Re: [board-discuss] the importance of shepherding this list & TDF
Hi all, FYI: The mail below contains parts of confidential communication. Of course selective, causing an unfair unbalanced picture of reality. I make a strong call for an end to this show. Please let's move this to a board meeting. Failing, to protect TDF, we'll consider moderating this list again..? At this stage, a significant board majority considers it very wise that TDF will not pay people to compete with contributing ecosystem parties. And there is no need for it: TDF's goals provide an huge amount of opportunities in multiple directions that are far from realized and all need time and attention. It's a sane thing, that obviously may evolve, as everything changes over time. But trying to put such a policy in a proposal, easily leads to legal, communication and personal struggles - as we've seen. So the proposal up now is simple and positive: a strong need; a whole load of clear tasks; hiring makes sense; and lets execute. As with all hiring proposals we had so far, legal advice seems simply unnecessary? Cheers, Cor Paolo Vecchi wrote on 30/11/2022 22:42: Hi Michael and all, On 30/11/2022 11:55, Michael Meeks wrote: Hi there, On 29/11/2022 23:38, Franklin Weng wrote: > Believe me or not. Let me try to provide a quick counter-balance in this thread. -- 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] the importance of shepherding this list & TDF
Hi Michael and all, On 30/11/2022 11:55, Michael Meeks wrote: Hi there, On 29/11/2022 23:38, Franklin Weng wrote: > Believe me or not. Let me try to provide a quick counter-balance in this thread. It seems to me extraordinary to criticize Thorsten like this for doing his job - I have no doubt that Thorsten is very good at his job as a developer. I surely don't have an adequate level of experience to criticise his coding skills so I never put in doubt that he has been doing great things for the advancement of LibreOffice as a volunteer and as a contracted party through tendering. In relation to his skills as a director and as a chairman for TDF I've expressed my opinions in public in a very diplomatic way and concerning only a small subset of the criticisms that IMHO he deserves which, for the moment, I'm holding off hoping that he will improve his attitude and help settling a number of issues. We have a board director claiming in public that other directors support his proposal, That seems to me like a false statement. I brought the proposal to a vote as that's the process that has been agreed with Jan and the rest of the board: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00993.html https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01088.html https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01113.html We elect a board to hammer out compromises That's what we have done with the proposal for months. All the versions of the proposal have been available for anyone to comment on: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zfoRygFbBgJZZcj I pretended to have all of this done in public so that everyone could see who was involved and how the proposal was being shaped. - ideally these arrive well formed and in a way that commands support or acquiescence of the whole board. In cases where that is impossible then some split vote and ideally a principled objection E-mail, and closing the topic seems wise. In a normal board with a shared vision for TDF that would be quite easy to achieve. In TDF's board it seems clear that for years there have been also other dynamics at play. We don't elect a board to amplify division & to escalate even uncontroversial topics (such as hiring two staff members) into some apparent existential nightmare of posturing to try to 'win' at all costs. It is good to decide topics and move on. The decision was taken in regards to a process that has been brought forward as agreed. Jan resigned with peculiar motivations and doubled down on that with the last email: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg01100.html Someone apparently told him that "Paolo claims that I have signed off the latest version of the Developers proposal" and he was so upset about it that he had to explicitly distance himself from the proposal he has worked on for months. He continues: "That is not true. That version is not balanced, and Paolo’s unwillingness to find balance there was one of the main reasons to my resignation." I consider also that comment quite problematic as the various versions of the proposal, the public and private comments clearly demonstrate that Jan is wilfully posting false statements. (As he's one of your contractors I would have thought that you would have asked him to be careful with what he's posting on a public list as it could have a negative impact also for your company reputation as a contractor, very well known to all, posting false statements even with a non corporate address still doesn't look good at all.) I've actually tried to convince him not to include statements in the proposal that would show Collabora Productivity as imposing limitations. That would not look good for both organisations and on top of it anyone with a minimum of experience on legal matters would have known that it shouldn't have been added. This was the sentence in question: " TDF in-house developers will not compete with commercial contributors and will not develop alternative implementations of Open Source projects actively maintained by LibreOffice volunteer or corporate contributors – like Collabora Online, mdds, or cppunit" He tried to get the same "gist" with other formulations that made the situation even worse and then when told we already agreed on the solution months ago he resigned. This is the sentence that easily fixes the issue: "Eventual limitations related to tasks, areas, projects or bugs on which the in-house developers should not work, eg. third parties are already engaged with them, shall be regulated through separate agreements and relevant communications between TDF and the third parties." Someone surely wants to come up with "it's not just that is also something else" but no, that's all we had left to discuss. Then another director provided his point of view: "*
[board-discuss] the importance of shepherding this list & TDF
Hi there, On 29/11/2022 23:38, Franklin Weng wrote: > Believe me or not. Let me try to provide a quick counter-balance in this thread. It seems to me extraordinary to criticize Thorsten like this for doing his job - in line with the best practices for communications as adopted by the board[1] on this list. We badly need our E-mail discussion to get more focused and respectful. Blunt finger pointing: "I don't trust >that person<" seems radically non-constructive to me. Surely better to work on the real issue - ideally one to one first (or bring a friend along if you're concerned about that), then in a larger group if that doesn't work out, before bringing it to everyone (ideally on tdf-internal). I would like to read a lot less E-mail attacking the person not the ball. I'd also like to see a lot less public board posturing - it has reached a ridiculous level. We have a board director claiming in public that other directors support his proposal, which then multiple directors point out that they in fact don't, before them saying again that they actually do etc. It seems like the Christmas pantomime season complete with comedy audience contradictions has come early =) The huge volume of E-mail on these topics doesn't help anyone. I think it is safe to assume that wiser counsel is rather restrained when sending E-mail, and that many read this and think it better not to feed the flames - apologies if I do that here. We elect a board to hammer out compromises - ideally these arrive well formed and in a way that commands support or acquiescence of the whole board. In cases where that is impossible then some split vote and ideally a principled objection E-mail, and closing the topic seems wise. We don't elect a board to amplify division & to escalate even uncontroversial topics (such as hiring two staff members) into some apparent existential nightmare of posturing to try to 'win' at all costs. It is good to decide topics and move on. I'd like also to try to remove some of the poison here with a personal take on Thorsten, with whom I've worked on & off for ~twenty years. I don't like unqualified "I trust", or "I don't trust" people - partly because I don't trust myself in some situations[2]; it seems to me a polarizing loss of nuance. Also - I trust even my political opponents to be generally decent citizens. However my sphere of trust for Thorsten is abnormally large. Thorsten is someone that TDF is extremely blessed to have in our community; he has contributed in an overwhelmingly positive way to LibreOffice and at significant scale. I don't always agree with him - and I compete with him in the marketplace (as well as partnering) - but his integrity is something I can rely on. His patience when dealing with controversy, his balance and desire to find a workable solution is legendary. More than that - we are a statutory meritocracy - and Thorsten has contributed an incredible amount of do-ing to the project not just coding (and apparently cloning himself[3] =) - but innumerable small acts of kindness and nurturing behind the scenes. He repeatedly encourages me to think that: "everyone is really just trying to do what they think is best" when I loose faith in that. Oh - and did I mention his positive input on the ESC, serving from our founding on the Board, doing the jobs that no-one wanted to eg. as an example all the donation book-keeping for many years - which was done with great probity. Did I mention his personal investment in allotropia - which contributes lots of LibreOffice code - this could go on and on but this E-mail is already an example of the over-long E-mails we have on the list and I just got started. Let me summarize it this way: Thorsten rocks. If anyone plans to attack and/or exclude him from TDF - they better bring a large-ish team of people to try to replace the immense good he does here. TDF needs good people to shepherd the board, and also this mailing list. It will perhaps be no surprise that I also have received constructive feedback on improving my tone on the list privately from Thorsten: that's his job - it's mine to take that to heart. Let me encourage others to listen - and act likewise. Against that - if people believe they are being harassed - they should report that privately to the CoC committee who will investigate that sensitively without fear or favor - there is no tolerance for harassment no matter how senior and important the people involved. Regards, Michael. [1] - https://www.mail-archive.com/board-discuss@documentfoundation.org/msg05644.html and I quote: - If we should find ourselves in a strong disagreement with another person, we make our responses to each other via private messages rather than continue to send them to the list or the group. If we are debating a point on which the group might have some
