[DECISION] Delayed atticization for LibreOffice Online

Dear community,

the following vote happened after our Monday board call, on request as
a private email vote:

The board sees positive & constructive news around renewed
developer interest in LibreOffice Online. To further encourage
initiatives to collaborate on a single, TDF-hosted repository, the
board resolves to postpone formally atticizing Online for three
more months. Unless the de-atticization requirements [1] (3
different developers contributing non-trivially) are fulfilled by
then, and/or if necessary binding corporate commitments are not
made by 2022-10-01, Online will be automatically moved to the
attic.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic#Deatticization_requirements

The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat
holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote
needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which
gives 4.

A total of 6 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

Result of vote: 2 approvals, 3 abstain, 1 disapproval.

**Decision: The proposal has been accepted.**

Two deputies support the proposal.

Participants to the vote were (in alphabetical order):

Ayhan, Caolán, Cor, Emiliano, Gabriel, Kendy, László, Thorsten

-- Thorsten

Dear community,

for the record my rejection of the proposal as formulated has not been counted.

I repeatedly asked for various elements to be considered and to amend the text before being able to vote on it but that unfortunately hasn't happened.

My opinion is that the text doesn't take in consideration feedback and other issues which include:
    - discussion period of 24h too short as it covers one working day where people are busy with their day job
    - vote started after less than 21h at 18:53 when people coming back from work could have had time to rush in a comment
    - comments made during the meeting and in the mailing lists were not considered for inclusion in an actual compromise text
    - attempts to have an evaluation of the concerns expressed in time met no considerations
    - some managed to provide their opinion only in the vote reply but still no corrective actions have been taken
    - IMHO the chairman, as director of a company reselling COOL[0], should have declared a potential CoI and let the vice-chairman deal with the evaluation and inclusions of comments to make sure the process is seen by all as fully impartial regardless of actual CoIs.

I could have simply voted against and found ourselves once again in the same split situation we had in the original vote and that's what I wanted to avoid.

The main issues and missing elements I see in this proposal are:
    - LOOL should not be automatically archived, a full evaluation of the situation after a fair period of time should be done
    - the time frame is too short for a community to form (holiday season making it even more difficult) so 12 months could be a fair period of time
    - reopening of the repository with due warnings until LOOL is safe to use and activities show a healthy community forming
    - marketing to promote the creation of a community around LOOL
    - get more feedback from the wider community at LibOCon about the future of LOOL
    - finishing evaluating with commercial stakeholders the mutually

Without the above IMHO the proposal will lead only to one outcome.

Having said the above I ask to reconsider the decision and add it to the public part of the agenda for the next board meeting.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://blog.allotropia.de/2021/08/25/allotropia-and-collabora-announce-partnership/

Hi Paolo,

Dear community,

for the record my rejection of the proposal as formulated has not been counted.

You did not participate in the vote. Full stop.

I repeatedly asked for various elements to be considered and to amend the text before being able to vote on it but that unfortunately hasn't happened.

Indeed, you've spent a lot of time to reopen the debate on the decision that was taken in the board meeting (the extended public part) last Monday. There was discussion about your ideas and that did not lead to any change.

My opinion is that the text doesn't take in consideration feedback and other issues which include:
    - discussion period of 24h too short as it covers one working day where people are busy with their day job

It didn't appear to me that you had not enough time available to share your thoughts.

- vote started after less than 21h at 18:53 when people coming back from work could have had time to rush in a comment

24 hours after the meeting maybe, But hé, who cares :wink:

- comments made during the meeting and in the mailing lists were not considered for inclusion in an actual compromise text

We extensively discussed and a compromise was accepted in the meeting.

- attempts to have an evaluation of the concerns expressed in time met no considerations

I think all your more then 10 mails received replies.

- some managed to provide their opinion only in the vote reply but still no corrective actions have been taken

We extensively discussed and a compromise was accepted in the meeting.
I have huge respect for the board members spending again time to discuss a decision already taken that you do not agree with.

- IMHO the chairman, as director of a company reselling COOL[0], should have declared a potential CoI and let the vice-chairman deal with the evaluation and inclusions of comments to make sure the process is seen by all as fully impartial regardless of actual CoIs.

Three remarks:
  1. I hold strong (did mail this before) that this topic/vote is about having sane development projects under TDF umbrella. To prevent hosting zombi-projects, which will harm our reputation.
It is not about allowing or blocking people to work on what they love.
And it is not about a choice for TDF to publish a online version of LibreOffice.
  2. It is without ground in our rules nor precedent that a potential CoI should exclude anyone from her/his role in our work.
  3. Declaring people having a indirect CoI is becoming popular, it seems. It is clear from various examples, that the current CoI policy leads to lack of clarity and discussions. I think it makes sense to have a well prepared and organized discussion on this at LibOCon.

I could have simply voted against and found ourselves once again in the same split situation we had in the original vote and that's what I wanted to avoid.

You could have brought in that elegant thought on the board list :wink:

The main issues and missing elements I see in this proposal are:
... > Without the above IMHO the proposal will lead only to one outcome.

I refer to my comment above: no one is blocking anyone on working on the code and project they love.
If the conditions in the decisions are not met in three monts, the project will be atticizised.
If conditions for de-atticizations are met in four months (and those are the same..) the repository will be de-atticizised.
How beautiful and simple it that.

You could consider to stop spending time from yourself and others on this useless debate and instead do some constructive work on what you want to see happen in the future?
And - apart from what László explained earlier on this list about projects-dynamics - making sure that your place looks a fun one to be in, would probably be wise too.

Having said the above I ask to reconsider the decision and add it to the public part of the agenda for the next board meeting.

.

Cheers,
Cor

Fully support Paolo hoping more voices raise their concerns too.

Hi all,

Dear community,

the following vote happened after our Monday board call, on request as
a private email vote:

The board sees positive & constructive news around renewed
developer interest in LibreOffice Online. To further encourage
initiatives to collaborate on a single, TDF-hosted repository, the
board resolves to postpone formally atticizing Online for three
more months. Unless the de-atticization requirements [1] (3
different developers contributing non-trivially) are fulfilled by
then, and/or if necessary binding corporate commitments are not
made by 2022-10-01, Online will be automatically moved to the
attic.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic#Deatticization_requirements

it is very interesting to read this criteria and compare it with the git
log of COOL. It seemed even this Github repo (project) didn't  attract
the number of volunteers, which are requested in the decision proposal.

It seemed there is a big interest to set high barriers in that area and
to block initiative.

And what I've learned within the communication during the last week(s).
There is no open communication and part of the game is to lead you by
the nose.

And as we are saying in Germany: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

Hi all,

Dear community,

the following vote happened after our Monday board call, on request as
a private email vote:

The board sees positive & constructive news around renewed
developer interest in LibreOffice Online. To further encourage
initiatives to collaborate on a single, TDF-hosted repository, the
board resolves to postpone formally atticizing Online for three
more months. Unless the de-atticization requirements [1] (3
different developers contributing non-trivially) are fulfilled by
then, and/or if necessary binding corporate commitments are not
made by 2022-10-01, Online will be automatically moved to the
attic.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic#Deatticization_requirements

it is very interesting to read this criteria and compare it with the git
log of COOL. It seemed even this Github repo (project) didn't  attract
the number of volunteers, which are requested in the decision proposal.

It's odd you say that as IIRC Mr Meeks said that since they move the project to Microsoft GitHub they had more contributors.

Are you by any chance able to substantiate your statement?

It seemed there is a big interest to set high barriers in that area and
to block initiative.

Even the number of voters in favour of that decision are fewer than those required to pass the barrier :wink:

As stated in my answer to the "decision", it just needs to be re-run with a text that would allow the community a chance to do something.

Are you anyway continuing to prepare a version of LOOL that could be presented a candidate to start creating a community around it?

And what I've learned within the communication during the last week(s).
There is no open communication and part of the game is to lead you by
the nose.

Could you elaborate on that?

I'm not sure I fully grasp the meaning of the above sentences.

And as we are saying in Germany: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her.

That's the same saying we use in Italy but it's not clear what you mean with it or to what/whom you are referring to.

Regards,
Andreas

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Paolo, all,

although I have not too much spare time for a research I try to answer
your questions.

Hi Andreas,

Hi all,

Dear community,

the following vote happened after our Monday board call, on request as
a private email vote:

The board sees positive & constructive news around renewed
developer interest in LibreOffice Online. To further encourage
initiatives to collaborate on a single, TDF-hosted repository, the
board resolves to postpone formally atticizing Online for three
more months. Unless the de-atticization requirements [1] (3
different developers contributing non-trivially) are fulfilled by
then, and/or if necessary binding corporate commitments are not
made by 2022-10-01, Online will be automatically moved to the
attic.

[1]
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic#Deatticization_requirements

it is very interesting to read this criteria and compare it with the git
log of COOL. It seemed even this Github repo (project) didn't  attract
the number of volunteers, which are requested in the decision proposal.

It's odd you say that as IIRC Mr Meeks said that since they move the
project to Microsoft GitHub they had more contributors.

Are you by any chance able to substantiate your statement?

I made a short research on the commits of about the last four month (the
board decision has also only a three month period in mind).

So lets have a look on the commits of the last four month of the fork
(without the localization work, copied from Weblate):

* March 2022:

- 4 volunteers, one of them was already for long time active in the
LibreOffice design team
- work done: two lines in a readme, some lines of JS, CSS and icons

* April 2022:

- 4 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member,
another one is a current member of the board with an JS one liner
- work done: unify ui naming menubar js file, docker image build script,
CSS and the one line in a JS file

* May 2022:

- 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member
- work done: CSS

* June 2022:

- 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member
- work done: CSS and an icon

Noticeable: except the long time LibreOffice design contributor the
volunteers committed only a very few patches and were only in one month
active (without one of them, who submitted another patch in a second
month, a further icon).

It seemed there is a big interest to set high barriers in that area and
to block initiative.

Even the number of voters in favour of that decision are fewer than
those required to pass the barrier :wink:

Yep.

As stated in my answer to the "decision", it just needs to be re-run
with a text that would allow the community a chance to do something.

Are you anyway continuing to prepare a version of LOOL that could be
presented a candidate to start creating a community around it?

I'm working on that too, but that need some more time. I'm happy, if
someone wants to join me and create e.g. a docker build from the source.

And what I've learned within the communication during the last week(s).
There is no open communication and part of the game is to lead you by
the nose.

Could you elaborate on that?

I'm not sure I fully grasp the meaning of the above sentences.

The last part of this 'communication strategy' reached me in private on
July, 3rd at 7.29pm, when I was told that I should contribute objective
reason / points to the debate around LOOL and the decision about its
atticization for LibreOffice Online. And just some hours later on July,
4th, 3.11am the results of the decision were published on this list.
I had also the impression that I'm in a extra supervision here (and with
private emails).

And as we are saying in Germany: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her.

That's the same saying we use in Italy but it's not clear what you
mean with it or to what/whom you are referring to.

Hope the above helped a bit.

Regards,
Andreas

The long arm of the supervisor reaches several of us who dared to support the proposal to reopen the repo. In my case, trying to point out what can be said and what cannot.

Hi Andreas,

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic#Deatticization_requirements

it is very interesting to read this criteria and compare it with the git
log of COOL. It seemed even this Github repo (project) didn't  attract
the number of volunteers, which are requested in the decision proposal.

Where in the deatticization requirements do you read the word "volunteer"? This is a very interesting and obvious misreading of the rules.

...
And as we are saying in Germany: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her.

Looks so. Why are you doing this?

Cheers,
Cor

Hi Paolo,

It's odd you say that as IIRC Mr Meeks said that since they move the

What is the use of writing "Mr Meeks" please?
It looks a bit odd to me, in a community where we simply say e.g. "Paolo". Or of course in case people possibly may not understand who Paolo is, "Paolo Vecchi".

project to Microsoft GitHub they had more contributors.

Why do you explicitly say "Microsoft GitHub"? Are there other GitHub's around that we may get confused with?

As stated in my answer to the "decision", it just needs to be re-run with a text that would allow the community a chance to do something.

I refer to my comments made on this list on July the 4th (and earlier on another one): no one is blocking anyone on working on the code and project they love.
If the conditions in the decisions are not met in three months, the project will be atticizised.
If conditions for de-atticizations (and those are similar) are met in four months, the repository will be de-atticizised.
How beautiful and simple it that.

Cheers,
Cor

Hi Andreas, all,

[changing the subject to reflect the discussion character]

Andreas Mantke wrote:

>> it is very interesting to read this criteria and compare it with the git
>> log of COOL. It seemed even this Github repo (project) didn't  attract
>> the number of volunteers, which are requested in the decision proposal.
>

Just to clarify - the attic decision talks about developers (volunteer
or not - should not make a difference).

The ESC proposal, on which this is based, considers Online to be of
medium complexity. To be able to maintain that code over longer
periods of time, 3 developers where deemed necessary.

So any comparison should count all commits I guess (that also makes
evaluation much easier - just run a git shortlog -n -s).

The last part of this 'communication strategy' reached me in private on
July, 3rd at 7.29pm, when I was told that I should contribute objective
reason / points to the debate around LOOL and the decision about its
atticization for LibreOffice Online.

And thanks for keeping the conversation here constructive indeed.

I suspect what happens was adherence to the board communication best
practices, which recommends to take bits of the conversation, which
are of no particular public interest, private.

This is a list with more than 200 subscribers - every not-so-relevant
email that people don't need to read, because it wasn't sent to the
list (or every email at least without a fullquote), leaves our
community more time & energy to do fun & productive work on the
project.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Hi Daniel,

The long arm of the supervisor reaches several of us who dared to support the proposal to reopen the repo. In my case, trying to point out what can be said and what cannot.

That's not good at all.

Have you received these types of notifications previously?
Do you know of others that received communications that are meant to dissuade people from expressing their legitimate opinions?

Would you, and anyone else that received similar communications, be willing to send a complaint to the CoC team or a trusted director for evaluation?

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Andreas, all,

[changing the subject to reflect the discussion character]

Andreas Mantke wrote:

>> it is very interesting to read this criteria and compare it with the git
>> log of COOL. It seemed even this Github repo (project) didn't  attract
>> the number of volunteers, which are requested in the decision proposal.
>

Just to clarify - the attic decision talks about developers (volunteer
or not - should not make a difference).

The ESC proposal, on which this is based, considers Online to be of
medium complexity. To be able to maintain that code over longer
periods of time, 3 developers where deemed necessary.

So any comparison should count all commits I guess (that also makes
evaluation much easier - just run a git shortlog -n -s).

The last part of this 'communication strategy' reached me in private on
July, 3rd at 7.29pm, when I was told that I should contribute objective
reason / points to the debate around LOOL and the decision about its
atticization for LibreOffice Online.

And thanks for keeping the conversation here constructive indeed.

I suspect what happens was adherence to the board communication best
practices, which recommends to take bits of the conversation, which
are of no particular public interest, private.

mmm, another take would recognize those messages as an intention to control the discussion in certain way.

This is a list with more than 200 subscribers - every not-so-relevant
email that people don't need to read, because it wasn't sent to the
list (or every email at least without a fullquote), leaves our
community more time & energy to do fun & productive work on the
project.

I dedicate my time an energy in what I care, no need someone to tell me what should I do.

Hi Andreas,

It's odd you say that as IIRC Mr Meeks said that since they move the
project to Microsoft GitHub they had more contributors.

Are you by any chance able to substantiate your statement?

I made a short research on the commits of about the last four month (the
board decision has also only a three month period in mind).

So lets have a look on the commits of the last four month of the fork
(without the localization work, copied from Weblate):

* March 2022:

- 4 volunteers, one of them was already for long time active in the
LibreOffice design team
- work done: two lines in a readme, some lines of JS, CSS and icons

* April 2022:

- 4 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member,
another one is a current member of the board with an JS one liner
- work done: unify ui naming menubar js file, docker image build script,
CSS and the one line in a JS file

* May 2022:

- 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member
- work done: CSS

* June 2022:

- 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member
- work done: CSS and an icon

That doesn't seem like much to me.

If that would be the level necessary to avoid to archiving LOOL then it would be very easy.

Noticeable: except the long time LibreOffice design contributor the
volunteers committed only a very few patches and were only in one month
active (without one of them, who submitted another patch in a second
month, a further icon).

I guess we could set this a baseline metrics for keeping LOOL repository open.

It seemed there is a big interest to set high barriers in that area and
to block initiative.

The condition applied are IMHO unfair as it sends out a message that could discourage many to even trying.

The fact that the promoters of the vote in the ESC and the board didn't even sent out a notification about what was about to happen surely doesn't sends out the message that they wanted supporter of LOOL to have a fair chance of reviving the project.

Even the number of voters in favour of that decision are fewer than
those required to pass the barrier :wink:

Yep.

As stated in my answer to the "decision", it just needs to be re-run
with a text that would allow the community a chance to do something.

Are you anyway continuing to prepare a version of LOOL that could be
presented a candidate to start creating a community around it?

I'm working on that too, but that need some more time. I'm happy, if
someone wants to join me and create e.g. a docker build from the source.

Do you need technical help, computing resources, both?

I wouldn't know from where to start in building it from source (sorry can't do everything) but maybe some community members with more experience than me could help out?

Happy to lend you some resources on my infrastructure if that's what you need.

And what I've learned within the communication during the last week(s).
There is no open communication and part of the game is to lead you by
the nose.

Could you elaborate on that?

I'm not sure I fully grasp the meaning of the above sentences.

The last part of this 'communication strategy' reached me in private on
July, 3rd at 7.29pm, when I was told that I should contribute objective
reason / points to the debate around LOOL and the decision about its
atticization for LibreOffice Online. And just some hours later on July,
4th, 3.11am the results of the decision were published on this list.
I had also the impression that I'm in a extra supervision here (and with
private emails).

Odd that also Daniel said he received similar emails.

Not sure if it's someone being overzealous in applying the 'communication strategy' or a way of sending another type of message.

And as we are saying in Germany: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her.

  That's the same saying we use in Italy but it's not clear what you
mean with it or to what/whom you are referring to.

Hope the above helped a bit.

It's very useful information but what would help even more is for the wider community to tell us clearly what they want.

... and naturally to see the result of your effort.

Regards,
Andreas

Ciao

Paolo

Oh, of course not only Daniel and Andreas got those bad boy badges. When I was wondering why I described the TW gov forked OxOOL to start another NDCODFWeb project for TW gov use it could be distorted to “make TDF maintain LOOL for TW gov”, our Great Leader has also warned me “to be constructive” (some other interesting questions: why warning in private, and if the one who distorted my descriptions got a warning or a good boy badge or not?). Not very sure if what is the standard of “constructive” of our Great Leader but I wonder if I have collected three bad boy badges maybe I would be fucked by the Great Leader again as in the last term of BoD.

I’ll be surprised if TDF will not rule the world under the leadership of our Great Leader who makes the board great again!

Yeah, this one is another “unconstructive” comment. I guess I’ll get the bad boy badge myself and I will have two (or maybe GL wants to send me more?). When issuing the bad boy badge to me please remember to wear your masks amd gloves since I’m having 91 Divoc running in my body now.

F

Paolo Vecchi <paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org> 於 2022年7月8日 週五 06:12 寫道:

Hi Daniel,

The long arm of the supervisor reaches several of us who dared to support the proposal to reopen the repo. In my case, trying to point out what can be said and what cannot.

That's not good at all.

Indeed.

Have you received these types of notifications previously?

Yep, from the very beginning of previous term. Several times, several people.

Do you know of others that received communications that are meant to
dissuade people from expressing their legitimate opinions?

I have received some comments that imply that it is. So I encourage all those who have gone through similar situations to express their opinions. Even former directors.

Would you, and anyone else that received similar communications, be
willing to send a complaint to the CoC team or a trusted director for
evaluation?

Sure. Anything to have a better environment for us all.

Hi all,

(...)

The last part of this 'communication strategy' reached me in private on
July, 3rd at 7.29pm, when I was told that I should contribute objective
reason / points to the debate around LOOL and the decision about its
atticization for LibreOffice Online.

And thanks for keeping the conversation here constructive indeed.

it seemed there is a lack of understanding on communication.

This comment could be seen in different ways:

a) it's a toxic praise

b) it's an unwanted review

c) it's treating the author like a pupil and rate the text with a school
note.

But in all cases the message send to the receiver is not positive.

Thus I'd recommend to stop such comments (in public or private).

Regards,
Andreas

Hi all,

although the July, 2022 is not finished yet, a short update on the
amount of volunteer contributors to the fork of LibreOffice Online:

(...)
So lets have a look on the commits of the last four month of the fork
(without the localization work, copied from Weblate):

* March 2022:

- 4 volunteers, one of them was already for long time active in the
LibreOffice design team
- work done: two lines in a readme, some lines of JS, CSS and icons

* April 2022:

- 4 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member,
another one is a current member of the board with an JS one liner
- work done: unify ui naming menubar js file, docker image build script,
CSS and the one line in a JS file

* May 2022:

- 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member
- work done: CSS

* June 2022:

- 2 volunteers, one of them is the long time active design team member
- work done: CSS and an icon

Noticeable: except the long time LibreOffice design contributor the
volunteers committed only a very few patches and were only in one month
active (without one of them, who submitted another patch in a second
month, a further icon).

Here are the 'numbers' for July, 2022:

- 1 volunteer
- work done: small css fix and a typo fix in a markdown file.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

thanks for keeping us up to date.

Here are the 'numbers' for July, 2022:

- 1 volunteer
- work done: small css fix and a typo fix in a markdown file.

Any progress on your version of LOOL?

Is there a repository where the community can check the progress and start contributing to?

Regards,
Andreas

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Paolo, all,

Hi Andreas,

thanks for keeping us up to date.

Here are the 'numbers' for July, 2022:

- 1 volunteer
- work done: small css fix and a typo fix in a markdown file.

Any progress on your version of LOOL?

Yes. I updated it with the available patches, worked on some further
updates and am currently running a Docker build from source with the
available script on openSUSE from the current status.

I created already one docker file about two weeks ago from the status at
that time.

Is there a repository where the community can check the progress and
start contributing to?

Yes.

https://github.com/freeonlineoffice/online

Contributions and help welcome :wink:

You can ping me (drop an email), if you want to join me.

Kind regards,
Andreas