Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
On 15.02.22 17:11, Thorsten Behrens wrote: ...latest reasonably concrete plan around hosting our own bounty/crowdfunding platform... An example for zero-overhead-bounties is Lazarus (VCL for Freepascal) https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Bounties. Well no overhead means we still have to send money, given the (karma) community picks the tasks and decides whether it's done. -- Dr. Heiko Tietze, UX-Designer and UX-Mentor Tel: +49 30 5557992-63 | Mail: heiko.tie...@documentfoundation.org 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi all, On 15/02/2022 17:11, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Since bugfixing tends to be expensive, the proposal back then was to 'match' community funding with proceeds from e.g. app store sales; thus effectively steering money towards what users would prominently want (and also be willing to chip-in money for). Thank you for showing your support for even more internal developers. As the proposal includes investing in developers with funds coming from donors and the app stores the sooner we employ those developers the faster TDF can start satisfying their needs. Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Ah - my mail crossed Simons one. Killing this part of the thread now ;) Cor Nouws wrote on 15/02/2022 17:05: Hi Mike, *, Mike Saunders wrote on 15/02/2022 16:01: ... So some kind of bounty system may help to create a more direct link between users (especially donors) and developers. But then Ilmari has written about issues with FOSS bounty platforms before: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2021-January/086741.html Indeed, it is not all that easy. So I don't know what the solution is, but as someone who's monitoring our social media channels, Reddit and other things every day, I see a huge number of feature requests. Many end up on Bugzilla as enhancement requests too, of course. While working on the TDC plan, one of the elements was a channel to bring users, bounties, BugZilla issues and freelance developers together, also with the idea to grow the pool of LibreOffice developers. Cheers, Cor -- Cor Nouws, member Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint GPD key ID: 0xB13480A6 - 591A 30A7 36A0 CE3C 3D28 A038 E49D 7365 B134 80A6 mobile : +31 (0)6 25 20 7001 skype : cornouws blog: cor4office-nl.blogspot.com jabber : cor4off...@jabber.org -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Mike, all, Mike Saunders wrote: > So I don't know what the solution is, but as someone who's monitoring our > social media channels, Reddit and other things every day, I see a huge > number of feature requests. Many end up on Bugzilla as enhancement requests > too, of course. > Thx for that background & the link to Ilmari's writeup. It's clearly something we've pondered from the very early days on; the latest reasonably concrete plan around hosting our own bounty/crowdfunding platform was running this inside the planned business entity. Since bugfixing tends to be expensive, the proposal back then was to 'match' community funding with proceeds from e.g. app store sales; thus effectively steering money towards what users would prominently want (and also be willing to chip-in money for). Cheers, -- Thorsten signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Mike, *, Mike Saunders wrote on 15/02/2022 16:01: ... So some kind of bounty system may help to create a more direct link between users (especially donors) and developers. But then Ilmari has written about issues with FOSS bounty platforms before: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2021-January/086741.html Indeed, it is not all that easy. So I don't know what the solution is, but as someone who's monitoring our social media channels, Reddit and other things every day, I see a huge number of feature requests. Many end up on Bugzilla as enhancement requests too, of course. While working on the TDC plan, one of the elements was a channel to bring users, bounties, BugZilla issues and freelance developers together, also with the idea to grow the pool of LibreOffice developers. Cheers, Cor -- Cor Nouws, member Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint GPD key ID: 0xB13480A6 - 591A 30A7 36A0 CE3C 3D28 A038 E49D 7365 B134 80A6 mobile : +31 (0)6 25 20 7001 skype : cornouws blog: cor4office-nl.blogspot.com jabber : cor4off...@jabber.org -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi everyone, On 15.02.22 15:14, Cor Nouws wrote: Also: at the moment, there is no mechanism in place run bounties by e.g. bundling of donations of users. Would we have that, then it could be a way to allow donations to steer (a tiny bit of) development. Let me just add something here from a marketing / social media / Reddit etc. perspective. We see a huge amount of requests for new features and fixes, and our response is usually: "You can get involved and help out" (with a link to whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org), or "Consider funding a certified developer" (with a link to the relevant website page). A common reply to that is: "Well, I have no technical abilities to help out, and the certified developer page is long and it's not clear how much things cost" etc. So some kind of bounty system may help to create a more direct link between users (especially donors) and developers. But then Ilmari has written about issues with FOSS bounty platforms before: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2021-January/086741.html So I don't know what the solution is, but as someone who's monitoring our social media channels, Reddit and other things every day, I see a huge number of feature requests. Many end up on Bugzilla as enhancement requests too, of course. Mike -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Michael Meeks wrote on 10/02/2022 19:08: On 10/02/2022 14:53, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: This reminds me of a comment by MMeeks where he made reference to the fact that those who do not code have no say. Which is a total absurdity. That has slipped my memory. Mine too ;) Then I imagine what Daniel thought to remind, is a (irresponsible) simplification of a complex situation. Black-white: "users only use and developers do everything so they decide." Reality: "there is a huge variety of users and developers and the process of developing is more than (the fine and complex art of) coding." TDF as community is set up around meritocracy: people that do the work have a saying. And it is up to us to make all work smoothly :) Also: at the moment, there is no mechanism in place run bounties by e.g. bundling of donations of users. Would we have that, then it could be a way to allow donations to steer (a tiny bit of) development. Lacking that, it is the competence of the board to take care for good spending of the donations. Cheers, Cor -- Cor Nouws, member Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint GPD key ID: 0xB13480A6 - 591A 30A7 36A0 CE3C 3D28 A038 E49D 7365 B134 80A6 mobile : +31 (0)6 25 20 7001 skype : cornouws blog: cor4office-nl.blogspot.com jabber : cor4off...@jabber.org -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
El 10/2/22 a las 15:08, Michael Meeks escribió: Hi Daniel, On 10/02/2022 14:53, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: El 10/2/22 a las 08:30, Stephan Ficht escribió: So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Crystal clear, for some of us at least This reminds me of a comment by MMeeks where he made reference to the fact that those who do not code have no say. Which is a total absurdity. That has slipped my memory. Perhaps you could share a reference to this comment and its context to substantiate your summary. And it's rather unfair asking you this - when I get a blizzard of this sort of misrepresentation left & right from others, but I have come to expect better of you Daniel =) Me too, no doubt about it.- -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
El 10/2/22 a las 18:32, Andreas Mantke escribió: Hi, Am 10.02.22 um 16:54 schrieb Jan Holesovsky: Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:58 +0100: once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation in OOo project at that time. I may be wrong, it is a long time ago, but from what I remember, the problem was not the domination per se [though please don't understand me as supporting domination ;-)], but the unwillingness to communicate & seek consensus how to improve the situation for contributors. it seemed there are different worlds for developer and other community members. I and others had the impression that the project domination by one company at that time wasn't healthy and that the engagement of this dominant player would end very soon (because of their business management model). This was the reason why we get involved in the LibreOffice project from day one. We, the majority of the German speaking community members, left the OOo project and had to fight against accusatory mails from employees etc. But we withstand this violating situation and invested a lot of our spare time and resources to make the German language project vital. Thus I think it is important for community members, which remember the situation of 2010, to avoid a situation, where only or nearly only one company dominates the project and especially one area of the project. The incorporation of a foundation was meant to avoid such situation. But currently I think, the idea behind this action was not shared by all TDF members and maybe we had to have set stricter rules to avoid cluster risk in the TDF bodies. And one thing which I take with me from this discussion is the evidence that it is (nearly?) impossible to wear two hats at the same time. Regards, Andreas Completely agree with what you said. -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Simon, thanks for all your considerations regarding accessibility. On 10/02/2022 23.25, Simon Phipps wrote: The challenges are often attached to systemic issues and need extended time of LibreOffice experts to unpick the root cause before implementing the fix - even specifying them to tender takes research and pre-work as I expect you know. We've tendered these sorts of issues, and we could consider employing someone to deal with them full time, yes. However, there are also specialist elements - having accessibility devices for testing, for example. My sense is we would be better off paying an existing expert team (there are a few companies who specialise, not necessarily "the usual suspects") to take on the whole backlog for us for maybe 18 months, doing both engineering management and implementation and joining the ESC while they do. After that I'd return to the topic and reconsider the best approach in the light of that experience. I can see pros and cons for both approaches (internal developer, tender). In case of tendering, I think some cooperation of a11y experts and LO experts (like a company specializing on a11y + "one of the usual suspects") might even be more ideal than just an a11y-specialized company by itself, since from what I've seen so far, I suspect that some of the issues are somewhere deep down in the Writer/Calc/... stack that might take people without any previous experience with LibreOffice development quite a while to get into. In any case, I think it would be important to also make sure that there will be a possibility to get a11y issues fixed in the future as well. In case of a TDF developer, that should be relatively straight-forward because the developer can "just work on it". In case of tendering, I would see a need for some kind of arrangement that will allow to hand out follow-up tasks without having to go via the usual tendering process, which would otherwise allow an issue that is identified today to be considered only in a proposal for next year's tendering budget, so there would be quite a delay. (I don't know whether that's possible, but maybe, some longer-running contract to be able to hand out additional smaller work items flexibly as needed might be a solution, once the initial work has been finished.) Best regards, Michael -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
+1 from me Ciao Paolo Note to self: propose to institute a position for an honorary member of the board. On 10/02/2022 22:32, Andreas Mantke wrote: Hi, Am 10.02.22 um 16:54 schrieb Jan Holesovsky: Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:58 +0100: once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation in OOo project at that time. I may be wrong, it is a long time ago, but from what I remember, the problem was not the domination per se [though please don't understand me as supporting domination ;-)], but the unwillingness to communicate & seek consensus how to improve the situation for contributors. it seemed there are different worlds for developer and other community members. I and others had the impression that the project domination by one company at that time wasn't healthy and that the engagement of this dominant player would end very soon (because of their business management model). This was the reason why we get involved in the LibreOffice project from day one. We, the majority of the German speaking community members, left the OOo project and had to fight against accusatory mails from employees etc. But we withstand this violating situation and invested a lot of our spare time and resources to make the German language project vital. Thus I think it is important for community members, which remember the situation of 2010, to avoid a situation, where only or nearly only one company dominates the project and especially one area of the project. The incorporation of a foundation was meant to avoid such situation. But currently I think, the idea behind this action was not shared by all TDF members and maybe we had to have set stricter rules to avoid cluster risk in the TDF bodies. And one thing which I take with me from this discussion is the evidence that it is (nearly?) impossible to wear two hats at the same time. Regards, Andreas -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi, Am 10.02.22 um 16:54 schrieb Jan Holesovsky: Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:58 +0100: once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation in OOo project at that time. I may be wrong, it is a long time ago, but from what I remember, the problem was not the domination per se [though please don't understand me as supporting domination ;-)], but the unwillingness to communicate & seek consensus how to improve the situation for contributors. it seemed there are different worlds for developer and other community members. I and others had the impression that the project domination by one company at that time wasn't healthy and that the engagement of this dominant player would end very soon (because of their business management model). This was the reason why we get involved in the LibreOffice project from day one. We, the majority of the German speaking community members, left the OOo project and had to fight against accusatory mails from employees etc. But we withstand this violating situation and invested a lot of our spare time and resources to make the German language project vital. Thus I think it is important for community members, which remember the situation of 2010, to avoid a situation, where only or nearly only one company dominates the project and especially one area of the project. The incorporation of a foundation was meant to avoid such situation. But currently I think, the idea behind this action was not shared by all TDF members and maybe we had to have set stricter rules to avoid cluster risk in the TDF bodies. And one thing which I take with me from this discussion is the evidence that it is (nearly?) impossible to wear two hats at the same time. Regards, Andreas -- ## Free Software Advocate ## Plone add-on developer ## My blog: http://www.amantke.de/blog -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Thorsten, all, On 10/02/2022 18.07, Thorsten Behrens wrote: It is putting the cart in front of the horse though, to start with: * we want TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice and then follow with * therefore we must employ two developers Whether or not that's an adequate summary of Paolo's proposal is not up to me to judge, but... I believe it is more productive to start thinking about what we want to achieve, in order to fulfill our mission. It is therefore encouraging to read some good thoughts about that (RTL/CTL, a11y, and other under-developed areas with little ecosystem contributions). The board can then ponder what is the best way to achieve those goals, relative to other demands. It is possible, but by no means certain, that actually hiring specialised staff is indeed the most economic way forward (e.g. for an area like a11y). ... I completely agree that having a clear goal and considering the pros and cons of different approaches to get there before taking a decision definitely makes sense. Best regards, Michael -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Daniel, On 10/02/2022 14:53, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote: El 10/2/22 a las 08:30, Stephan Ficht escribió: So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Crystal clear, for some of us at least This reminds me of a comment by MMeeks where he made reference to the fact that those who do not code have no say. Which is a total absurdity. That has slipped my memory. Perhaps you could share a reference to this comment and its context to substantiate your summary. And it's rather unfair asking you this - when I get a blizzard of this sort of misrepresentation left & right from others, but I have come to expect better of you Daniel =) Thanks ! Michael. -- michael.me...@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity Hangout: mejme...@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks (M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Thorsten! Thanks for your positive contribution which I agree with completely (although I do have a comment, see below). On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 5:09 PM Thorsten Behrens wrote: > Hi *, > > with the lively discussion ensuing here, it is perhaps worth sharing > my position ahead of the board call tomorrow: > > Paolo Vecchi wrote: > > Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house > developers > > to address our donors specific needs > > > I think it is worth considering, whether TDF should employ dedicated > developers. I'm not in general against it. > > It is putting the cart in front of the horse though, to start with: > > * we want TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice > > and then follow with > > * therefore we must employ two developers > > I believe it is more productive to start thinking about what we want > to achieve, in order to fulfill our mission. It is therefore > encouraging to read some good thoughts about that (RTL/CTL, a11y, and > other under-developed areas with little ecosystem contributions). > > The board can then ponder what is the best way to achieve those goals, > relative to other demands. It is possible, but by no means certain, > that actually hiring specialised staff is indeed the most economic way > forward (e.g. for an area like a11y). > For Accessibility, my preference would be to tender for a specialist organisation to either triage accessibility bugs or implement capabilities for a fixed period followed by a performance review and re-tendering (possibly for a longer period). By doing that we would avoid having to also develop in-house engineering management and product accessibility expertise. This is beyond the current tendering practice in that we would ask the successful applicant to also direct and design their work. > > It should be noted though, also to manage expectations, that mastering > even a small area in LibreOffice takes many years to learn. So hiring > for a role has long-term implications then on which kind of tasks, > features or bugfixes can be done in-house. > > Cheers, > > -- Thorsten > -- *Simon Phipps* *TDF Trustee*
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Thorsten, On 10/02/2022 17.55, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Sole users (i.e. without contributing anything to the community) are to my mind never part of a FLOSS project community. Just to mention it, the KDE Code of Conduct [1] contains this: Our community is made up of several groups of individuals and organizations which can roughly be divided into two groups: * Contributors, or those who add value to the project through improving KDE software and its services * Users, or those who add value to the project through their support as consumers of KDE software and I remember that the importance of users was emphasized at some in-person event I attended (probably Akademy) as well. Of course, one could try to make a distinction between users that contribute something back and those who do not, but I don't know whether that would be particularly helpful, or even easy. (E.g. is a user that only uses the software for themselves not part of the community, but one who recommends it to others is, because they "spread the word"? - And maybe one of those starts getting active in some "official" area in the LibreOffice project, or migrates their company from a proprietary office suite to an LTS version from an ecosystem company,...) Best regards, Michael [1] https://kde.org/code-of-conduct/ -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi all, I'd just like to comment on the exchange below, from my perspective: Le 10/02/2022 à 15:27, Italo Vignoli a écrit : Then there is a number of donors who ask to stop the recurring donation. Some of them provide a reason, which in some cases is that he wanted to donate once and not on a recurring basis, in some cases lack of money, and in some other because they don't use the software anymore (no bug or other technical reason provided). A small number of donors block donations because the software doesn't fit their needs or is too difficult to use (again, without providing any technical reason or a bug). You should always consider the fact that only a very small number of users is capable of spotting bugs, as for them the software always works as intended. It took me several years to get a marginal understanding of bugs, and I have been working in technology environments since 1982. The majority of users is technically dumb, including people who are supposed to be competent, and this is just a fact. Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets for such cases? Since 2013, not a single user has related stopping donations with bugs, while some donors have related their donation to solving bugs. Were I a recurring business donor, I would do this, in the event I wanted to stop donating and a particular bug or bugs were preventing me from using LibreOffice in my business. Mind you, to be honest, even then, I personally wouldn't have much expectation of the situation changing. One of the reasons I'm not a recurring donor is because I have to ask myself why, as the manager of a small business, I would do that (I do use the "paid" versions from the Apple Store commercial entity though). Do I feel the need for some kind of ROI ? I would argue that, yes, I do. After all, if I am prepared to pay a subscription to a business such as Microsoft for its online product offering, or take out a Google Workspace subscription, then for the amount I pay out for the small number of users in the business, I would argue that contributing a similar monthly amount to the LibreOffice project entitles me to something other than a free download for my OS of choice. This is where the rationale of the well-wishing world of an OSS software foundation and its relation to small business users and potential donors hits the rails of reality hard. Of course, I could give out of the kindness of my heart, and have done in the very distant past - but in business, and especially small business, my outgoings are not ruled by my heart, they are ruled by my bottom line. I would then argue that if I perceived that any donation I might make might actually go toward fixing one of the bugs that affects me, I could see a stronger business case for repeat donations. Obviously, if a bug I reported 10 years ago is still laying around untouched, I might come to the realisation that no one is ever going to fix it and stop donating as a result. Currently, I do not see that. It certainly isn't the case with the commercial entity, whose own business criteria and priorities are clearly not the same as mine. Fair enough, as a business we all have to make money, but then an inevitable decision will be taken to stop using the commercial entity's offering, and possibly, even probably, stop using LibreOffice altogether. I also know we've had the discussion about bug bounties before and gone round and round - without result. I wish there was some alternative that would appeal to people in a situation like the one I find myself in. Currently, none of the ways of financially contributing are appealing, save as a charitable benefactor with no expectations whatsoever. As an individual person, I might well do that - as a business with other more pressing demands on my pocket, not so much. I'm not even sure that there is a solution to the above. Alex -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi *, with the lively discussion ensuing here, it is perhaps worth sharing my position ahead of the board call tomorrow: Paolo Vecchi wrote: > Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers > to address our donors specific needs > I think it is worth considering, whether TDF should employ dedicated developers. I'm not in general against it. It is putting the cart in front of the horse though, to start with: * we want TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice and then follow with * therefore we must employ two developers I believe it is more productive to start thinking about what we want to achieve, in order to fulfill our mission. It is therefore encouraging to read some good thoughts about that (RTL/CTL, a11y, and other under-developed areas with little ecosystem contributions). The board can then ponder what is the best way to achieve those goals, relative to other demands. It is possible, but by no means certain, that actually hiring specialised staff is indeed the most economic way forward (e.g. for an area like a11y). It should be noted though, also to manage expectations, that mastering even a small area in LibreOffice takes many years to learn. So hiring for a role has long-term implications then on which kind of tasks, features or bugfixes can be done in-house. Cheers, -- Thorsten signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi wrote: > I was actually disagreeing with a statement saying that users are not part > of the community. > Then we have to agree to disagree. Sole users (i.e. without contributing anything to the community) are to my mind never part of a FLOSS project community. The rest of your answer are mostly unproductive jabs at various people, that I refuse to interact with. Cheers, -- Thorsten signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi all, On 10/02/2022 12:59, Thorsten Behrens wrote: Hi *, Paolo Vecchi wrote: On 09/02/2022 15:57, Jan Holesovsky wrote: It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as opposed to "users". "Users" are not part of the "community", until they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under the TDF umbrella, etc. I'm sorry but I have to strongly disagree with your statement. In fact Paolo wasn't disagreeing so much, just stressed that users should be encouraged to become contributors. I was actually disagreeing with a statement saying that users are not part of the community. On the statement per se, that we (as in, TDF, and its board in particular) predominantly need to care and listen to our contributors, I would believe there's hardly any disagreement in the community. Sure that we have to listen but that doesn't mean we have to do all what contributors say as some ideas passionately promoted by some contributors within the board turned out to be suboptimal and cost months of work and arguing. I think that, as part of the on-boarding process, we should include a session hosted by Florian and Mike Schinagl that clarifies to all why TDF has been created, what its role is and what we should all keep in mind while performing our duties as members of the board. While it is important for the new board to know what TDF can, and cannot do (and in fact Paolo will find an email in his inbox, where Florian is announcing exactly such an onboarding), the role of the board is the opposite - to lead, within the limits of the charitable laws, where the community needs us to go. From the exchanges I've seen it seems like it's really important to make clear what TDF is and what was set up to do. Looking at the reasons why TDF was started almost 12 years ago shouldn't be the sole guiding principle. Living in the past is not a good board strategy. While we should clearly evolve and grow, TDF has been setup for a specific reason and it has been incorporated on purpose as a Foundation (Stiftung) to preserve its guiding principles. It seems like it's more important than ever to remind ourselves of that and have a nice session with Florian and Mike Schinagl to tell us more about it. The feedback we are receiving and the legal consultations we had confirm that employing developers to contribute directly to LibreOffice fits perfectly with TDF's purpose and objectives and allows to do more for our community. Paraphrasing slightly what someone said quite a few years ago "Ask not what your community can do for you - ask what you can do for your community" so TDF should lead and do before expecting others to do. I'll not comment on the quotes out of a press article, shown without much context and lacking a link to the original source (which would be good practice). The article (https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/libreoffice_ecosystem_beyond_utterly_broken/) was written in the context of the LOOL and MarComm plan discussions, and the fallout around the LibreOffice Personal / LibreOffice Community arguments. I recommend reading it in full. I did not link the article on purpose as it really doesn't make the two person involved look good at all, it denigrates TDF, it reports misconceptions that have been clarified, it states that TDF cannot do things that are actually in the statutes and in general did not reflect the thoughts of the majority of the board. It nearly got a quite strong public answer but some preferred to avoid it. Finally, on the apparent contradiction between what Andreas (lawyer, TDF founder, long-term board member) and Paolo state on what TDF is permitted to do: this is part of an ongoing discussion with various experts. I would much prefer not discussing difficult legal matters on a public list. They are not difficult legal matters, they are just basic legal consultations that gave us confirmation that we can do much more that previously thought. I'm quite sure that Andreas (lawyer, TDF founder, long-term board member) would agree with Paolo (nothing much apparently) if he were a board member in this term and participated to the legal consultations. There is also no contradiction as Andreas summarised well the final scope for the employment of the developers which is the same scope for our tenders. Cheers, -- Thorsten Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Andreas, Andreas Mantke píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:58 +0100: > once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a > different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation > in OOo project at that time. I may be wrong, it is a long time ago, but from what I remember, the problem was not the domination per se [though please don't understand me as supporting domination ;-)], but the unwillingness to communicate & seek consensus how to improve the situation for contributors. [This is also why I insist that "community" means the contributors - the situation was perfectly fine for the users; they were getting their builds for free & were happy.] At that time: * There was the CWS system that was forcing contributors to go through a complicated process even for the simplest fixes + unless you have found a friendly internal engineer who was kind enough to include your patch into their CWS + not to mention that the access to CWS was restricted for the outside for a long time in the first place * CVS was a disaster for version control + and I've created a working, usable git import + yet Mercurial was favored, even though not ready for the OOo size + so the conversion was postponed and OOo was converted to Subversion as a temporary measure + then 2 years later converted to Mercurial - with a terrible penalty for the non-internal contributors, because Mercurial had to download 500MB of metadata for each branch [which might be OK'ish these days - but this was 11 years ago and more] + only to be converted to Subversion again [at Apache] + and then finally to git * the localization went through the .sdf files + I was not involved in this, so I have only vague memories it was a terrible pain for the l10n community * the build system was a disaster by itself due to build.pl & dmake + and worse, the company had a different, internal one - so no interest in improving it for the contributors + but at least Bjoern has invented the gbuild while being an internal engineer, regardless of the internal pushback - he's a hero; and I have fond memories of other heroes who helped to make the contributing easier - still - the general approach of the company was to make the contribution hard. * I'm sure there's more; but luckily I forgot :-) So if you see any sign of an ecosystem company trying to make contributing harder (like the above), please do shout - contributing must be as easy as possible for everybody who wants to contribute! All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
El 10/2/22 a las 08:30, Stephan Ficht escribió: Hello, wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind: "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives. So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Crystal clear, for some of us at least This reminds me of a comment by MMeeks where he made reference to the fact that those who do not code have no say. Which is a total absurdity. Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading water and getting nowhere. Cheers, Stephan -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Italo, Awesome, thank you so much for the summary! All the best, Kendy Italo Vignoli píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 15:27 +0100: > On 2/10/22 14:56, Jan Holesovsky wrote: > > > Comes to my mind - as you deal with the donors daily, and > > particularly > > ask them why do they want to stop their recurring donations (in > > case > > they do), I wonder if there is an aggregated data available > > somewhere? > > The majority of recurring donations is stopped immediately after the > first donation by the donor, when he gets the receipt and realizes > that > he has triggered a recurring donation instead of a one off. > > Then there is a number of donors who ask to stop the recurring > donation. > Some of them provide a reason, which in some cases is that he wanted > to > donate once and not on a recurring basis, in some cases lack of > money, > and in some other because they don't use the software anymore (no bug > or > other technical reason provided). > > A small number of donors block donations because the software > doesn't > fit their needs or is too difficult to use (again, without providing > any > technical reason or a bug). > > You should always consider the fact that only a very small number of > users is capable of spotting bugs, as for them the software always > works > as intended. It took me several years to get a marginal understanding > of > bugs, and I have been working in technology environments since 1982. > The > majority of users is technically dumb, including people who are > supposed > to be competent, and this is just a fact. > > > Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any > > longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets > > for > > such cases? > > Since 2013, not a single user has related stopping donations with > bugs, > while some donors have related their donation to solving bugs. > > Best regards, Italo > -- > Italo Vignoli - it...@vignoli.org > mobile/signal +39.348.5653829 > GPG Key ID - 0xAAB8D5C0 > DB75 1534 3FD0 EA5F 56B5 FDA6 DE82 934C AAB8 D5C0 > > -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
On 2/10/22 14:56, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Comes to my mind - as you deal with the donors daily, and particularly ask them why do they want to stop their recurring donations (in case they do), I wonder if there is an aggregated data available somewhere? The majority of recurring donations is stopped immediately after the first donation by the donor, when he gets the receipt and realizes that he has triggered a recurring donation instead of a one off. Then there is a number of donors who ask to stop the recurring donation. Some of them provide a reason, which in some cases is that he wanted to donate once and not on a recurring basis, in some cases lack of money, and in some other because they don't use the software anymore (no bug or other technical reason provided). A small number of donors block donations because the software doesn't fit their needs or is too difficult to use (again, without providing any technical reason or a bug). You should always consider the fact that only a very small number of users is capable of spotting bugs, as for them the software always works as intended. It took me several years to get a marginal understanding of bugs, and I have been working in technology environments since 1982. The majority of users is technically dumb, including people who are supposed to be competent, and this is just a fact. Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets for such cases? Since 2013, not a single user has related stopping donations with bugs, while some donors have related their donation to solving bugs. Best regards, Italo -- Italo Vignoli - it...@vignoli.org mobile/signal +39.348.5653829 GPG Key ID - 0xAAB8D5C0 DB75 1534 3FD0 EA5F 56B5 FDA6 DE82 934C AAB8 D5C0 -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Stephan, Stephan Ficht píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 14:28 +0100: > Yeah, on the one hand it's satisfaction, and from my POV dealing > with > donors nearly every day, on the other hand, and in many cases, it's > even > an incentive, a support, and an expectation to improve what the wide > community will provide and share in the future. Thank you very much for that! Comes to my mind - as you deal with the donors daily, and particularly ask them why do they want to stop their recurring donations (in case they do), I wonder if there is an aggregated data available somewhere? Also, in case it is a concrete problem that stops them donating any longer, please do you have an opportunity to file bugzilla tickets for such cases? All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Olivier, +1 Am 10.02.22 um 13:50 schrieb Olivier Hallot: One cent in donation is a manifest of satisfaction on LibreOffice. It sums to ~1M yearly of users satisfaction. Yeah, on the one hand it's satisfaction, and from my POV dealing with donors nearly every day, on the other hand, and in many cases, it's even an incentive, a support, and an expectation to improve what the wide community will provide and share in the future. Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic stuff, documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels and regional meetings. I wonder who is actually listening to users. IMO, very important to do so. "Users / not yet users" is the large total from which derives the subsets I mentioned previously. Cheers, Stephan -- Stephan Ficht, Administrative Assistant Tel: +49 30 5557992-64 | Mail: stephan.fi...@documentfoundation.org The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Olivier, Olivier Hallot wrote: > Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic stuff, > documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels and regional > meetings. > I would consider those users contributors. > I wonder who is actually listening to users. > I believe many of us do? It's just that in case of conflicting requirements, I would (almost) always prioritize contributors' needs over (non-contributing) user requests. That also creates incentives, for users to become contributors. Cheers, -- Thorsten signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Thanks Olivier! I'm pleased that you clarified the importance of users so well but I'm also worried about the fact that this clarification was needed in the first place. Ciao Paolo On 10/02/2022 13:50, Olivier Hallot wrote: Thanks for making it clearer. I'd like to imagine LibreOffice with myriads of code contributors and no users. Better not. Fact: users donate. Currently donation is not tied to any TDF obligation, it is an expression of satisfaction or good will. Donation is a also pain that users go thru in spending time and money to express their satisfaction. One cent in donation is a manifest of satisfaction on LibreOffice. It sums to ~1M yearly of users satisfaction. Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic stuff, documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels and regional meetings. I wonder who is actually listening to users. Olivier Em 10/02/2022 08:30, Stephan Ficht escreveu: Hello, wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind: "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives. So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading water and getting nowhere. Cheers, Stephan -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Kendy, On 10/02/2022 10:49, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:56 +0100: He asked himself quite a few interesting questions: "Without sharing too much, there are some moral questions popping up for me. Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what matters more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth? Is ownCloud just another company or do we also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?" Shouldn't we all ask ourselves the same questions? Awesome - so now you finally understand how hard a decision it was for us (Free Software lovers & contributors for decades) to move the LOOL development to GitHub - because it was the result of asking & pondering the same questions. Thank you for that! I'm not sure it's as awesome as you may think. What NextCloud seems to have done is practically the contrary to what Collabora did. I never talked with Frank about it, and even if it happened I wouldn't share it without his permission, but his own published thoughts seem to indicate that for him his Open Source ethos wasn't fully respected in a company that was going "too commercial" that's why I wondered "Was Frank feeling that the commercial drive was clashing with his Open Source ethos?" I don't think I ever heard Frank saying that NextCloud users were not part of the community or complaining that there were too many freeloaders like others do. We have any a couple of public threads that you may find useful to view the LOOL issue from both sides. They are linked here: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00099.html The clear summary anyway is that LOOL, conceived as a project that should have been delivered to the community, has been forked as commercial interests prevailed regardless of the agreements in place, the negotiations that were still ongoing and the marketing plan, which included LOOL, being developed. Particularly: * TDF does not own the community, TDF is an organization designed to make the community (let me repeat, "community" = "group of contributors") strong & flourishing. I reported verbatim Frank's questions. He probably was wondering if a community should be "owned" by a commercial organisation. Then see my previous email in regards to the definition of "community": https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00167.html * TDF does not own LibreOffice itself; it owns the brand, but the code, translations, etc. is owned by the particular contributors (ie. by the community) - to the level of lines of code, strings of translations, icons painted, test cases provided, etc. Also NextCloud GmbH doesn't own the code it produced or the code, translations, etc. produced by contributors. It doesn't even own its brand as a foundation owns it. TDF has been created as the home of LibreOffice and its community. See the rest of the email you omitted, towards the end: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00164.html * Long term responsibility & growth matter more - and when the LOOL's (sub-)community didn't grow under TDF, it was time to move on. The decisions shouldn't be about donation money. When in the early days a SUSE employee proposed to TDF the LOOL project he was developing more contributors came along. It seems like at some point contributions stopped. We may need to investigate to help us understanding what went wrong and avoid similar mistakes in future. Did some contributions stop because some thought that they were contributing to a company instead of a community? Did the contributors get employed by Collabora so it looked like nobody else was interested in contributing? Was the project too complex for many individual contributors to deal with? Other factors at play? And regarding the last one: "Is TDF just another foundation or do we also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?" is for us, the new board, to improve - Well, removing the name of a commercial organisation that Frank was leaving behind and replacing it with the non for profit and independent TDF frames things in a very different way. Anyway of course we have to focus on the millions of users and hundreds of contributors that form our community and support us in various ways with code, localization, marketing, infrastructure, QA, design, word of mouth, events and activities, donations and in many more ways. because from what I can see, TDF was not listening to the contributors the last 2 years too much. As Lothar said members of the board listened and had to work very hard to fix many issues and to get the relevant information showing that TDF can do much more that it has been thought including investing in developers. Let's improve it together! Yes but let's keep in mind that
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Thanks for making it clearer. I'd like to imagine LibreOffice with myriads of code contributors and no users. Better not. Fact: users donate. Currently donation is not tied to any TDF obligation, it is an expression of satisfaction or good will. Donation is a also pain that users go thru in spending time and money to express their satisfaction. One cent in donation is a manifest of satisfaction on LibreOffice. It sums to ~1M yearly of users satisfaction. Other users express their happiness translating, adding linguistic stuff, documenting and building culture in askbot, telegram channels and regional meetings. I wonder who is actually listening to users. Olivier Em 10/02/2022 08:30, Stephan Ficht escreveu: Hello, wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind: "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives. So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading water and getting nowhere. Cheers, Stephan -- Olivier Hallot LibreOffice Documentation Coordinator Rio de Janeiro - Brasil - Local Time: UTC-03:00 LibreOffice – free and open source office suite: https://www.libreoffice.org Respects your privacy, and gives you back control over your data http://tdf.io/joinus OpenPGP_0x59F8BA50F9918DE6.asc Description: OpenPGP public key OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Stephan,
Stephan Ficht píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 12:30 +0100:
> wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my
> mind:
>
> "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is
> subset
> of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives.
Thank you! Unfortunately it is not as easy, when you look at that as
"sets".
"contributors of code" is definitely a subset of "contributors of
anything". "Contributors of anything" could be a subset of "community"
(though I argue "contributors of anything" equals to "community" - but
that is an unimportant detail here).
But the "community" is not a subset of "TDF" - there are many
contributors ("community" by the above definition) who are not TDF
trustees.
So from the sets point of view, "TDF" is a subset of "community" too.
[Of course, that is assuming the Membership committee does not allow
non-contributors to became TDF trustees (but I believe that's the case
:-) ) - because then the "TDF" and "community" would only have an
intersection.]
> So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic
> for
> the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice.
Definitely, I agree with you, and I believe listening to others &
seeking for consensus is key.
All the best,
Kendy
--
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Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Stephan, Le 10/02/2022 à 12:30, Stephan Ficht a écrit : Hello, wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind: "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives. So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading water and getting nowhere. Really thank you, I was feeling the same and didn't know how to write it, you did it perfectly :) Cheers Sophie -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi *, Paolo Vecchi wrote: > On 09/02/2022 15:57, Jan Holesovsky wrote: > > It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as > > opposed to "users". "Users" are not part of the "community", until > > they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under > > the TDF umbrella, etc. > > I'm sorry but I have to strongly disagree with your statement. > In fact Paolo wasn't disagreeing so much, just stressed that users should be encouraged to become contributors. That's indeed a very important, and perhaps an under-used approach to increase overall contributions in the project! On the statement per se, that we (as in, TDF, and its board in particular) predominantly need to care and listen to our contributors, I would believe there's hardly any disagreement in the community. > I think that, as part of the on-boarding process, we should include a > session hosted by Florian and Mike Schinagl that clarifies to all why TDF > has been created, what its role is and what we should all keep in mind while > performing our duties as members of the board. > While it is important for the new board to know what TDF can, and cannot do (and in fact Paolo will find an email in his inbox, where Florian is announcing exactly such an onboarding), the role of the board is the opposite - to lead, within the limits of the charitable laws, where the community needs us to go. Looking at the reasons why TDF was started almost 12 years ago shouldn't be the sole guiding principle. Living in the past is not a good board strategy. I'll not comment on the quotes out of a press article, shown without much context and lacking a link to the original source (which would be good practice). The article (https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/16/libreoffice_ecosystem_beyond_utterly_broken/) was written in the context of the LOOL and MarComm plan discussions, and the fallout around the LibreOffice Personal / LibreOffice Community arguments. I recommend reading it in full. Finally, on the apparent contradiction between what Andreas (lawyer, TDF founder, long-term board member) and Paolo state on what TDF is permitted to do: this is part of an ongoing discussion with various experts. I would much prefer not discussing difficult legal matters on a public list. Cheers, -- Thorsten signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Regis, Regis Perdreau píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 11:21 +0100: > Some parts of LibreOffice are not covered by the ecosystem... > Although we sometimes have customers who ask for improvements : If you talk about customers - it sounds like there is a company willing to pay to fix those. With my Collabora hat on, I'd love somebody from our company to talk to those customers to see what we can offer them. But with my TDF hat on - why should TDF, paid by donations from real, living people, use those donations to employ developers to fix stuff for enterprises? > May be those topics below are not fashionable but they contribute to > give some credibility to LibreOffice > > - VBA compatibility > - Basic bugs > - Base enhancement > - Python support > - Math equation > - Slide transition > - documents signature support (CNG api) > - All most annoying bugs... I didn't check how many of these were proposed for tendering - but I think some of these were. Can you please add the missing ones as proposals, so that it is possible to rate them & see which of them are in line with the TDF goals & TDF can tender them? Thank you very much! All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
+1 Maybe the only thing missing is "users" as subset of community. I guess that the "contributors of anything" are also "users" of LibreOffice and that any "user" is a potential "contributor of anything" ;-) Ciao Paolo On 10/02/2022 12:30, Stephan Ficht wrote: Hello, wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind: "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives. So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading water and getting nowhere. Cheers, Stephan -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hello, wrt the subject line and reading through this thread comes in my mind: "contributors of code" is subset of "contributors of anything" is subset of "community" is subset of TDF to fulfill its written objectives. So, everyone and everything being an important piece in the mosaic for the big picture for a FLOSS office suite, called LibreOffice. Perhaps trivial, but it is just as easy to constructively get behind these TDF objectives instead of getting lost in the details, treading water and getting nowhere. Cheers, Stephan -- Stephan Ficht, Administrative Assistant Tel: +49 30 5557992-64 | Mail: stephan.fi...@documentfoundation.org The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi, Some parts of LibreOffice are not covered by the ecosystem... Although we sometimes have customers who ask for improvements : May be those topics below are not fashionable but they contribute to give some credibility to LibreOffice - VBA compatibility - Basic bugs - Base enhancement - Python support - Math equation - Slide transition - documents signature support (CNG api) - All most annoying bugs... All the best Régis Perdreau Le jeu. 10 févr. 2022 à 11:30, Jan Holesovsky a écrit : > Hi Lothar, > > Lothar K. Becker píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 11:12 +0100: > > > It was one of my first and foremost task as chair - and let me add it > > was hard time consuming work - that everybody was heard and could > > speak, it is simply not true, that contributors wasn't heard. > > I am sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I've seen it myself in the > public parts of the calls I were attending how hard a job it must have > been for you given the conditions, and I am sure you *yourself* made > everything to listen very carefully - thank you for that! > > And the same way - I want thank everyone who were carefully listening & > considering, instead of just pushing their agenda. > > All the best, > Kendy > > -- > 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Lothar, Lothar K. Becker píše v Čt 10. 02. 2022 v 11:12 +0100: > It was one of my first and foremost task as chair - and let me add it > was hard time consuming work - that everybody was heard and could > speak, it is simply not true, that contributors wasn't heard. I am sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I've seen it myself in the public parts of the calls I were attending how hard a job it must have been for you given the conditions, and I am sure you *yourself* made everything to listen very carefully - thank you for that! And the same way - I want thank everyone who were carefully listening & considering, instead of just pushing their agenda. All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Kendy, Am 10.02.2022 um 10:49 schrieb Jan Holesovsky: because from what I can see, TDF was not listening to the contributors the last 2 years too much. sorry to step in here but at this point I have to take part: It was one of my first and foremost task as chair - and let me add it was hard time consuming work - that everybody was heard and could speak, it is simply not true, that contributors wasn't heard. It is a different issue, if all of that got a majority in deciding in the board or was convincing everybody, there you could certainly be different opinion, but not for the pure fact if contributors wasn't heard. I think this is worth to differentiate. Nevertheless there is always room for improvement, for which the new board certainly should reach out. Thanks Lothar -- Lothar K. Becker, 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 mail: lot...@documentfoundation.org phone: +49 7202 9499 001 (c/o .riess applications gmbh) -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Kendy, On 09/02/2022 15:57, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 15:09 +0100: The community and our valuable members of the ecosystem have been asking us to invest more in development It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as opposed to "users". "Users" are not part of the "community", until they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under the TDF umbrella, etc. I'm sorry but I have to strongly disagree with your statement. "contributors" are not opposed to "users" as users, which are/could become contributors at any time, are amongst the main beneficiaries of all TDF does as from our statutes and mission as a Foundation. We do encourage users to contribute in any way they can even with simple things like filing a bug or simply promoting LibreOffice to their friends and family helps our community. Even the simple fact that they use LibreOffice can be part of fulfilling our goals as it helps with the "distribution of FLOSS philosophical and cultural ideals". On libreoffice.org we can also read: "LibreOffice is Free and Open Source Software. Development is open to new talent and new ideas, and our software is tested and used daily by a large and devoted user community." Even Collabora's own forum includes users in their own community "competent community of users, integrators, and developers" I think that, as part of the on-boarding process, we should include a session hosted by Florian and Mike Schinagl that clarifies to all why TDF has been created, what its role is and what we should all keep in mind while performing our duties as members of the board. With that in mind - can you please point us to those requests? There are plenty of examples in board's public and private meetings and even in articles that have been published quoting members of the ecosystem. Eg: 'TDF has around €1.5m in the bank, Meeks said, but something that may surprise outsiders is that the foundation cannot and does not use that money to employ developers.' 'Thorsten Behrens, IT lead for LibreOffice at CIB, told The Register he was "99 per cent in agreement" with Meeks, adding: "The TDF is a charity; it's not in the business of developing software and actually cannot, because that would put it in competition with the commercial ecosystem," as well as threatening its charitable status.' or 'Turning TDF donations into feature/function improvements is not only a process that at best is approximately 10% of that total development..." These clear calls, from 2020, for TDF to invest more in developers have been listened to and some misconceptions, which have been holding back TDF for a long time, have been clarified. Some comments are very odd as we know that "The objective of the foundation is the promotion *and development* of office software available for use by anyone free of charge." and it isn't clear at all how improving LibreOffice could be in competition with the commercial ecosystem, the commercial ecosystem partners focus on their own market segment with their own services which TDF doesn't provide. So, as things are much clearer, we can now get to work to make TDF an active code contributor which will help in making LibreOffice better for all. Thank you! All the best, Kendy Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 19:56 +0100: > He asked himself quite a few interesting questions: > "Without sharing too much, there are some moral questions popping up > for > me. Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what > matters > more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth? Is > ownCloud just another company or do we also have to answer to the > hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?" > > Shouldn't we all ask ourselves the same questions? Awesome - so now you finally understand how hard a decision it was for us (Free Software lovers & contributors for decades) to move the LOOL development to GitHub - because it was the result of asking & pondering the same questions. Thank you for that! Particularly: * TDF does not own the community, TDF is an organization designed to make the community (let me repeat, "community" = "group of contributors") strong & flourishing. * TDF does not own LibreOffice itself; it owns the brand, but the code, translations, etc. is owned by the particular contributors (ie. by the community) - to the level of lines of code, strings of translations, icons painted, test cases provided, etc. * Long term responsibility & growth matter more - and when the LOOL's (sub-)community didn't grow under TDF, it was time to move on. The decisions shouldn't be about donation money. And regarding the last one: "Is TDF just another foundation or do we also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?" is for us, the new board, to improve - because from what I can see, TDF was not listening to the contributors the last 2 years too much. Let's improve it together! All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi, Am 09.02.22 um 10:44 schrieb Jan Holesovsky: Hi Daniel, Daniel A. Rodriguez píše v Út 08. 02. 2022 v 19:31 -0300: I think Andreas hits the nail on the head when he mentions that in other projects no company dominates the project or the community. The contrary is true: Most of the successful open source projects have a major, dominating company behind them - have a look at Nextcloud (Nextcloud GmbH), ownCloud (ownCloud GmbH), MariaDB (MariaDB Corporation Ag), ... and I can continue on and on. once I read this sentences the first time, I thought I was in a different film in 2010. But maybe I didn't understand the situation in OOo project at that time. Maybe this is due to the fact that I hadn't been at the dinner of an inner circle during the Budapest conference. In LibreOffice, there is no dominating company. Many like to paint Collabora as one, but it is not the case due to how the founding members (and I was one of them) have designed the TDF (with the 1/3 Sorry, but the founder of TDF was the association 'Freies Office Deutschland e.V. (FrODeV)' with money from the world wide supporting community. rule in the bodies and other means to protect from the project domination) and due to how the German charity laws work. After some years in the LibreOffice project and TDF I reconsider that the one third rule should have been one seat at maximum for an organization. This would have lead to a more divers formation of TDF's bodies. But that is something that could be fixed only with high effort in case there is a will to go in that direction. Also, such thinking is very offensive to eg. Allotropia - who is doing a great job undermining any kind of potential domination by excellent engineering; have a look at their impressive WASM prototype. But if you want to see an open source project with no company behind them, have a look at Apache OpenOffice. Sorry, but there are other OSS projects with a lot of business contributors with different sizes and a balanced impact on the project. In my view such a structure / ecosystem is much more healthy. 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
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Kendy, On 09/02/2022 10:44, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi Daniel, Daniel A. Rodriguez píše v Út 08. 02. 2022 v 19:31 -0300: I think Andreas hits the nail on the head when he mentions that in other projects no company dominates the project or the community. The contrary is true: Most of the successful open source projects have a major, dominating company behind them - have a look at Nextcloud (Nextcloud GmbH), ownCloud (ownCloud GmbH), MariaDB (MariaDB Corporation Ag), ... and I can continue on and on. I believe that the examples you mentioned actually confirm what Daniel said. NextCloud has been forked from ownCloud apparently for divergences on levels of "openness" which may have something to do with some commercial choices on which Frank had no control but he can surely explain it better than me: https://karlitschek.de/2016/04/big-changes-i-am-leaving-owncloud-inc-today/ Was Frank feeling that the commercial drive was clashing with his Open Source ethos? He asked himself quite a few interesting questions: "Without sharing too much, there are some moral questions popping up for me. Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what matters more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth? Is ownCloud just another company or do we also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?" Shouldn't we all ask ourselves the same questions? MariaDB has been created as Oracle acquired Sun/MySQL and the contributors didn't seem to like the idea. MariaDB Foundation has actively chosen not to get involved much in writing code while we actually have the contrary in our statutes. Another organisation has been created as the community didn't want to be dominated by commercial interests of a single company. In its announcement a founder stated: "We believe that the Foundation is a key step for the evolution of the free office suite, as it liberates the development of the code and the evolution of the project from the constraints represented by the commercial interests of a single company. Free software advocates around the world have the extraordinary opportunity of joining the group of founding members today, to write a completely new chapter in the history of FLOSS" In LibreOffice, there is no dominating company. Many like to paint Collabora as one, but it is not the case due to how the founding members (and I was one of them) have designed the TDF (with the 1/3 rule in the bodies and other means to protect from the project domination) and due to how the German charity laws work. I believe it's important to clarify that we are talking about TDF, the Foundation that is the home of LibreOffice and its community, not "just" about LibreOffice. In terms of code contributions Collabora has a large impact as it's first in front of the "Unknown" category, RedHat, TDF and Allotropia. As Italo said during FOSDEM code commits isn't all there is in terms of contributions so we'll probably have to look more closely at the data to celebrate the value of the many others that contribute to the project. In terms of influence in TDF, Collabora has quite a large impact looking at the members in some of TDF's bodies so it would be great to have better representation. The 1/3 rule is good but I guess that when it has been written when people were looking at a scenario were board members could have represented a very diverse and large number of commercial organisations. They probably didn't think there could be a company with employees, suppliers and their business partners in the same board. There is work to do to understand why TDF hasn't been able to retain some of its contributors over the years and what we should do to attract more, not necessarily only developers, to have more people that can bring in new ways to look at the problems that all Open Source projects have to deal with and find solutions that work for our community. Also, such thinking is very offensive to eg. Allotropia - who is doing a great job undermining any kind of potential domination by excellent engineering; Allotropia has great developers with great potential for contributions. have a look at their impressive WASM prototype. Allotropia is doing great with the WASM prototype and I reiterate my proposal to agree on a shared outcome in case investments from TDF are to be considered with some interest. But if you want to see an open source project with no company behind them, have a look at Apache OpenOffice. If I'm not mistaken the vast majority of contributors to Apache OpenOffice decided to move away as they didn't want to be dominated by companies' commercial interests ;-) Anyway the point here isn't to not have a commercial ecosystem, quite the contrary as we need more diversity to avoid creating a kind of "group thinking" that limits the board points of view about the issues we face and the solutions
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Thorsten Behrens wrote on 09/02/2022 18:11: sophi wrote: Do you have any insight into why the community has not chosen to fix the issue please? Reading through the bug (which was only an example) and other contributions, I don't think we can say that the community has not chosen to fix their issues. Wasn't that meant to be tendered? Yep. -- Cor Nouws, member Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint GPD key ID: 0xB13480A6 - 591A 30A7 36A0 CE3C 3D28 A038 E49D 7365 B134 80A6 mobile : +31 (0)6 25 20 7001 skype : cornouws blog: cor4office-nl.blogspot.com jabber : cor4off...@jabber.org -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
sophi wrote: > > Do you have any insight into why the community has not chosen to fix the > > issue please? > > Reading through the bug (which was only an example) and other contributions, > I don't think we can say that the community has not chosen to fix their > issues. > Wasn't that meant to be tendered? Cheers, -- Thorsten signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Simon, Le 09/02/2022 à 16:53, Simon Phipps a écrit : Hi Sophi! On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 3:32 PM sophi wrote: Hi Kendy, Le 09/02/2022 à 15:57, Jan Holesovsky a écrit : Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 15:09 +0100: The community and our valuable members of the ecosystem have been asking us to invest more in development It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as opposed to "users". "Users" are not part of the "community", until they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under the TDF umbrella, etc. With that in mind - can you please point us to those requests? Sorry to be so insistent about RTL/CJK, but to illustrate what it means, see this bug: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104597#c40 it is months on the ESC minutes and it's very impacting for Arabic versions. This is one on the top of my head, but there are more of them on fonts, etc. If you look at the names commenting this issue, you'll see several contributors here. Do you have any insight into why the community has not chosen to fix the issue please? Reading through the bug (which was only an example) and other contributions, I don't think we can say that the community has not chosen to fix their issues. Cheers Sophie -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Sophi! On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 3:32 PM sophi wrote: > Hi Kendy, > Le 09/02/2022 à 15:57, Jan Holesovsky a écrit : > > Hi Paolo, > > > > Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 15:09 +0100: > > > >> The community and our valuable members of the ecosystem have been > >> asking us to invest more in development > > > > It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as > > opposed to "users". "Users" are not part of the "community", until > > they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under > > the TDF umbrella, etc. > > > > With that in mind - can you please point us to those requests? > > Sorry to be so insistent about RTL/CJK, but to illustrate what it means, > see this bug: > https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104597#c40 > it is months on the ESC minutes and it's very impacting for Arabic > versions. This is one on the top of my head, but there are more of them > on fonts, etc. > If you look at the names commenting this issue, you'll see several > contributors here. > Do you have any insight into why the community has not chosen to fix the issue please? Thanks Simon
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Kendy, Le 09/02/2022 à 15:57, Jan Holesovsky a écrit : Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 15:09 +0100: The community and our valuable members of the ecosystem have been asking us to invest more in development It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as opposed to "users". "Users" are not part of the "community", until they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under the TDF umbrella, etc. With that in mind - can you please point us to those requests? Sorry to be so insistent about RTL/CJK, but to illustrate what it means, see this bug: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104597#c40 it is months on the ESC minutes and it's very impacting for Arabic versions. This is one on the top of my head, but there are more of them on fonts, etc. If you look at the names commenting this issue, you'll see several contributors here. Cheers Sophie -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Paolo, Paolo Vecchi píše v St 09. 02. 2022 v 15:09 +0100: > The community and our valuable members of the ecosystem have been > asking us to invest more in development It is important to understand that "community" means "contributors"; as opposed to "users". "Users" are not part of the "community", until they start contributing; via code, QA, translations, marketing under the TDF umbrella, etc. With that in mind - can you please point us to those requests? Thank you! All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Simon, thank you for sharing your opinions with us. On 08/02/2022 19:44, Simon Phipps wrote: Hi Andreas! On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 5:59 PM Andreas Mantke wrote: but it wouldn't improve the situation, if - like today - the experienced fisherman / fishermen take every new talented fisher immediately from the free software developer (volunteer) market. Thus there is now chance for a divers market with a lot of small and local businesses around the LibreOffice project. Thus the (business) user of LibreOffice will not get the opportunity to choose between different service provider. If this situation will not change immediately the LibreOffice certification program will not give a competitive edge. I agree with Andreas that this is a great opportunity for TDF to extend its in-house skills which in turn could also provide more opportunities to enable new ecosystem contributors. I'm sure there are many developers eager to join TDF to start working directly with the wider community with a great team that is with us not for the sake of having a job but because they passionately believe in what they are doing. Do you believe TDF could spend donated funds on the salaries of developers who write LibreOffice, Andreas? As I recall when we were on the Board you asserted this would be an improper use of TDF's funding under its bylaws? It depends on the rationale. If we perform specific tasks in-house, we create knowledge and skills within TDF that can be freely shared with the wider community. That's a win-win for everyone. Accessibility is a field where we're already active which requires further in-house investments but many other areas need further research and development to allow us to share documentation and knowledge which otherwise could be not made available by third parties. There are many areas that are not economically relevant or interesting for volunteers and commercial contributors in which we must step in by investing in members of the team that will help in fulfilling our mission. For those unaware: TDF has previously extensively considered the proposal to employ LibreOffice developers, which is, as Daniel has commented, superficially very appealing. However, wanting something is not the same as it being possible to have something! For those unaware: some members of the current board had to fight hard since day one of their term to show others that a proposed project for a third party entity was suboptimal due to lack of proper analysis and investigation on what are the factors that could limit TDF. The good thing that came out of that proposal is that finally we went through a proper legal analysis which has shown that some limitations that held back TDF were actually not there. The reasons we do not currently have internal developers include (among others): * The question of whether TDF can spend money developing software. It has been asserted that it cannot. It has been asserted through overdue legal consultations that we can invest money in many more ways that has been previously thought to fulfil our mission. We now have a mentor that will train new developers, with varying degrees of experience, in how to develop for LibreOffice which will not only help in furthering the educational and research scope of LibreOffice with code but will also grow into mentors themselves allowing TDF to deliver more on its educational purpose and furthers its civic engagement which is another charitable purpose of TDF. Not having had dedicated in-house developers did reduce our capability to fully deliver on our objectives, which are clearly stated in our statutes, so now that we have the necessary legal clarifications we should improve this situation immediately. * The question of who would decide what was written, and how, and how developers would be properly managed. This is an organisational issue which will follow what is written in the proposal and I'm sure our ED, mentor and the rest of the Team will do a fabulous job in integrating the new developers. In regards to what and how they will do it see my proposal. Depending on the skills that the developers already have they may initially focus on A11y or long standing bugs but then we will encourage them to grow in different areas so they can fully express the skills they are most comfortable with and that will benefit the community even more. * Related to this, the moral imperative that TDF should not compete with its trustees. I see a few issues with this statement: 1. How can we be in competition with trustees as they are individual members of our community who committed to help TDF and the rest of the community in many ways, not only code, to further our objectives? 2. Even if you used the word trustees by mistake while you meant commercial contributors they surely read our statutes and our objectives so
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Cor, do you mind explaining to us what you mean with the sentence below? On 08/02/2022 22:32, Cor Nouws wrote: I'm far from convinced that it leads to anything good when a foundation tries to bend the forces that drive a commercial market. Cheers, Cor Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Daniel, Daniel A. Rodriguez píše v Út 08. 02. 2022 v 19:31 -0300: > I think Andreas hits the nail on the head when he mentions that in > other > projects no company dominates the project or the community. The contrary is true: Most of the successful open source projects have a major, dominating company behind them - have a look at Nextcloud (Nextcloud GmbH), ownCloud (ownCloud GmbH), MariaDB (MariaDB Corporation Ag), ... and I can continue on and on. In LibreOffice, there is no dominating company. Many like to paint Collabora as one, but it is not the case due to how the founding members (and I was one of them) have designed the TDF (with the 1/3 rule in the bodies and other means to protect from the project domination) and due to how the German charity laws work. Also, such thinking is very offensive to eg. Allotropia - who is doing a great job undermining any kind of potential domination by excellent engineering; have a look at their impressive WASM prototype. But if you want to see an open source project with no company behind them, have a look at Apache OpenOffice. All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
To give this discussion another spin: We pondered in the team about hiring a web developer. Someone between infra, code, mentoring and design. This person could also care about extension development (an area where users can participate in the development without knowing C++). But in any case we are looking for a very special fisherwoman, and the experience from the past makes me think she's rather a mermaid than a real person. OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
El 8/2/22 a las 17:06, Andreas Mantke escribió: Hi Simon, Am 08.02.22 um 19:44 schrieb Simon Phipps: Hi Andreas! On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 5:59 PM Andreas Mantke wrote: but it wouldn't improve the situation, if - like today - the experienced fisherman / fishermen take every new talented fisher immediately from the free software developer (volunteer) market. Thus there is now chance for a divers market with a lot of small and corrent sentence: 'Thus there is _no_ chance for a divers market with a lot of small and' And such chance exists right now? local businesses around the LibreOffice project. Thus the (business) user of LibreOffice will not get the opportunity to choose between different service provider. If this situation will not change immediately the LibreOffice certification program will not give a competitive edge. Do you believe TDF could spend donated funds on the salaries of developers who write LibreOffice, Andreas? As I recall when we were on the Board you asserted this would be an improper use of TDF's funding under its bylaws? The only way to employ developers is for education and for science and research (according to the statutes and the tax exemption). But the goal has to be teaching others to work on the code and get some knowledge (e.g. for the education part). But if new volunteers get that knowledge, a certificate and were talented developer they get very soon partner / staff of the biggest market player. That would never lead to a divers service environment around LibreOffice. Thus everybody who needs service around LibreOffice will never get the opportunity (one strength of OSS) to choose between service providers. There are other communities / OSS projects with companies of different size and a divers project structure and no company is dominating the project / community. I think Andreas hits the nail on the head when he mentions that in other projects no company dominates the project or the community. TDF has a development mentor, why shouldn't he be the one who decides what gets written, and how? I think it's not about competing with the valuable members of the ecosystem, it's about the foundation taking the reins of the project. -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Andras, Andreas Mantke wrote on 08/02/2022 18:58: The best person that can teach you how to fish is an experienced fisherman. My example would be fruit grower and fruit picker (after all, the apple came before the fisherman ;) ) but apart from that: but it wouldn't improve the situation, if - like today - the experienced fisherman / fishermen take every new talented fisher immediately from the free software developer (volunteer) market. Could be. After all it is one of the ideas behind for example GSoC. On the other hand, in case it works out like that, it is good news on two fronts: apparently the commercial ecosystem party has enough income to hire someone extra; and also there still will be budget for us to hire mentors. We also know that developers from commercial ecosystem parties are involved in getting mentors up to speed. So the whole picture does not have to look that bad, I think. So spending that are intended to further grow the possibility of (relative new) developers to contribute (by mentoring, tooling, events), are a strong impulse to grow that side of the developer community and enabling more working people to help with code they think is useful. Thus there is now chance for a divers market with a lot of small and local businesses around the LibreOffice project. Thus the (business) I remember we discussed possibilities in the past, that would enable relative independent new developers to get funded for work on LibreOffice. I think that is a good idea to grow the commercial ecosystem. user of LibreOffice will not get the opportunity to choose between different service provider. Compared to various other open source projects, TDF/LibreOffice isn't doing that bad. On the other hand, we can't blame projects for how they work as long as people are free to study, change, share, fork, .. If this situation will not change immediately the LibreOffice certification program will not give a competitive edge. I love TDF for its work: being the place where all stakeholders meet and try to bring the best in the shared projects. Then with my experience in a broad variety of commercial, volunteer and public entities, I'm far from convinced that it leads to anything good when a foundation tries to bend the forces that drive a commercial market. Cheers, Cor -- Cor Nouws, member Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint GPD key ID: 0xB13480A6 - 591A 30A7 36A0 CE3C 3D28 A038 E49D 7365 B134 80A6 mobile : +31 (0)6 25 20 7001 skype : cornouws blog: cor4office-nl.blogspot.com jabber : cor4off...@jabber.org -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Simon, Am 08.02.22 um 19:44 schrieb Simon Phipps: Hi Andreas! On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 5:59 PM Andreas Mantke wrote: but it wouldn't improve the situation, if - like today - the experienced fisherman / fishermen take every new talented fisher immediately from the free software developer (volunteer) market. Thus there is now chance for a divers market with a lot of small and corrent sentence: 'Thus there is _no_ chance for a divers market with a lot of small and' local businesses around the LibreOffice project. Thus the (business) user of LibreOffice will not get the opportunity to choose between different service provider. If this situation will not change immediately the LibreOffice certification program will not give a competitive edge. Do you believe TDF could spend donated funds on the salaries of developers who write LibreOffice, Andreas? As I recall when we were on the Board you asserted this would be an improper use of TDF's funding under its bylaws? The only way to employ developers is for education and for science and research (according to the statutes and the tax exemption). But the goal has to be teaching others to work on the code and get some knowledge (e.g. for the education part). But if new volunteers get that knowledge, a certificate and were talented developer they get very soon partner / staff of the biggest market player. That would never lead to a divers service environment around LibreOffice. Thus everybody who needs service around LibreOffice will never get the opportunity (one strength of OSS) to choose between service providers. There are other communities / OSS projects with companies of different size and a divers project structure and no company is dominating the project / community. 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
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Andreas! On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 5:59 PM Andreas Mantke wrote: > > but it wouldn't improve the situation, if - like today - the experienced > fisherman / fishermen take every new talented fisher immediately from > the free software developer (volunteer) market. > > Thus there is now chance for a divers market with a lot of small and > local businesses around the LibreOffice project. Thus the (business) > user of LibreOffice will not get the opportunity to choose between > different service provider. > > If this situation will not change immediately the LibreOffice > certification program will not give a competitive edge. > Do you believe TDF could spend donated funds on the salaries of developers who write LibreOffice, Andreas? As I recall when we were on the Board you asserted this would be an improper use of TDF's funding under its bylaws? For those unaware: TDF has previously extensively considered the proposal to employ LibreOffice developers, which is, as Daniel has commented, superficially very appealing. However, wanting something is not the same as it being possible to have something! The reasons we do not currently have internal developers include (among others): 1. The question of whether TDF can spend money developing software. It has been asserted that it cannot. 2. The question of who would decide what was written, and how, and how developers would be properly managed. 3. Related to this, the moral imperative that TDF should not compete with its trustees. While I do not necessarily agree with the thinking behind these issues, any proposal before the Board would need a thoughtful and balanced proposal for resolving each of them. Perhaps one of the folk supporting the Board agenda item would like to write a paper that does that? Cheers Simon
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Paolo, Am 08.02.22 um 17:34 schrieb Paolo Vecchi: (...) On 08/02/2022 16:41, Jan Holesovsky wrote: (..) if we talk about TDF employees or contractors, we need more mentors - because that is the only way how to scale: "Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime". This is what TDF should be doing in my view - teaching how to fish, not fishing itself. The best person that can teach you how to fish is an experienced fisherman. but it wouldn't improve the situation, if - like today - the experienced fisherman / fishermen take every new talented fisher immediately from the free software developer (volunteer) market. Thus there is now chance for a divers market with a lot of small and local businesses around the LibreOffice project. Thus the (business) user of LibreOffice will not get the opportunity to choose between different service provider. If this situation will not change immediately the LibreOffice certification program will not give a competitive edge. 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
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi Kendy, thanks for participating to the discussion. On 08/02/2022 16:41, Jan Holesovsky wrote: Hi all, Paolo Vecchi píše v Po 07. 02. 2022 v 19:16 +0100: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs My candidacy statement was much more focused on the community growth; so I'd like to propose a different vision: TDF should be a pleasant place for contributors to feel welcome. TDF should focus on growing the community, mentoring, and welcoming newcomers. I don't think that paying in-house developers is in line with this vision; I totally share your vision which is very much complementary to what I propose. I've been a developer as well many years ago so I know how important is to have an open and relaxed environment where developers can exchange experiences and ideas. Having in-house developers will make it easier to share the knowledge as developers can/should be also mentors enabling us to help more people. if we talk about TDF employees or contractors, we need more mentors - because that is the only way how to scale: "Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime". This is what TDF should be doing in my view - teaching how to fish, not fishing itself. The best person that can teach you how to fish is an experienced fisherman. While we have an excellent Team that is doing its best, TDF needs to grow more in-house experienced fishermen that can help in making LibreOffice better while teaching others to do the same. Even Mr Meeks confirmed today during the Team call that there is so much work that could be done to keep 100s of developers busy for a lifetime so it's likely we will have to employ more than 2 developers to do some actual development and also to enable new contributors to participate in the efforts of keeping LibreOffice as the best Open Source office suite available. I believe TDF will be very well positioned to offer a neutral environment where everyone is welcome even in situation where contributors may be competitors outside this safe environment where we can provide experienced "fishermen" that will teach how to improve LibreOffice to all interested parties without distinction. I'm sure we can work very well together in combining our complementary visions for TDF. All the best, Kendy Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi all, Paolo Vecchi píše v Po 07. 02. 2022 v 19:16 +0100: > Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house > developers to address our donors specific needs My candidacy statement was much more focused on the community growth; so I'd like to propose a different vision: TDF should be a pleasant place for contributors to feel welcome. TDF should focus on growing the community, mentoring, and welcoming newcomers. I don't think that paying in-house developers is in line with this vision; if we talk about TDF employees or contractors, we need more mentors - because that is the only way how to scale: "Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime". This is what TDF should be doing in my view - teaching how to fish, not fishing itself. All the best, Kendy -- 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] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs
Hi all, many of you voted for me as you wanted me to promote and achieve the goals set in my candidacy statement: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2021/msg00279.html Point 1 is what leads me once again to share with the community my intention to push forward point 3 and 4 so that you can all provide your objective contributions to help me and the rest of the board in doing the right things for TDF and our community. The following is a summary of the points that support the need and the feasibility of the proposal: Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs * As shown by Italo's slides at FOSDEM again and by others, TDF is not contributing as much as it could * Up to now no strategic decisions have been taken to make TDF a more regular and active code contributor * Members of the ecosystem and others also suggested that we should spend more money in development * Bugs, a11y issues and features can be harder to taken care of by volunteers and are not always addressed by the ecosystem * We need to build up internal skills and development capabilities to speed up innovation * Lack of suppliers diversification, mostly 2 at present, is a suboptimal situation for TDF, LibreOffice and its community * Internal developers can grow to cover areas like mentoring and QA while also helping with new contributors support * TDF needs to expand its internal capacity to deal with publishing in app stores directly and manage variable levels of complexity due to ever changing rules * Some proposed projects could be developed internally instead of outsourcing them, which helps to grow in-house skills and capacity to address our donors needs * Potential App Stores revenues may allow for more developers and to invest in developing other projects * Our development mentor together with the team should propose to the BoD projects for internal development * While internal projects may cover different areas tenders and ESC proposals will be also evaluated to avoid effort duplication * This is not "just" a new project, it's an essential and strategical move for TDF to grow further in its second decade which widens the horizon for new visions and opportunities to do more and even better things for LibreOffice and our community * Funds are available for at least 2 developers allowing us to start employing them straight away * Next steps: create and publish the job offers for developers and on-board them ASAP The proposal will be publicly discussed this Friday 11 of February so I'm looking forward to your constructive feedback to make it a better proposal for all. In the meantime I hope you appreciated my efforts in relation to point 6: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2022/01/27/bug-bounties-finding-and-fixing-security-holes-with-european-commission-funds/ Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
