Hi all,
see below my answers.
1. Do you commit yourself to have enough time and the necessary
technological tools in order to participate to the regularly scheduled
board calls?
I'm very happy to invest my time in TDF as I've done during the current
term. For all of us, time is nowadays one of the most valuable assets we
have. My goal is to make TDF a welcoming place where all of us will want
to invest their time and feel they are achieving something great for
themselves, TDF and the wider LibreOffice community. The time all of you
invest into the project and the community is the most valuable thing you
give to TDF. Your commitment of time and skills makes possible what we
do together.
I have the necessary tools to participate to the board calls and the
various community meetings, like the marketing call or the native
language events.
2. Do you commit yourself to follow up and work on (at least) the main
items and actions you will volunteer to oversee or that will be
assigned to you by the board?
Yes I do. I have important goals I want to achieve together with you and
naturally I'm very happy to carry on sharing my experience in the legal
group on topics such as contracts, legal compliance and GDPR while
engaging also in other areas where I volunteered like events and
affiliations.
3. What is your willingness to delegate decisions, especially in lack
of time?
During the current board I've managed to participate in all meetings and
contributed to our decisions. For other areas where others have more
experience, I have happily delegated to and trusted subgroups. They
looked into specific issues and the tasks, to evaluate them in more
details, and reported back so that we could have a better overview of
the issues at hand to take informed decisions. Not having to micromanage
every single decision makes our work much more effective, and we can get
more things done.
One of my goals is to increase transparency from the board a lot. I
propose to take and explain many more decisions in public and not any
more behind closed doors. I am convinced we should also involve and
enable the community much more and make it possible for them to engage
in various specialisations and regional groups and make their ideas a
reality. I believe that the board should help people with their
engagement and approve programs that help communities being more active
instead - too often in the past the board has been the bottleneck.
4. What are your views on the foundation's budget? How should the
money be spent, besides our fixed costs?
I believe we should be directly involved in the improvement of
LibreOffice by employing 4 or 5 core developers within TDF. At present,
we are unable to support directly our community in terms of bug fixing
and specific developments that are not taken care of by other
developers, and I think we should change that. TDF has more options now
than we used to have, and we should take this as an opportunity to serve
better our community and users.
5. Should we work towards broadening our pool of contributors, both
technical and non-technical?
Absolutely yes. Contributors in all areas are the heart and soul of TDF.
Without their contributions, we are "just" a legal entity, but thanks to
them, we are the home of LibreOffice, one of the most important and
recognized free software projects. One of my goals is to create a
environment where contributors feel welcome, and are supported also by
TDF's team.
We have not yet reached many of the individuals and organisations that
could contribute to TDF and LibreOffice and enrich our community. We
surely need organisations and institutions to invest in the development
of the features and fixes they may need. We also need individuals that
can help with localization, marketing, events, QA, design, UX,
infrastructure, documentation, certification, install parties or simply
talk to friends about LibreOffice. Every contribution matters!
6. What actions do you suggest to increase the engagement and
participation of volunteers from local communities around the world in
project's activities?
We have many community members who have a lot of experience in this,
because they promote LibreOffice in their local community very
successfully. We should trust their wisdom, collect their valuable
feedback and prepare information packs and manuals for those who would
like to start as well. Many would like to begin doing something, but
starting from zero may put them off, as it takes a lot of effort. If we
share our experiences and give people the resources they can use and
adapt to the needs of their local community, it will help many more to
start participating.
7. Should the Foundation -as an entity distinct from the LibreOffice
project or the Document Liberation project- engage into growing its
influence and promoting and defending Free Software and Digital
Freedom? It is, after all, an int
