Board of Directors Meeting 2020-07-03

The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2020-07-03
Meeting Minutes

Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Lothar Becker
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht

In the meeting: Lothar (BoD), Thorsten (BoD), Franklin (BoD), Nicolas (Deputy), Emiliano (BoD), Michael (BoD), Daniel (BoD), Drew, Stephan, Italo, Ilmari, Sophie, Sam, Florian, Aron, Paolo (Deputy), Cor (BoD), Dennis, Simon

Representation: None
(See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")

Chairman of the Board is in the meeting. One of the Chairman or Deputy Chairman is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.

The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members are attending the call.

The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.

The meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.

The meeting commences at 13:02 Berlin time.

Agenda:

Public Part

1. Q&A: Answering Questions from the community (All, max. 10 minutes)

    Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask questions to the board and about TDF.

2. Inform & Discuss: Status of Action Items of last board meetings and redmine tickets (Lothar, Stephan/Florian, All 5 min)
    Rationale: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention
to speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

As a reminder, there are following public Action Items from the last board meeting:
AI: Florian to add updates to Redmine tickets and make public where possible, announce to lists -> done
  * link to public board tickets: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/projects/board-public
  * link to private board tickets: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/projects/board-private
  * previous, private board items will be transferred
  * ticket ID will stay the same, so previously private tickets can be tracked in public later on
  * AI (public): sort out how to handle old/existing tickets

AI: marketing plan 2020-2025 Paolo/Franklin/Michael/Thorsten/Mike/Italo -> continue working on this
  * work continues.

3. Inform & Discuss: LOOL item/marketing plan 2020-2025: Status quo, Questions&Discussion about the document, further steps (group of 6, All 15 min)
(for document see: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/jzryGw7XDkJadmo#pdfviewer )

    Rationale: Status quo, Discussion of written proposals/documents, further procedure

   * Summarize where we're at (Lothar)
      + remarks on the board-discuss list
      + is it the right link ?
      + yes has not changed (Italo)
   * several action items that are related to the plan (Italo)
      + some related to product string freeze
      + have been managed by developers
      + some others are related to documents
      + will work on them next week - finishing annual report currently.
   * making good progress (Michael)
      + we have around a month, prolly worth starting build
        LibreOffice Online Personal.
   * Personal vs. Community (Paolo)
      + some discussion - but happy to follow Italo's branding expert
      + background: talked with some former colleagues (Italo)
         + in larger agencies, one was a schoolmate
         + working in brand-management in advertising or related
         + sent a short description, and asked to come up with a name
         + when they replied; provided a list of names which
           included Community
         + these people are not OSS involved - most use Mac
         + answers/comments on 'Community' were fun:
             + "do we support people with addictions ?"
                + 1st concept brought to mind.
             + a lot more consensus on Personal.
         + not Personal in the sense of legally personal
         + not talking about a license, but a concept of
           being used by an individual.
         + although we are in the tech. area - we don't think
           about this.
         + 1st association personal - Personal Computer
         + 4 people who are experts - highly educated.
             + talking about software.
         + also asked about 'Home' (Lothar)
             + perceived as not a professional product (Italo)
                + key asset of software - pro. software for individual
                  use but professionaly developed.
                + Home perceived as more amateurish.
                   + not in favour of Home (Lothar)
         + only the reaction of people will tell us if we're
           right or wrong (Italo)
             + community outside of FLOSS has not the same meaning
               that we give it.
             + had to explain - people who are advocates: a community
               of interest.
             + our perception may be influenced by our narrative.s
      + minature scale negative reaction (Ilmari)
         + good idea to draft some FAQs
         + when people start debating the topic on social media etc.
         + will write about this in the plan document (Italo)
            + a small summary of the dicussion had.
     + how the Personal brand fits with LibreOffice Online (Simon)
         + not for PC, not installed
         + but for an individual to use it (Italo)
            + one term for all uses.
            + less optimized for Online - then again the perception
              of normal users - outside the tech. world
            + software - don't understand S/W browser vs. installed
              locally often
            + extremely larrge number of users - completely different
              from us in how they relate to technology
            + no one single term - perfect for everything.
            + think Personal gets closest in different flavours.
               + may be wrong - see what happens when the product
                 is deployed.
     + meta-comment (Florian)
         + short on time, hard to get things together
         + for the future - for these decisions - consider the option
           of a members vote.
             + our membership base includes volunteers, individuals, enterprise, should be a good representation of the community
             + a suggestion; have them vote etc.
         + a sales point to become members.
         + perhaps if proves not to be working re-consider it later
         + for clarification, decide if we want to re-consider it later or not
     + Dislike the Community vs. Enterprise (Michael)
         + differential marketing against 'Community' is unfortunate.
     + getting string changes under time pressure (Thorsten)
         + LibreOffice 7.0 string freezes etc.
     + for Online - agree with Simon (Thorsten)
         + pay off to think / brainstorm a bit more there
         + pressing thing - is hard deadlines.
     + feedback for the group + marketing team ? (Lothar)
     + broadly very happy with Personal (Thorsten)
         + defer to Italo there.
         + like the separation there & the target group.
         + wonder if it works there.
     + comment - to fix the issue (Paolo)
         + we have LibreOffice. and LibreOffice Enterprise
         + so don't have a demarcation
         + we have something more.
         + how does that differ from what we have now ? (Michael)
             + what we have doesn't work
             + it doesn't steer people effectively.
             + started here two months ago (Cor)
     + where we started (Simon)
         + on the BoD a while ago, comment year+ ago
         + TDF doesn't have a place for producing enterprise editions
           in its mission / activities
         + community members do that: hence the idea of ingredient
           branding.
             + so CIB/Collabora etc. can use that.
         + should focus on making a good tool for community users
         + this river flows from this discussion.
         + lets not talk about enterprise at all - community members
           can use this to indicate they're part of the community.
     + happy to listen to others (Italo)
         + expressed my thoughts
         + community voting an issue:
             + had to get out of Telegram design-group
             + someone with no competence in branding
             + we have a lot of experts in branding
             + don't expect people without knowledge to
               start saying we're experts.
        + no energy to start discussing with people that
          have no basic understanding.
AI Lothar: reach out to Italo for details on what happened in the Telegram group
     + members is really not the end-users we target (Michael)
        + perhaps good to ask those widely.
        + good to get input from members too (Thorsten)
           + should be open for feedback.
           + helps us to explain better & be more convincing.
     + agree with Ilmari we should have a FAQ (Sophie)
        + people in community - may feel don't own the product
          if we don't use the word community
        + we need to explain, Personal is quite different to
          community edition.
           + feel they are part of it.
     + we need a clear domain (Michael)
        + so eg. French Gov't users - think "this is the wrong thing"
           + when they see it in the enterprise.
        + I see 'community' as a positive term.
           + "wow we're using the community edition"
        + agree with that (Sophie)
     + lets keep in touch with ethics & principles (Paolo)
        + indeed - unethical to use it in a large company, saving money
          without contributing (Michael)
           + so helpful to steer people that way.

4. Inform & Discuss: Upcoming Membership Committee election (Florian, Franklin, All 10min)

    Rationale: Time table, procedure, call for candidates

Announcement around mid-July, elections early September, new MC in charge September 19. Eligible voters are all members as of Q3.
  + third quarter members will be announced soon
  + these have active and passive electoral right for the membership committee
  + membership committee size can be changed by the board
  + AI: Emiliano to talk to Gabriele
  + announcement to be sent ~next week

5. Inform & Discuss: Planning of BoD, MC and team meeting at LibOCon (Florian, All 5 min)

    Rational: Discuss and Define need, dates and (virtual?) location

    LibOCon dates: Thursday, October 15-Saturday, October 17. Potential Hackfest around that date too, and mini summits.

  + we do quite a good job of early announces etc. now (Michael)
  + what's the main difference ? (Emiliano)
     + duration mostly 6-8 hours (Florian)
     + remember different time-zones (Lothar)
     + can try to compress the issues into six hours (Emiliano)
        + with planning, can stretch it out into several days
     + Daniel & Franklin should be accommodated (Florian)
  + Florian to come back with a proposal (Lothar)
     + MC & Team should also be asked.

Public meeting ends at 13:48 Berlin time.

Agenda items of Private part:

6. Inform & Discuss: Information about Finance and Taxes (board members 10min)

    Reason why in private: confidential information about status quo

    Rational: status quo, eventual upcoming decision, further todos

7. Inform & Discuss: Status of private Action Items of last board meetings and private redmine tickets (board members 5 min)

    Reason why in private: in the nature of the private tickets

    Rational: Clarifying what is pending, questions to reports in redmine tickets, and what todo, who is caring, until when, it is not the intention to
speak about all, but the important or urgent ones

Lothar Becker (Session chair)
Stephan Ficht (Keeper of the minutes)