[VOTE] LibreOffice Online - repository and translations

Hi,

for me this is a more practical point, not to confuse with an “active” LOOL repo where we do not expect code contributions in the short term period and with that it is unlikely that other contributions (non code) to this repo will come life (which is contra productive).

Nevertheless, if frozen or not, it is far more important, that we all try to engage old/new code contributors to the LOOL project for TDF.

With that I see this as a short term measure to keep track and as soon as we have these new active project it/the content should be used again in this repo tool or the content of it in another appropriate one/repo tool as well for non coding contributions.

So in this understanding for a short term period +1 for 1., 1b. and 2. from me.

Cheers
Lothar

Am 26.11.2020 um 11:02 schrieb Florian Effenberger:

Hello,

last Friday, the board discussed about LibreOffice Online. [1] During the call and in the discussions following, the request for a vote has been expressed, which I am hereby posting to this list.

I start this here as a VOTE thread. For any discussions, please reply in the separate DISCUSS thread, which I will initiate as well.

The vote that has been proposed is the following:

  1. to freeze (not delete) the “online” repository at TDF’s git, for the time being

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

  1. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for the time being

The decision will then also be announced and shared with the various community mailing lists, to keep all the projects in the loop.

Florian

[1] Find the minutes at https://listarchives.tdf.io/i/enpAg8Q93rwP_69yePZQnKFT

1. to freeze (not delete) the "online" repository at TDF's git

+1

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror

0

2. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate

0

Not sure if my previous post was successfully posted or not, here use my own email address to post again. Sorry if you got duplicated posts.

Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org> 於 2020年11月26日 週四 18:03 寫道:

Hello,

last Friday, the board discussed about LibreOffice Online. [1] During
the call and in the discussions following, the request for a vote has
been expressed, which I am hereby posting to this list.

I start this here as a VOTE thread. For any discussions, please reply in
the separate DISCUSS thread, which I will initiate as well.

The vote that has been proposed is the following:

  1. to freeze (not delete) the “online” repository at TDF’s git, for the
    time being

-1, disagree.

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to
instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we
catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

-1, disagree.

  1. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for
    the time being

-1, disagree.

Regards,
Franklin

Please will those voting against the proposal explain their reasoning and the alternative outcome they are supporting?

Thanks

Simon

On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 10:03 AM Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org> wrote:

Hello,

last Friday, the board discussed about LibreOffice Online. [1] During
the call and in the discussions following, the request for a vote has
been expressed, which I am hereby posting to this list.

I start this here as a VOTE thread. For any discussions, please reply in
the separate DISCUSS thread, which I will initiate as well.

The vote that has been proposed is the following:

  1. to freeze (not delete) the “online” repository at TDF’s git, for the
    time being

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to
instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we
catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

  1. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for
    the time being

The decision will then also be announced and shared with the various
community mailing lists, to keep all the projects in the loop.

Florian

[1] Find the minutes at
https://listarchives.tdf.io/i/enpAg8Q93rwP_69yePZQnKFT


Florian Effenberger, Executive Director (Geschäftsführer)
Tel: +49 30 5557992-50 | Mail: floeff@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+unsubscribe@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
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Simple answer: freezing the LOOL repository gives a very strong negative message.

No matter what the alternative outcome will be, it will be better than watching the repo become stale, which is also some others’ worries.

Franklin

Simon Phipps 於 2020/11/29 下午7:35 寫道:

Please will those voting against the proposal explain their reasoning and the alternative outcome they are supporting?

Thanks

Simon

On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 10:03 AM Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org> wrote:

Hello,

last Friday, the board discussed about LibreOffice Online. [1] During
the call and in the discussions following, the request for a vote has
been expressed, which I am hereby posting to this list.

I start this here as a VOTE thread. For any discussions, please reply in
the separate DISCUSS thread, which I will initiate as well.

The vote that has been proposed is the following:

  1. to freeze (not delete) the “online” repository at TDF’s git, for the
    time being

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to
instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we
catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

  1. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for
    the time being

The decision will then also be announced and shared with the various
community mailing lists, to keep all the projects in the loop.

Florian

[1] Find the minutes at
https://listarchives.tdf.io/i/enpAg8Q93rwP_69yePZQnKFT


Florian Effenberger, Executive Director (Geschäftsführer)
Tel: +49 30 5557992-50 | Mail: floeff@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+unsubscribe@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

Simon Phipps

Office: +1 (415) 683-7660 or +44 (238) 098 7027
Signal/Mobile: +44 774 776 2816

From TDF we must recognize the strategic importance of LOOL. That is why the repository must remain active. That way, those who wish to join and make the project shine, can do so. At the same time, as Paolo mentions, we must make sure that the set of tools offered is friendly enough for newcomers. But always maintaining the FLOSS preference.

Hi all

[...]

The vote that has been proposed is the following:

1. to freeze (not delete) the "online" repository at TDF's git, for the
time being

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to
instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we
catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

2. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for
the time being

+1 to the three items on this list.

I hope this leaves the door open to bring back the code at some point.

All the best,
Nicolas

Hello,

last Friday, the board discussed about LibreOffice Online. [1] During
the call and in the discussions following, the request for a vote has
been expressed, which I am hereby posting to this list.

I start this here as a VOTE thread. For any discussions, please reply in
the separate DISCUSS thread, which I will initiate as well.

The vote that has been proposed is the following:

  1. to freeze (not delete) the “online” repository at TDF’s git, for the
    time being

+1

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to
instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we
catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

+1

  1. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for
    the time being

+1

my vote
Andreas

Hi all,

Florian Effenberger wrote:

The vote that has been proposed is the following:

1. to freeze (not delete) the "online" repository at TDF's git, for the time
being

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to instead
mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we catch pull
requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

2. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for the
time being

+1 to all points.

I'm convinced it's the least-worst short-term measure, and leaves the
door open in all directions.

Having seen all arguments here, a clear

  + 1

from me. Especially since otherwise I'm very afraid (having some
experience..) that there will be a froze fight for nothing consuming
positive energy from us.

I think it's a wise proposal that Thorsten brought up.

Thanks,
Cor

Hello,

1. to freeze (not delete) the "online" repository at TDF's git, for the time being

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure we catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

2. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for the time being

The decision will then also be announced and shared with the various community mailing lists, to keep all the projects in the loop.

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

A total of 7 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 4 votes.

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 3 disapprovals, 1 abstain.
One deputy approves, one deputy disapproves.

As the vote is a tied vote, § 9 IV of the statutes come to effect. The Chairperson has the deciding vote, and voted +1 to the proposal.
Therefore:

Decision: The request has been accepted.
This message is to be archived by the BoD members and their deputies.

Florian

I believe the result is suboptimal but at least it provides us with a
new level of urgency to find some alternatives.

Having Collabora stated its position by removing the comments that COOL
is a LibreOffice project we now know that they consider the project as
something completely separate from TDF so we have no duty to promote a
third party project.
We should now remove all references to CODE or COOL as by promoting them
we would promote a commercial entity which is now not contributing
anymore to LOOL.
The way the fork has been made shows that the "leaving the doors open"
comment is once again a strategy to take time to kill the LOOL project
making Collabora, an external commercial entity, the only organisation
managing the project.

LOOL is a "LibreOffice project" which surely lost one of its major
contributor but this shouldn't stop TDF and its community from moving
forward with an On-Line platform.

As I said a few times LOOL and now COOL, being mostly maintained by a
single commercial organisation, are a big risk for TDF and its community
as at any moment in time they could change their focus in a way that can
be detrimental for the community, they could fail commercially and leave
us with unsupported code or they may be taken over by another commercial
organisation which may shut down the project.

TDF should not repeat the same mistakes so it should look for new
partners for the LOOL project and possibly for alternative technologies
but this time having a clear and structured relationship with the
contributors and surely invest to have multiple maintainers of the project.

In the meantime we should communicate to the outside world the fact that
COOL is not LOOL and that we will implement new tools to make it easier
for new contributors to LOOL to work on the code and with the clear
intent, if it wasn't already clear, to make LOOL available for free to
use by anyone and that we will make it as simple as possible to
implement it.

We surely should be leaving the doors open to Collabora if they wish to
propose a new way to cooperate , which should be fair and balanced and
applied in the same way to all members of the ecosystem, but in the
meantime members of TDF's BoD that wish the best for TDF and the
community instead of their personal gains should move forward as fast as
possible to fix the long standing issues that created this situation.

Paolo

Interestingly, https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/board/
doesn't say who the chair is :slight_smile:

Page has been updated, apologies

Hi Florian,

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 3 disapprovals, 1 abstain.
One deputy approves, one deputy disapproves.

As the vote is a tied vote, § 9 IV of the statutes come to effect. The
Chairperson has the deciding vote, and voted +1 to the proposal.
Therefore:

Decision: The request has been accepted.
This message is to be archived by the BoD members and their deputies.

AFAICT this outcome stems from the fact there it was a yes/no type of
vote, so yays “for a short-term period” (quoting Lothar, but there were
other BoD members with that understanding) were counted alongside
enthusiastic yays.

Given the short-term period isn't binding, in practice the vote might be
interpreted as a definitive +1. Could the BoD clarify the short-term
period and maybe even commit to revisit the vote say, before the end of
their term?

Cheers,

Hi Guilhem,

thanks for your differentiated view! And let me stress again at least from my side, this is a temporary freeze, meanwhile to engage for new or old code contributors, so that we are able to have or to maintain at least a “secure” code base for TDFs LOOL.

I already have started some activities for this purpose (as it is also an independent issue from frozen or not) and I urge everybody to help here (board, team, members, community, others) to meet this temporary period, so yes from my side, this is the plan in my pov.

Thanks again, Guilhem, all the best,
Lothar

Am 02.12.2020 um 15:58 schrieb Guilhem Moulin:

Hi Florian,

On Wed, 02 Dec 2020 at 12:23:22 +0100, Florian Effenberger wrote:

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 3 disapprovals, 1 abstain.
One deputy approves, one deputy disapproves.

As the vote is a tied vote, § 9 IV of the statutes come to effect. The
Chairperson has the deciding vote, and voted +1 to the proposal.
Therefore:

Decision: The request has been accepted.
This message is to be archived by the BoD members and their deputies.

AFAICT this outcome stems from the fact there it was a yes/no type of
vote, so yays “for a short-term period” (quoting Lothar, but there were
other BoD members with that understanding) were counted alongside
enthusiastic yays.

Given the short-term period isn't binding, in practice the vote might be
interpreted as a definitive +1.  Could the BoD clarify the short-term
period and maybe even commit to revisit the vote say, before the end of
their term?

Cheers,

Hey Guilhem,

Guilhem Moulin wrote:

Could the BoD clarify the short-term period and maybe even commit to
revisit the vote say, before the end of their term?

Though I cannot speak for the entire board, the above is my
understanding at least (I'd say this needs revisiting the latest in
early summer 2021).

The proposal was made to buy us time to sort things out, not as a
permanent setup.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

I consider that contributions to COOL, should not taken into consideration for TDF membership.

Hi all,

Hello,

1. to freeze (not delete) the "online" repository at TDF's git, for
the time being

1b. to switch the https://github.com/libreoffice/online mirror to
instead mirror the Collabora repo, for the time being, and make sure
we catch pull requests there, e.g. via the mentoring alias on TDF side

2. to freeze (not delete) the translations for online in Weblate, for
the time being

The decision will then also be announced and shared with the various
community mailing lists, to keep all the projects in the loop.

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

A total of 7 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 4 votes.

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 3 disapprovals, 1 abstain.
One deputy approves, one deputy disapproves.

As the vote is a tied vote, § 9 IV of the statutes come to effect. The
Chairperson has the deciding vote, and voted +1 to the proposal.

as far as I know the statutes doesn't speak about a second vote of the
Chairperson here. The vote of the Chairperson is only deciding in such case.

Thus it counted only 3 approvals and not 4. The necessary approvals are
not reached and the request has not been accepted.

In addition: as far as I know two members of the board have a CoI on
this topic. But only one board member abstained from voting (correct
behavior). The second approved the proposal, instead of abstaining. This
could be seen as a violation of his duties as a member of the board or
his loyalty for TDF. Thus his vote had to been rejected (and not counted
in).

Conclusion: for both reasons the request has not approved, but rejected.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Daniel,

I consider that contributions to COOL, should not taken into
consideration for TDF membership.

  I'm sure the membership committee will take all of these things into
consideration as they deliberate. If that is their decision, perhaps it
is no bad thing to re-shape our membership over the next year.

  It does however make it even more vital to get a mentor hired, unless
we want a rather smaller proportion of coders as members.

  From the COOL perspective, our position is unchanged: We respect and
recognize the contribution of all the developers of LibreOffice and will
honor that in equivalent access: commit, translation etc. on our side.

  Regards,

    Michael.

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

A total of 7 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 4 votes.

Result of vote: 3 approvals, 3 disapprovals, 1 abstain.
One deputy approves, one deputy disapproves.

As the vote is a tied vote, § 9 IV of the statutes come to
effect. The Chairperson has the deciding vote, and voted +1 to the
proposal.

as far as I know the statutes doesn't speak about a second vote of
the Chairperson here. The vote of the Chairperson is only deciding
in such case.

I don't understand what you mean by "only deciding". Clearly, the
statutes (Satzung) intend for the Chairperson (Vorsitzender) or his
Deputy (Stellvertreter)) to act as a tie-break. Else the sentence

In the event of a tied vote, the chairman, or as a substitute the
vice chairman, has the deciding vote.

Bei Stimmengleichheit gibt die Stimme des Vorsitzenden, ersatzweise
seines Stellvertreters den Ausschlag.

Is wholly without effect, as it can never have any effect in
practice. Can you please give a scenario where the fact that, in your
interpretation and understanding of the Statutes, the vote of
Chairperson being "deciding" leads to a decision that would not have
been reached without the "deciding" quality of the vote?

Thus it counted only 3 approvals and not 4. The necessary approvals
are not reached and the request has not been accepted.

To make my question above more precise, the "deciding vote" of the
Chairperson applies only in case of "Stimmengleichheit" which I would
define (somewhat redundantly) as:

  Gleichheit der Zahl der für zwei oder mehr zur Wahl stehenden
  Alternativen, die in dieser Wahl eine (identische) Stimmenzahl haben
  bekommen die höher als die Stimmenzahl der anderen Alternativen ist,
  abgegebenen Stimmen

or in English

  Equality of the number of votes cast for two or more alternatives
  that have gotten a(n) (identical) number of votes in this election
  that is higher than the number of votes for the other alternatives.

So what does "only deciding" mean? To take a decision without the vote
being "deciding", it needs to be "mit einfacher Mehrheit", which
Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrheit#Einfache_Mehrheit)
defines as having strictly more votes than all other options together
(cumulatively), not counting abstention as another option.

If the vote got to "Stimmengleichheit", necessarily there is no
"einfache Mehrheit", so the intention is that the Chairperson vote
lead to a decision, and that the winning alternative does _not_ have
"einfache Mehrheit". So in my analysis, you cannot reject the decision
of the vote for not having "einfache Mehrheit", much less for not
having "absolute Mehrheit" (absolute majority), which is what I
understand by your "only 3 approvals and not 4". (In the vote at
hand, having 6 non-abstaining votes, einfache and absolute Mehrheit
have the same meaning in terms of number of votes).

Please do explain.

In addition: as far as I know two members of the board have a CoI on
this topic. But only one board member abstained from voting (correct
behavior). The second approved the proposal, instead of
abstaining. This could be seen as a violation of his duties as a
member of the board or his loyalty for TDF. Thus his vote had to
been rejected (and not counted in).

If you intend to reject a vote based on this, "could be seen as X" is
not enough. Either you assert it _is_ X, or no consequence can come
out of it. Additionally, rejecting a vote can only happen on the basis
of pre-established formal rules.

You are entitled to think poorly of people that behaved otherwise than
you think is proper, you are entitled to campaign for their not being
reelected, but you cannot exclude their vote other than based on
written rules that predate the vote.

On the subject of conflict of interest, the choice made by the
Statutes is _not_ to exclude "conflict of interest" votes, but to
limit those to _one_ _third_. You may think that is a poor choice, you
certainly can campaign for a *future* change of the statutes on this
point, but you cannot remove votes expressed in accordance with, and
within, the limits of the statutes, and other established rules, as
they stood during the vote.

If CoI votes were to be excluded, why would the composition of the
board be limited to one third from the same company? If CoI votes were
excluded, we can have e.g. 70% (five members out of seven) board
members from the same company, and on each conflict-of-interest vote,
the votes of the five are excluded (or rather, they don't vote), and
the remaining two board members vote among themselves. To me, this is
an indication that the limit of one-third is intended as _another_
solution to the CoI problem than "exclude CoI votes", not cumulative
to it. (Again, it doesn't mean I think it is a good choice.)