simon Ciao Paolo On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 5:47 AM Franklin Weng wrote: Hi, Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite: https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into "NDCODFweb": https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb which is also mainly supported by OSSII. Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ). OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community. I'm not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version. In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL: 1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts. 2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I'll say that it is actually a "fast forward" from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way. Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from *any* ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository. Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too). Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL. Details can be discussed with OSSII. Regards, Franklin -- *Simon Phipps* /TDF Trustee/ -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [board-discuss] Re: LOOL is about to be archived
Hi Daniel, thanks for sharing your experience with OxOOL! We definitely have to look at it in more details. LOOL is in the agenda for Monday's BoD meeting, please come along to comment about it. Ciao Paolo On 24/06/2022 12:00, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: As Franklin mentioned, the university where I work (UNAU) is using OxOOL since 2020. And works like a charm have to add. Would love to have it's features as LOOL base. El 24 de junio de 2022 1:37:32 a. m. GMT-03:00, Franklin Weng escribió: Hi, Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite: https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community <https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community> OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into "NDCODFweb": https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb <https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb> which is also mainly supported by OSSII. Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ). OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community. I'm not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version. In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL: 1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts. 2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I'll say that it is actually a "fast forward" from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way. Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from *any* ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository. Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too). Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL. Details can be discussed with OSSII. Regards, Franklin Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道: Hi all, just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line. As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF's repository. At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then. Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1]. The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC's choice. It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard. If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived. Ciao Paolo [0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html [1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html [2] https://wiki.documentfoundatio
[board-discuss] Re: LOOL is about to be archived
Hi Franklin, thanks for the great proposal. As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I'll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your' and Andreas' proposal. There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again. Ciao Paolo On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote: Hi, Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite: https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community <https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community> OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into "NDCODFweb": https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb <https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb> which is also mainly supported by OSSII. Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ). OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community. I'm not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version. In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL: 1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts. 2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I'll say that it is actually a "fast forward" from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way. Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from *any* ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository. Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too). Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL. Details can be discussed with OSSII. Regards, Franklin Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道: Hi all, just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line. As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF's repository. At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then. Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1]. The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC's choice. It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard. If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived. Ciao Paolo [0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html [1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html [2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [board-discuss] Work On Update LOOL (was Re: LOOL is about to be archived)
Hi Andreas, thank you for letting us know that you are working on it. Ideally it would be great to have a few developers working on it, especially to fix known security issues, and sufficient activity to make it viable. It is true that LOOL has been in a kind of limbo. The repository has been frozen "temporarily" but it kind of became a permanent situation. In your opinion, would reopening the repository for 12 months provide enough time for a community to form around it? It would require warnings until all the security bugs have been fixed and that it might not be well maintained until we see constant and sufficient activity but it could be an option to make it up for the longer than expected temporary freeze of the repository. If after 12 months we don't see much activity then we could be certain that the community is not really interested in working on LOOL. It would be great to know if others have other takes/options/alternatives on this subject. Ciao Paolo On 21/06/2022 21:14, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi all, only a short info that I'm currently working on an update of the LOOL source code with the latest patches. Because I have an issue with my newly bought hardware I had to migrate my environment (etc.) to another hardware (will need some hours of spare time). Thus I was not able to finish my work during this week. If someone wants to join me, feel free to send me an email. Once the necessary bits are done, I'll come back and try to make a proposal for the further process to get LOOL back under the TDF umbrella. Regards, Andreas Am 21.06.22 um 14:15 schrieb Paolo Vecchi: Hi all, just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line. As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF's repository. At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then. Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1]. The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC's choice. It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard. If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived. Ciao Paolo [0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html [1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html [2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
[board-discuss] Another "merged" proposal of in-house developers
Hi all, as finally many of the changes requested by other proposals are clear I've integrated what makes sense to have on a developers recruitment proposal and added a few items clarifying some aspect in version 2.2 (in ODF format) of this "merged" proposal that you'll find here together with the other proposal: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/f/960049 Those that don't have access to that folder or don't want to edit/comment it can access a PDF version from here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/BMnj2c4A9XR4oWk *What changed:* I've adapted a few sentences/words to get closer to the other proposal where possible and eliminated some sentences/words that might not add much to the context. I've also reinstated the app store area as now is not controversial anymore. There is a specific paragraph stating that in-house developers are not bound by ESC decisions. Overall the original logic is still there but showing a lower number of differences to the other proposal. *What is still different:* The developers do not need to be senior or already capable of mentoring, training them is part of our goals so we should do that The focus is clearly on the development side with mentoring to be done when the developers are ready and willing There is less focus on the ESC handling the task and more on staff dealing with it as developers are going to be part of TDF's staff so they shouldn't be told what to do by non employees of TDF or the Board. *What is not there:* The section related to "Targeted Developers" as it's a construct that imposes limitations on what TDF's staff can do. We will employ in-house developers that will work for the best interest of TDF and it's wider community which initially will surely focus on specific areas, the "Focus Areas", but over the years could cover other areas if they like it and it's necessary. I believe that a candidate reading that an organisation is looking for "targeted developers" might already feel the limitation of the role and the lack of opportunities for personal growth so we might prefer to welcome in-house developers that won't feel that limitations as full members of TDF's staff. ESC deciding and having a final word on "overlaps in the development of the LibreOffice code" is too broad as it might imply also development related to projects, features or bug fixes on which a third party might have interests expressed through the ESC which at present has no CoI Policy. Limitations imposed on TDF's staff that satisfy the interests/needs of third parties, or in some cases both TDF and third parties, should be part of a separate agreement, not a recruitment proposal. Other similar limitations, including non competition or development of alternative implementation to (eg.) "Collabora Online, mdds, or cppunit" have not been included in this version as they should be covered by separate agreements which are independent to TDF's staff recruitment. Contracts with subcontractors, trainers and specialists do not belong in a recruitment proposal. Additional support or training will be taken in consideration once we have evaluated the candidates and when our mentors will inform us of what is necessary. Development contracts present in the other proposal will follow the due tendering process. I hope that the rationale for not including certain areas, terms and limitations is clear to all in this "merged" proposal and that we can proceed in finding great candidates to join our team as soon as possible. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[board-discuss] LOOL is about to be archived
Hi all, just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line. As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF's repository. At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then. Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1]. The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC's choice. It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard. If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived. Ciao Paolo [0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html [1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html [2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [Meta] Discussing in board-discuss [ was: Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF]
Hi Simon, On 12/06/2022 12:42, Simon Phipps wrote: Please note that I have (intentionally) refrained from responding to earlier messages. But no-one (including you) was addressing the repeated negative framing of Andreas' many e-mails so I offered a contribution from experience to balance it. Some actually addressed Andreas' emails and understood the requests for a positive change for TDF. If others wants to look away when there are criticisms they a free to do it but then they shouldn't negatively affect those that wants to fix issues. > By entering into a dialogue. By hearing and evolving compromises with > other members through selecting positive elements of their > contributions. I'd generally agree, but what I can read from the thread is that some discussions and objections are less likely to be acknowledged and recognized, and taken as a basis to work on a positive compromise, mostly because that is not coming from a long-time contributor. Doing everything by text-only for two years has been extremely toxic. The positive side of it is that we now have clear records in email threads that allowed us to pinpoint issues that then had to be dealt with. That's not the case for Andreas, who you are confirming he is akin to the Foundation since a lot of time. Andreas was one of the founding generation of TDF so has been involved in the project for a long time, yes. He contributed great work on infrastructure and deserves credit for it. He was unhappy when TDF migrated from Plone and I believe felt insulted by that step because his work was lost, which we regretted. I do understand that frustration, and have experienced it myself. Regardless of the reasons behind his will to participate to discussions I found Andreas' contributions very useful. Sometimes he's very direct but we have to accept that there are different communication styles and that we can't block or refer to the CoC people only because they say something that might not conform with our own ideas. I hope that more community members will find the courage to speak out if they see that there are issues that need to be dealt with. > How should members voice their concerns when they see entryists harming > the project and old unsettled grudges being repeatedly raised regardless > of how they are answered? Let's start by acknowledging that if there are objections and they are even consistently confirmed from long relationships and from short ones, possibly something to discuss is there. Absolutely right. My original message however was to indicate that there is a very old problem that has not been "let go" and which newcomers might not recognise, and its repetition should probably not be heavily weighted as an indicator of the validity of the concerns today. Old problems should not be "let go" they should be evaluated objectively and addressed. If Andreas was demanding that we re-implemented his Plone infrastructure I'll be one of those saying that it's probably better if he "let go" but as far as I can see Andreas comments had nothing to do with it and all to do with improving our processes, increasing transparency and adding bits of information that are difficult to source as they might be spread in old email archives. I've been on the receiving side of Andreas' effort to keep an eye on board's decisions pointing out potential issues and I've actually appreciated that. I think there should be more people like him to keep the board in check and make sure we don't get too complacent or reliant on a narrative coming from only one source. Cheers Simon -- *Simon Phipps* /TDF Trustee/ Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [Meta] Discussing in board-discuss [ was: Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF]
+1 Paolo On 12/06/2022 12:03, Emiliano Vavassori wrote: Hi Simon, Il 12/06/22 11:17, Simon Phipps ha scritto: They are to help newcomers like you become aware that the complaints being made are not in fact new or related to the current situation but date back to a dispute that is many years old and still unresolved due to personal enmities. That is still setting a (partial, angled) framing of the situation (as Andreas was doing, to some extent). What still worries me is that said frictions are still there after a lot of years and weren't solved, and honestly I don't buy it is a constellation of personal issues, rather than a misunderstanding on how effectively implement the shared goals we all should have. I am sorry you do not find this helpful, but being aware of the true history of the project (especially at a time when there are voices trying to reframe history) is very important and refusing to do so may lead to incorrect assumptions and the acceptance of untrue framing. I didn't say I found it useless, I said it wouldn't really still help with moving the general balance of the discussion towards a positive outcome, which was the main objections to Andreas' mails. By entering into a dialogue. By hearing and evolving compromises with other members through selecting positive elements of their contributions. I'd generally agree, but what I can read from the thread is that some discussions and objections are less likely to be acknowledged and recognized, and taken as a basis to work on a positive compromise, mostly because that is not coming from a long-time contributor. That's not the case for Andreas, who you are confirming he is akin to the Foundation since a lot of time. How should members voice their concerns when they see entryists harming the project and old unsettled grudges being repeatedly raised regardless of how they are answered? Let's start by acknowledging that if there are objections and they are even consistently confirmed from long relationships and from short ones, possibly something to discuss is there. Cheers, -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF
Hi Simon, On 12/06/2022 11:17, Simon Phipps wrote: Hi Emilliano, On Sun, Jun 12, 2022 at 9:31 AM Emiliano Vavassori wrote: Hi Simon, Il 11/06/22 20:02, Simon Phipps ha scritto: > I will remind you > that you started this negative approach about how TDF is acting > illegally when you and I were on the Board together last decade. I'm honestly struggling to see how your comments can be thought as positive. They are to help newcomers like you become aware that the complaints being made are not in fact new or related to the current situation but date back to a dispute that is many years old and still unresolved due to personal enmities. I was a newcomer in 2020 and I didn't get much help from you or other old members of the board in understanding the past to take decision for the future of TDF. I had to spend a lot of time reading lots of minutes of past meetings and keep asking difficult questions to get to the point where I could clearly see that some decisions being passed down to us (eg TDC) had issues that haven't been considered. It is good to have people like Andreas that point out issues that should be evaluated by newcomers before they fall into a group thinking situation that does not help with addressing problems and moving forward. I am sorry you do not find this helpful, but being aware of the true history of the project (especially at a time when there are voices trying to reframe history) is very important and refusing to do so may lead to incorrect assumptions and the acceptance of untrue framing. It is important to learn about the past to plan for the future. Discovering some details that are not widely publicised helps in fixing some issues that have been overlooked. TDF is not just a small group of friends developing LibreOffice any more, it is now a larger organisation that needs to apply some rules so that it creates a level playing field for everyone that wants to contribute in many ways, not only with code which for some seems to be the only measure if some people or organisations are more equal than others. And how should users and members should voice their unsettlement, without risking to be stopped at every corner and called out for violations of CoC. By entering into a dialogue. By hearing and evolving compromises with other members through selecting positive elements of their contributions. By collaborating together even when uncomfortable. By respecting the honest contributions of long-time contributors. This place is hardly a close venue. Compromises and unanimity in decisions would be great but are not always possible as some points of view are too far apart. Some cling very hard onto their acquired positions and it is very difficult and frustrating to get them to understand that times have changed and that is not only their code that makes TDF, our community and LibreOffice great for all. Even when compromises have been agreed some decide to walk away and not contribute back to a project like LOOL that isn't made up only by code but also by lots of contributions from the rest of our community. How should members voice their concerns when they see entryists harming the project and old unsettled grudges being repeatedly raised regardless of how they are answered? "Entryists" bring also fresher, different point of views and ask the questions that some don't want to hear. "Entryists" helped in stopping a project you promoted that would have been damaging for TDF and our community, "entryists" tried to bring clarity on what LOOL really was and found out that reality was different from what was promoted, "entryists" got finally a CoI Policy in place for the board and (IMHO) should implement it also for the ESC, "entryists" are still working on lots of other improvements that will help TDF serve better its community. So yes, "entryists" should look at both side of the arguments, dig deeper in their merits and then promote the required changes. I hope you noticed the usefulness of "entryists" and that you will help them with unbiased information in future instead of attacking them because they haven't conformed with your views. Sincerely, Simon -- *Simon Phipps* /TDF Trustee/ Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF
s no barrier for hiring developers. The latter is the better choice because TDF get more impact on the development process and gain more in-house knowledge. This would also help TDF e.g. to more easily participate in the GSoC The hope is that there will be many applicants, and that we'll have the possibility to choose two. But if there is only one good candidate, I think we should not start another round of interviews until we evaluate the experience - because the process is expensive & time consuming. What about "... will not develop alternative implementations of Open Source projects actively maintained by LibreOffice volunteer or corporate contributors."? LOOL could be an example, but there is eg. the Kohei's mdds (that is essential for the Calc core), or Moggi's maintenance of cppunit - hosted on freedesktop, but using LibreOffice bugzilla for bugreports. That still seems a bit to be too generic to me. For the moment, I've at least adapted it to the above, but happy to go further there, if you can propose a wording please? Also I was thinking of something like "TDF in-house developers will encourage up-streaming in case their work ends up as a modification of an external LibreOffice project." (to target things like PDFium etc.) OK, I've added the explicit list as examples. it is not in the interest of TDF / LibreOffice community to exclude areas of development per se. If the LibreOffice community and the board thinks the development of a product, a module etc. is important and necessary for the future / the (further) growth of the program / the community it had to be able to point his development resources (in-house or else) into that direction. No commercial / free software company has the right to distract the foundation from doing that. Thus it is not appropriate to add such sentences to the proposal. As above, if there must be an agreement with third parties then that must be valid for all and written in a document that has nothing to do with the employment of new members of the staff. And from my impression the 'merged proposal' is a paper to prune TDF's freedom and to support only commercial companies. But such a proposal is never in the best interest of the foundation and the board should abstain to vote for such a proposal. IMHO that proposal isn't viable anymore for many reasons including those expressed above. I hope we will finally get back to the original purpose of the proposal and approve it ASAP. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF
Hi Thorsten, On 08/06/2022 22:35, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Dear list, Andreas Mantke wrote: Interestingly I cannot remember TDF ever tendering for LibreOffice Online work, can you please point me to the details? TDF tendered in 2014/2015 the work for the Android editing, which was explained to the board also as important for LOOL. That seems to be a very technical argument (on both sides); in any case I doubt that a discussion of something that happend 8 years ago helps us in moving the developer hiring proposal forward. Something that had a clear start, progression and support from TDF during the past 7 years shows the risks we may incur when different interests influence TDF and our community. As such, lets please get back to the topic. Paolo Vecchi wrote: With a very odd timing the 02/06/2022 Mr Meeks added to the ESC agenda, during the meeting, the request to actually kill LOOL. From the emails on board-discuss it seems clear that that he doesn't want that in-house developers to even thinking about reviving LOOL to make sure TDF cannot promote even a basic version of it. Same here - mixing lots of other topics into this discussion is not useful in us making progress. Promoting an ineffective and expensive way to get some mentors and the proposal of killing LOOL are related as coming from a single person that might have conflicting interests and is not even a member of the ESC. It is also premature, since the ESC is still discussing the matter. There isn't and hasn't been much debate going on and the ESC has been asked to vote today about killing LOOL. Debating the merits of the proposal should happen there, not here (for the while). Unless the board wants to run its own, competing motion for how to deal with the Online repo (which I would consider nonconstructive). IMHO the ESC should deal with purely engineering issues, the intervention from a non ESC members shows that it has been abused as a "political" tool. What happened during the past 2 ESC meetings should be thoroughly investigated to see if undue influence from a conflicted party is an acceptable behaviour. Thanks, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF
Hi Andreas, On 08/06/2022 19:53, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi all, Am 06.06.22 um 13:18 schrieb Jan Holesovsky: Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke píše v Ne 05. 06. 2022 v 19:12 +0200: If I remember correctly TDF has paid a big part of work on the basics of LOOL. And maybe some former / current board member recognize which company was paid for that work from donation money. Interestingly I cannot remember TDF ever tendering for LibreOffice Online work, can you please point me to the details? TDF tendered in 2014/2015 the work for the Android editing, which was explained to the board also as important for LOOL. Thus this project was payed from the LibreOffice donation money. The biggest part of this work (according to the prize) was done by Collabora productivity. thanks for the reminder. Since then Collabora also benefited a lot from TDF's marketing, infrastructure and community support. That was all part of the discussion which has been ignored during the negotiation to get LOOL made available to the community but then they unilaterally decided to move to GitHub and not backport any fixes or features. With a very odd timing the 02/06/2022 Mr Meeks added to the ESC agenda, during the meeting, the request to actually kill LOOL. From the emails on board-discuss it seems clear that that he doesn't want that in-house developers to even thinking about reviving LOOL to make sure TDF cannot promote even a basic version of it. [But I may be wrong - as said, I have nothing to do with TDF tending process, so maybe I've missed something?] I made a research in an archive and found out that the document with the offer from Collabora was created by Jan Holesovsky with LibreOffice 4.2 on Oct., 6 2014. I guess anyone can forget to have created the documents that lead to the financing and support by TDF and the community of one of their major projects. Now that Kendy has been reminded from where LOOL came from he will probably vote differently the request to kill it in the ESC. Regards, Andreas Ciao Paolo -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] [DECISION] TDF to publish LibreOffice in app stores
+1 Paolo On 08/06/2022 16:45, Caolán McNamara wrote: On Wed, 2022-06-08 at 11:44 +0200, Florian Effenberger wrote: happy to update the vote template if the board is fine with that. All board members are on this list, so we can gather some feedback. Yeah, I'm content to see that information presented by default. -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Re: In-house developers proposal v 2.1
Hi Michael, I prefer to avoid going into details as people should draw their conclusions by looking at timing and people involved by looking at the ESC meeting minutes and your proposal. On 08/06/2022 10:40, Michael Meeks wrote: Hi Paolo, On 08/06/2022 09:18, Paolo Vecchi wrote: That is a copy/paste from a text the general manager of a commercial contributor sent the 23/05 It is not the greatest vote of confidence in your position that you critique the source of a counter-proposal rather than the proposal itself: please play the ball not the man. Actions have been performed by people, in this case you and Kendy. As I've been told off for stating facts and not naming people so I guess I have to make it clear who did what and when. A sequence of events/coincidences show that some proposals are more equal than others and clear objections that make your proposal more complicated, expensive and much less effective have not been addressed at all. You then go on to (again) mis-characterize Kendy's merged proposal, something you've repeatedly done and been corrected on: developers mostly focused on mentoring are very difficult to find and very expensive, and anyone with basic HR skills would never let employees be managed by a committee in which third party companies have can have so much influence as seen in recent minutes. The proposal contains this: "The Executive Director shall direct day to day management for the Targeted Developers to ensure they effectively focus on the Target Areas." Line management is up to the ED - that is explicit. I suspect that they will not direct management by a committee - but it's up to them =) Our ED has already plenty of things to do and micromanaging in-house developers should not be part of his job. Please re-read the rest of my proposal as it states how things should be run to avoid overwhelming our ED. Our ED will evaluate things only if there are issues between the team and the ESC. Attempting to exclude targetted developers from attending the ESC call and reporting on what they're up to - as they become respected peers alongside others working on the code seems extraordinary. Nowhere in my proposal is being said that the ESC will be excluded. Please re-read my proposal. Again your understanding of how LibreOffice development and the ESC works seems weak as I've outlined before[1]. I'm slowly learning about it thanks to the good comments from Adreas that pushed me to look into it even if development is not my main focus and it is only one of the various areas LibreOffice is made of. I've seen a very nice way to cooperate between developers in a way that seems to take in consideration the best way to deal with code and find good solutions to issues Your intervention in the ESC meeting the 26/05/2022 and the 02/06/2022 had absolutely nothing to do with code and a lot to do with politics and undue influence in a committee that now cannot be seen as a neutral ground. Regards, Michael. Ciao Paolo [1] - https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00557.html -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Re: In-house developers proposal v 2.1
Hi all, On 08/06/2022 00:57, Cor Nouws wrote: Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi wrote on 08/06/2022 00:31: On 07/06/2022 21:40, Simon Phipps wrote: Kendy made a merged version and shared it with us all... No, once again he took my document and copy/pasted bits of Michael Meeks proposal on it to completely change the logic of the proposal. I assume if the 'logic changed', that is to reflect contributions in the discussion that were not added in your file. That is a copy/paste from a text the general manager of a commercial contributor sent the 23/05, his employee and member of the board copied the 25/06 on a document he called a merge and the same general manager practically imposed to the ESC part of his project. The way the proposal wants to manage "suggestions" for tendering, the focus on mentoring and control of TDF's employee have been already described as very bad ideas. That proposal doesn't really fit with the budget planned, senior I think there is room to look to the budget for next year again, if needed. As this is, as agreed, a strategic project that has been taken out of the budget planning that we have done not long ago then we are still on time to review this budget. developers mostly focused on mentoring are very difficult to find and very expensive, and anyone with basic HR skills would never let employees be managed by a committee in which third party companies have can have so much influence as seen in recent minutes. This is unhelpful framing. Influence is (apart from statutory limitations to participation from entities) from participating, which is done in the best traditions of open source development, which in the case of LibreOffice is broadened deliberately - I was at the discussion - to more than 'just' coding. We should check with an employment laws expert if they consider if "unhelpful framing". The "legacy document" has actual contributions from many people of the community and TDf's team, the document on which Kendy pasted some text has only contributions from Michael Meeks and you Kendy made efforts to include comments and ideas from all sides. Very useful to come to a proposal with the broadest possible support respecting as much ideas as possible. Kendy replaced text to reflect the ideas of a commercial contributor not to include comments. greetings, Cor Ciao Paolo -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Re: In-house developers proposal v 2.1
Hi Simon, On 07/06/2022 21:40, Simon Phipps wrote: Kendy made a merged version and shared it with us all... No, once again he took my document and copy/pasted bits of Michael Meeks proposal on it to completely change the logic of the proposal. That proposal doesn't really fit with the budget planned, senior developers mostly focused on mentoring are very difficult to find and very expensive, and anyone with basic HR skills would never let employees be managed by a committee in which third party companies have can have so much influence as seen in recent minutes. It's really a waste of time to cherry-pick and update a legacy document instead of the one multiple people have been working on. The "legacy document" has actual contributions from many people of the community and TDf's team, the document on which Kendy pasted some text has only contributions from Michael Meeks and you (BTW please remove your only contribution as it names a potential supplier). Ciao Paolo -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF
Hi Cor, On 03/06/2022 13:16, Cor Nouws wrote: Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi wrote on 03/06/2022 11:53: ... Another reason why I did not want to share my proposal open for editing to anyone is that it might happen that someone writes something that should not be written in a public document. We want a public discussion (of course not when it does not fit) but prevent people to write in a document because they may write something odd... after all there is this mailing list where * can write * ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :D When you send an email you are responsible for what you write and TDF might become responsible to take down the content from the archives if the content is offensive/illegal. If you write something in my proposal then I'm also responsible for checking that you are not adding something that could be problematic. .. We will publish public tenders open to all ensuring that there will be a level playing field so that any organisation will be able to participate. You may have missed something, but that is standing policy. We know that but it could be that Simon, with his comment, forgot about it. Cheers, Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF
Hi Simon, On 03/06/2022 10:59, Simon Phipps wrote: Hi! On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 7:51 AM Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote: Tendering and in-house development are not interchangeable, but they are interlinked. Keep in mind that the in-house devs would participate in running tenders. Another valuable role for an in-house developer would be to manage a more long-term relationship with specialist subcontractors, for example a company with expertise in accessibility development. With a longer-term expert subcontractor, TDF could then actually develop new capabilities rather than simply fix bugs and stand still like AOO. By adding to our list of approaches a managed but non-employee longer-term relationship with outside firms that is not limited to a single task, TDF would be able to both benefit from the flexibility of tendering and also gain the benefit of long-term staffing. You may have missed that my proposal already mentions something about it in page 9: "Their general role will be to fix bugs and features in full, fixing bugs that are blockers for community contributors and to help evaluating which complex tasks should be tackled by external specialists." https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/sFtCk9wiMWbt2pB It was an excellent idea to make the document editable, thanks Kendy, so I have added some words to this effect. Feel free to improve them! Another reason why I did not want to share my proposal open for editing to anyone is that it might happen that someone writes something that should not be written in a public document. Stating the name of a supplier and the way we would want to engage with them could reduce our bargaining power to get the best deal for TDF. We will publish public tenders open to all ensuring that there will be a level playing field so that any organisation will be able to participate. Cheers Simon -- *Simon Phipps* /TDF Trustee/ Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Merged proposal for in-house developers at TDF
onal financial risk to save LibreOffice, and never stopped volunteering in LibreOffice development and in TDF, so they deserve our greatest trust. Also tendering and in-house development are not interchangeable. The planned in-house development with 1-2 developers is not a viable option for LibreOffice development without the development activity of a couple dozen developers of these 4-5 companies (Collabora Productivity, allotropia, Red Hat Linux, NISZ, etc.) and unaffiliated developers (https://www.documentfoundation.org/gethelp/developers/). Likely the planned in-house development could spare a few tenders per year for the same or double price. If we are extremely lucky, we could spare much more, but if one of the companies, e.g. my client terminates LibreOffice development (because its long-term "aim to leave the development for the community"), the price could be much higher for the LibreOffice community, because the 1-2 new in-house developers couldn't replace losing 5 or more developers. Check my previous numbers about the real risk: how my client tries to find and keep the good developers continuously. I'm sure that TDF can minimize the risk of in-house development mentoring following the advice of our developer community, including advice of our highly appreciated free software companies, who primarily develop LibreOffice. But risk remains risk, and tendering still remains more important, because the best results of the possible future in-house development are still dwarfed by the code contribution of our free software companies. Fortunately, because the donations collected by TDF are largely due to the work of our free software companies. So not only LibreOffice, but TDF depends on our free software companies and vice versa. We depends on each other and we trust each other and we work together, and we can talk to each other, that is why we are a community. Best regards, László P.S. It's not only oversimplification, but insinuation speaking about "commercial companies" instead of free software companies or naming their developers, suggesting that employers and employees represent only business interest. Check these: “Our mission statement is to 'make open source rock'”. Collabora Productivity “The company allotropia software GmbH provides services, consulting and products around LibreOffice and related opensource projects. Founded in 2020 with 5 long-time developers of the project, its stated mission is to make LibreOffice shine – in as many different shapes and forms as necessary to serve modern needs towards office productivity software.” “to be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way” – Red Hat Linux “mission of NISZ to promote the spread of open source solutions”. It's all about free software. For example, I am not only a contractor, owner of a 1-person free software developer company, and volunteer of TDF, but I'm volunteering actively in free software development, too. See the new typographic features of LibreOffice 7.4 developed by me. Except the OOXML compatibility part, it's voluntary work: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.4#New_typographic_settings And I'm not alone, developers of our free software companies do similar amounts or more voluntary work for LibreOffice, showing their deep commitment. But also our paid work is all about free software and LibreOffice development. Whose interest is to create mistrust around us, dividing the community? I'm afraid, who doesn't know us and our work and does not even want to know us and our work. Regards, Andreas -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
