Counterproposal to the "actization" of LibreOffice Online

Hi *,

as requested by Thorsten and others many times, I’m starting a new
thread to discuss an alternative proposal to the “attic” for LibreOffice
Online.
I think there has been, in the other thread, room enough to discuss
about the status quo of Online and LibreOffice Viewer, which is in a
similar situation.
I also would like to emphasize the fact that, in the current situation,
building a competing product starting from the frozen repo with no
companies working on it and the one on GitHub 1 year ahead, would just
be impossible.

The code is still Free Software under the same MPL license, as it was
under TDF.  The code is flourishing on GitHub, so the FLOSS world wins;
and only few people actually care if it is named "LibreOffice Online",
or "Collabora Online".

All remedies I can think of are much worse than the disease you'd like
to cure. And for companies, it is trivially easy to circumvent any
sort of contract that binds a particular company, but not the general
public.

Based on this two quotes, I’d like to make a counterproposal for the
online project:
    1. Since not only Collabora-affiliated developers but almost
everybody that was previously involved in development of Online moved on
Github, contributing to Collabora’s repo, TDF should publicly endorse
this choice, stating that the project is now hosted on Github and the
development is managed by a company of the ecosystem but is – at the end
of the day – always LibreOffice Online.
    2. Provide stable libreoffice-branded builds (on a nightly/weekly
basis) of LibreOffice Online on the Docker HUB (possibly also DEBs/RPMs)
starting from the Collabora repository. This can either be done
internally by TDF or tendered.
    3. Update the documentation at TDF’s wiki. As above, internally
done, volunteered or tendered.
    4. Grant, as already happens e.g. for Play Store / Windows app
store, the permission to release the builds with the “LibreOffice
Online” trademark to companies of the ecosystem that ask for that.

This 4 bullet points would allow, at least in my opinion, TDF to
acknowledge Online as “still part of the LibreOffice ecosystem” and
continue with his distribution/marketing, in order to build a real
market surrounding LOOL.

All the best,
Marco

Hi Marco,

see below.

Based on this two quotes, I’d like to make a counterproposal for the
online project:
    1. Since not only Collabora-affiliated developers but almost
everybody that was previously involved in development of Online moved on
Github, contributing to Collabora’s repo, TDF should publicly endorse
this choice, stating that the project is now hosted on Github and the
development is managed by a company of the ecosystem but is – at the end
of the day – always LibreOffice Online.

I don't think TDF can and should endorse or promote third party products as I think you proposed.

Collabora made the choice of moving what was LOOL away from TDF infrastructure and made a considerable effort to remove as much as possible the references to the fact that it was a shared project (removing "This file is part of the LibreOffice project", renaming variables from LOOL to COOL, etc.).

Unfortunately what is in that GitHub repository is not LOOL any more so, IMHO, it has little to do with TDF now.

2. Provide stable libreoffice-branded builds (on a nightly/weekly
basis) of LibreOffice Online on the Docker HUB (possibly also DEBs/RPMs)
starting from the Collabora repository. This can either be done
internally by TDF or tendered.

True, we could even backport the lot and rebrand it but I believe TDF should lead by example by confirming that, while it would be only fair for the other party to actually deliver their side of the agreement, we don't want to damage any valuable member of the ecosystem by cloning their product as it is.

As said in other threads, negotiations for a mutually beneficial agreement were ongoing before they decided to go their own way and it's up to them to recognise that their actions went against what TDF and the LibreOffice community stand for and eventually come back to the negotiation table.

If Collabora decides to backport to TDF's LOOL repository or agrees that it's fair for TDF or external partners to do it then we could consider it.

3. Update the documentation at TDF’s wiki. As above, internally
done, volunteered or tendered.

Before updating the documentations we should know in relation to what, the outdated LOOL we have in the repository or a product that is not LOOL any more?

4. Grant, as already happens e.g. for Play Store / Windows app
store, the permission to release the builds with the “LibreOffice
Online” trademark to companies of the ecosystem that ask for that.

I'm not fully sure about it as it may lead to the same difficult situation we have now with LOOL.

If companies of the ecosystem would like to contribute to LOOL hosted by TDF this time it should be done under a clear agreement, the one also proposed for the "de-atticisation" process, so that the LibreOffice community will also benefit from it.

If they should be allowed to use the "LibreOffice Online" name is something to discuss as I think all members of the ecosystem should find ways to differentiate themselves in terms of brand and services they provide. Then we could evaluate if they could use the LibreOffice Technology brand while they use LibreOffice projects hosted by TDF to which they actively contribute.

This 4 bullet points would allow, at least in my opinion, TDF to
acknowledge Online as “still part of the LibreOffice ecosystem” and
continue with his distribution/marketing, in order to build a real
market surrounding LOOL.

I believe it's clear to most that LibreOffice Online is the original project hosted by TDF which should have led to a platform freely usable by anyone under.

The issue now is how to bring it back to a state where people can actually use it.

Let's also keep in mind that while you can create Marco's Office that anyone can download and use, LOOL needs a more complex setup.
I believe that ownCloud, NextCloud and others would have accepted to add LOOL by TDF as a free community option to their marketplace to make it easier for non IT specialists to use but otherwise it is not that simple to deliver to the users.

All the best,
Marco

Maybe others from our community have other ideas and comments for these proposals?

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Marco,

> I also would like to emphasize the fact that, in the current situation,
> building a competing product starting from the frozen repo with no
> companies working on it and the one on GitHub 1 year ahead, would just
> be impossible.

  Thank you for recognising the importance of companies working
on the project to do much of the heavy lifting too; that's
appreciated.

  I wonder though if building a competing product is a useful
goal for TDF to consider. I would hope instead that TDF can
collaborate well with others to drive its mission. Every organization
has strengths and weaknesses, things it can, and cannot do - and by
working together to complement each other - much can be achieved that
would be otherwise impossible.

  Beyond that I see your proposal as fundamentally the same as
previous approaches here - which I mentally group under the heading
"lets de-fund the developers".

  As you know TDF previously had an agreed[1] position around
online. It was pretty ugly and displeasing to many; no-one was very
happy with it. Confidence in the durability of this compromise broke
down completely with the results we know. The up-side of that is that
now - I believe we have moved to a new and better model for everyone:

  Now we have clear credit for the work via clean branding. We
use Italo's clever framing to credit via the LibreOffice Technology
that we build on and those that write it. The documentation you need
is open. There are no user-limits in the binaries so they can be used
in schools for free etc. We didn't break the economics ie. we still
empower "makers" over "takers", which continues to fund work on the
LibreOffice core. To top it all we can remove a massive source of
contention.

  Re-opening the can of worms as you suggest doesn't look
constructive. And I don't believe it is necessary.

  If competing organizations want to re-build COOL and re-brand
it or deploy it themselves, that is fine - it is FLOSS - people
already do that left and right.

  Lending them our brand to promote competing products, without
the expense of them having to contribute anything significant, and
without any track record of doing so would be unfortunate. As is - it
risks use the LibreOffice brand to make it socially acceptable to set
the price-point at zero for collaborative online office suites, and (I
assume) remove the nudges to get support and services.

  I hope you can see that just de-funds the developers.

  My ecosystem paper[2] tries to explain the basics:

  -> marketing/branding -> leads -> sales -> investment -> ...

  where a chunk of such investment goes back into the
LibreOffice core that is foundational to TDF's mission; as well as
marketing to go around the next virtuous circle.

  We have lots of hard data that shows the LibreOffice brand
will crush the ecosystem's brands in a side-by-side comparison. So at
one level you're right - it would be ideal in some sense to use the
LibreOffice brand in a fair way to drive leads and sales to fund
development - however this has been repeatedly shown to be
structurally impossible for TDF. Quite probably that is a feature not
bug for a non-profit.

  So here we are.

  Who benefits from a proposal to remove the author's names and
credit from the brand of the product, and to leverage the community's
brand to drive competing products ?

  TDF's previous approach had a message:

  "This is an un-supported version of LibreOffice. To avoid the
   impression it is suitable for deployment in enterprises, this
   message appears when more than 10 users or 20 connections are
   in use concurrently."

  I believe we can only harm the LibreOffice brand by blessing
services that are not effectively supported - ie. backed by competent
(certified) developers. If someone wants that - they should build it
and use their own brand (as they always could).

  I associate (perhaps unfairly) the suggestion for TDF to make
this easy to do with those who want to promote their own hosting
services with a zero-price complement.

  Fostering the development of Free software is tough, with
everyone from Sun/Oracle onwards struggling with that. As of today we
have no big 'strategic' investor. If we want to create more good Free
software we need to care about the side-effects of otherwise
well-intentioned actions.

  The thought that TDF could first de-fund and then hire
developers to do the work itself is interesting, but is fundamentally
a negative-sum-game. We have a positive sum option: to keep the wider
ecosystem around -and- spend that money to improve the software (for
example by hiring extra mentors or tendering).

  Sadly, the distraction from this topic has really impaired the
board's ability to do good things around the LibreOffice Technology
and our desktop product.

  Perhaps I've not persuaded you, but I think the proposal while
no doubt well-meaning is self-defeating for TDF, for LibreOffice, and
for its contributing ecoystem.

  I also agree with Thorsten that the stories about achieving
market dominance during the COVID crisis with this approach are
impossibly naive. From a hardware provision perspective alone - being
backed by a giant monopoly (which we are not), really helps to front
the Eur 10's of millions of infrastructure cost needed to provide a
large-scale free service. Also - I expect that selling users' private
data or insights gleaned from it (something TDF would never do) also
gives a significant cost edge against us.

  On the plus side - the tragic COVID crisis has encouraged a
number of organizations to choose to move to LibreOffice
Technology. Many have done that in a sustainable way - I hope their
financial contribution and positive experiences of support will
continue for many years improving LibreOffice to everyone's benefit.

  Hopefully that is something we can mutually celebrate,

  Regards,

    Michael.

[1] - https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/
  eg. "why is this un-supported?" - this page forms the
  only substantial agreement I can see on the topic.
[2] - https://people.gnome.org/~michael/data/vendor-neutral-marketing.html

Hi all,

I won't comment about the rest of the email as I've already provided plenty of additional information here:

https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00029.html

However, the following comment made by our fellow member of the board needs to be framed correctly.

Sadly, the distraction from this topic has really impaired the
board's ability to do good things around the LibreOffice Technology
and our desktop product.

The LOOL topic has indeed used up plenty of the board time but has not impaired the board's ability to do good things.

Quite the contrary.

The process of understanding why the community wasn't benefiting from LOOL and the (painful) negotiations that followed started the overdue marketing plan from which our fellow member of the board's company and other members of the ecosystem are happily benefiting.

This "distraction" has, indeed, taken away a lot of resources and time that could have been invested in doing better things but it has now been dealt with and has confirmed that the relationship between a major corporate contributor to a project and TDF must be clarified very early on in the process.

Things would have been a lot easier if our fellow member of the board looked objectively at the project's direction years ago when his new company took over it and, as he was also a member of the board at the time, proposed an agreement that would satisfy both his commercial ambitions and the need to have a positive outcome for the community out of TDF's investments.

This issue which hasn't distracted our fellow member of the board for many years has finally been tackled.

Another lesson learned from this "distraction" is that we haven't invested enough in internal developers which can not only help in mentoring new community developers but can also help in dealing with fixes and features that may be uninteresting for commercial contributors which may prefer to focus on their products.

Having internal developers will also help us in evaluating better what we can deal with internally, help new projects that want to be hosted at TDF and structuring better the tenders for development we'll need to delegate to external organisations while also being able to validate the quality of the deliverables.

So, to conclude, this "distraction" has actually helped the board in dealing with a situation which impaired its freedom to act in a well informed and structured way and created a new situation where, thanks to important and in some cases overdue work done by the board during this term, we know where we stand, we know that we can do a lot more that some thought we could and we can finally move forward and do more good things for the community.

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Michael, all,

Hi Marco,

[...]

I also agree with Thorsten that the stories about achieving
market dominance during the COVID crisis with this approach are
impossibly naive. From a hardware provision perspective alone - being
backed by a giant monopoly (which we are not), really helps to front
the Eur 10's of millions of infrastructure cost needed to provide a
large-scale free service. Also - I expect that selling users' private
data or insights gleaned from it (something TDF would never do) also
gives a significant cost edge against us.

On my point of view, it was not about achieving market dominance but
about solidarity. And TDF has failed here, again on my point of view.
When I see what Framasoft (an association with 35 contributors and 10
employees) has been able to achieve during these days/years, I feel sad
that we were not part of this framework. See the CHATONS initiative
which has played an incredible role for teachers, students, families and
even in the health field by helping doctors, during the lockdown periods:
https://www.chatons.org/en

If I read through this article detailing what they have done during 2020,
https://framablog.org/2020/12/08/review-of-framasofts-actions-in-2020-excluding-the-lockdown-period/

I don't read only about products, but about sharing, empowering of
people, solidarity and creativity, all in the FLOSS spirit. TDF for me
is not only hosting a product, but has a culture, has a knowledge, has a
lot of creative people around, meaning we have a lot of resources, but
we have done nothing to share them during the critical period families
and students were fronting.

Cheers
Sophie

Paolo Vecchi wrote:

So, to conclude, this "distraction" has actually helped the board in dealing
with a situation which impaired its freedom to act in a well informed and
structured way and created a new situation where, thanks to important and in
some cases overdue work done by the board during this term, we know where we
stand, we know that we can do a lot more that some thought we could and we
can finally move forward and do more good things for the community.

I have a hard time reconciling the objective loss of a quite important
project at TDF, with the above paragraph.

Whatever the reasons (perhaps it was inexperience), the board managed
to alienate an important corporate ecosystem member enough that they
left with their project.

I would really like to stop looking at the past now, and instead see
how we all together can shape the future - with some impact.

That means, keeping as many existing contribution, while attracting &
growing more contributors in green fields (where there are plenty!).

Personally, I'm not interested in playing zero-sum games (taking
development away from the ecosystem, and re-patriating it into
TDF). Instead, we need to work much more on creating win-win setups,
and supplementing each other.

There's definitely things that TDF can do much better than any
ecosystem company. There's also definitely things that ecosystem
companies are likely better suited for, than TDF. The same is true for
our volunteer community (which is BTW not the same as TDF, the
foundation!). In the past, we've been envied for actually striking a
nice balance, and complementing each other.

One obvious area where there's very little commercial incentive to do
things is a11y. At the same time, that would be something very
charitable to fund & further! If there's budget for funding internal
development, a11y would be very high on my list of topics to focus on.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Hi Sophie,

thank you for reminding us what TDF and its community is all about.
It is also great to see that members of TDF team are passionate about what they are doing within TDF for the community.

I agree with you that we failed to act. Some of us tried to deliver the information and the packages needed to setup LOOL wherever it was needed but failed.
We were probably also too busy in trying to get a bad situation sorted to find other ways to act.

That's why we need even more the team and the community to shout out when they see that we are not reacting to something that we must act on so that everyone in the board gets the message.

I've been following what Framasoft have been doing for quite a while and have seen how they coordinated with the CHATONS to offer many of the services that were needed since the beginning of the pandemic.

I managed to follow their example and invested personally and through my company to help other people, I would have been great if we could have done the same through TDF.

I think we should get in touch with Framasoft to support them and also to (re)learn from them how to get the community more engaged so that we can get the community to help us in steering TDF and its projects in the right direction.

Already during last board meeting I've proposed to setup a PeerTube instance, mostly to lead by example in terms of Digital Sovereignty and to give a privacy friendly option to those that would like to view our videos, together with a donation to Framasoft to thank them for their efforts.

Maybe you could facilitate a call so that we see how we could join forces to promote and support each others?

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Sophie,

I appreciate your comment here and (with some fear) have to respond to amplify it.

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 11:14 AM sophi <sophi@libreoffice.org> wrote:

On my point of view, it was not about achieving market dominance but
about solidarity. And TDF has failed here, again on my point of view.

Yes, I have to agree with you. Freedom, equality and solidarity used to be the norm at TDF. Over the last couple of years that has largely ended at the Foundation level (fortunately our community still has many parts where this is not true). This has led to progress grinding to a halt through mistrust. For example, both TDC and LOOL were ended just at the point where the external conditions suggested they were going to flourish. Little has been achieved in their place as you observe, and as the tired bickering in this thread illustrates.

Egalitarianism was replaced by turning inwards to fight unproductively among those privileged to be allowed information - and in the process to slander those involved before. As a result of this the Foundation has turned even more closed, with Board inflighting leaving the Trustees in the dark while the arguments went on. There has consequently been no spirit of solidarity to harness to do good outside the project. As you say, that is tragic, and I really appreciate your observation of it.

If TDF is to satisfy its mission this has to stop. The new Board has a huge opportunity and responsibility to put all this behind them and lead positively. It must shun divisiveness and seek ways to rekindle solidarity by emphasizing equality and promoting freedom. This will not be done treating the motivations of some participants as suspect! In fact almost everyone is pursuing an “interest”, almost by definition in a collaborative community!

As Maslow observed, before higher-level behaviours can be cultivated, basic needs must be met - especially belonging and esteem. The Foundation needs to be more inclusive of all its trustees in its processes rather than just consulting them for votes once every two years. It needs to be realistic about the pragmatics of large-scale software engineering and how it’s paid for and rein-in those trying to frame “commercial” as tainted. It has to seek ways to encourage both community and commercial activities inside its “umbrella” rather than treating some as clean and some as unclean.

I very much hope the new Board will engage positively and unanimously on these things. I’m not finding the current conversation encouraging but I have hopes the new team will take a firm hold and change things for the better.

Best regards

Simon

Thanks so much Simon for this comment ! I would especially like to
endorse your statement: 'It needs to be realistic about the pragmatics
of large-scale software engineering and how it's paid for and rein-in
those trying to frame "commercial" as tainted.' as an extremely
insightful statement.

Open Source has won the argument in terms of how software should be
developed. I can't think of a commercial product shipping today that
doesn't include Open Source software. The struggle that remains is for
freedom and equality of access to the world-changing technology that
is being developed as Open Source (and also to commit to equality of
access to the decision making behind it), and I hope that TDF will
dedicate itself to these principles.

Cheers,

Jeremy.

Hi Thorsten,

Paolo Vecchi wrote:

So, to conclude, this "distraction" has actually helped the board in dealing
with a situation which impaired its freedom to act in a well informed and
structured way and created a new situation where, thanks to important and in
some cases overdue work done by the board during this term, we know where we
stand, we know that we can do a lot more that some thought we could and we
can finally move forward and do more good things for the community.

I have a hard time reconciling the objective loss of a quite important
project at TDF, with the above paragraph.

I guess I've anticipated your change of title as can't do much about LOOL, unless someone decides to deliver on his part of the agreement, so may as well look forward.

Then anyway what has TDF and our community lost?
It's only when we started looking into it and we wanted to do the right thing that the main contributor decided to fork.
Up to that point TDF has been hosting and promoting a project on which it had little say and it has never been allowed to fully deliver it to the community.

Whatever the reasons (perhaps it was inexperience), the board managed
to alienate an important corporate ecosystem member enough that they
left with their project.

Sorry but that is not correct.
The whole board, included you which I believe don't lack of experience, negotiated openly with a fellow member of the board that coincidentally is also the director of the company that then forked the project.
For months the signs were positive but when we were nearly ready to deliver to the people where in need of it our fellow member of the board/director of the ecosystem company decided otherwise.

I would really like to stop looking at the past now, and instead see
how we all together can shape the future - with some impact.

I would rather not stop looking at the past as it's only by learning from the past that we create a better future.

I did propose the following additional article to the "de-atticisation" as the past told us that things can go seriously wrong:

> - If the parties involved in the development of the project are commercial
> entities an agreement must be signed to make clear the final scope, the
> benefits to the community and the eventual limitations in publishing it
> following TDF's objectives.

You should look at the past as it's months I've been asking you to lead by example and tell us what will happen to the project that your company is leading when it will start becoming an important revenue maker.

We don't want the past to repeat itself, don't we?

That means, keeping as many existing contribution, while attracting &
growing more contributors in green fields (where there are plenty!).

I fully agree with you as long as the rules with corporate contributors are clear from the beginning.

Personally, I'm not interested in playing zero-sum games (taking
development away from the ecosystem, and re-patriating it into
TDF). Instead, we need to work much more on creating win-win setups,
and supplementing each other.

TDF must make its choices as corporate contributors have to make theirs.

Fortunately corporate contributors have business models that allows them to grow without counting on TDF tenders so, while tenders will be still made to deal with complex development that other contributors are unable to tackle, we need to become capable of managing some of the project so that we are not always dependent on third parties that may not find a specific project fun or commercially interesting.

There's definitely things that TDF can do much better than any
ecosystem company. There's also definitely things that ecosystem
companies are likely better suited for, than TDF. The same is true for
our volunteer community

True and that's why there is room for all to have fun and participate to make LibreOffice and related project great.

(which is BTW not the same as TDF, the
foundation!).

This comment worries me a bit.
TDF is the home of our community and the entity that guards LibreOffice from situations that in the past (here it is again) led to the formation of TDF itself to create the great community around it and LibreOffice.

Without TDF protecting the brand and putting the resources donated by our community to help our community to improve LibreOffice all the time then the project would be at risk of fragmentation and take over by less community friendly entities.

In the past, we've been envied for actually striking a
nice balance, and complementing each other.

And we should get back to that stage.

We had to go through a painful process to fix a few things that needed fixing but now that things should be clear to most it would be great to get back to work in a way that benefits TDF and its LibreOffice community

One obvious area where there's very little commercial incentive to do
things is a11y. At the same time, that would be something very
charitable to fund & further! If there's budget for funding internal
development, a11y would be very high on my list of topics to focus on.

That's something that has been on the list to do for a long time.
I haven't noticed anything related to it in the ESC ranking or maybe it's simply not marked clearly enough.

If it isn't there then we should ask the ESC to propose fixes in that regards?

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Ciao

Paolo

Hi,

Hi Sophie,

I appreciate your comment here and (with some fear) have to respond to
amplify it.

    On my point of view, it was not about achieving market dominance but
    about solidarity. And TDF has failed here, again on my point of view.

Yes, I have to agree with you. Freedom, equality and solidarity used
to be the norm at TDF. Over the last couple of years that has largely
ended at the Foundation level (fortunately our community still has
many parts where this is not true). This has led to progress grinding
to a halt through mistrust. For example, both TDC and LOOL were ended
just at the point where the external conditions suggested they were
going to flourish. Little has been achieved in their place as you
observe, and as the tired bickering in this thread illustrates.

Egalitarianism was replaced by turning inwards to fight unproductively
among those privileged to be allowed information - and in the process
to slander those involved before. As a result of this the Foundation
has turned even more closed, with Board inflighting leaving the
Trustees in the dark while the arguments went on. There has
consequently been no spirit of solidarity to harness to do good
outside the project. As you say, that is tragic, and I really
appreciate your observation of it.

If TDF is to satisfy its mission this has to stop. The new Board has a
huge opportunity and responsibility to put all this behind them and
lead positively. It must shun divisiveness and seek ways to rekindle
solidarity by emphasizing equality and promoting freedom. This will
not be done treating the motivations of some participants as suspect!
In fact almost everyone is pursuing an "interest", almost by
definition in a collaborative community!

Sure, without following an interest you wouldn't participate and invest
your live time in that community.

But at least if you are a member of a charity's body you need to be open
and transparent about such interests and rethink, if following them
foster the objectives of the organization. If following your interest
(commercial or non-commercial) is in opposite to that, a member of the
body has to put his interest last. If she / he is not able to follow
such rule, she / he shouldn't reconsider his membership, because
otherwise she / he most probably will get very soon into the situation
to violate her / his duty as a member of the body.

In short: if you wear to hats (TDF / personal interest) you as a member
of a body has to wear the TDF hat in the first place.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Simon,

Sorry to be very direct in my answer.

Yes, I have to agree with you. Freedom, equality and solidarity used to be the norm at TDF. Over the last couple of years that has largely ended at the Foundation level (fortunately our community still has many parts where this is not true). This has led to progress grinding to a halt through mistrust. For example, both TDC and LOOL were ended just at the point where the external conditions suggested they were going to flourish. Little has been achieved in their place as you observe, and as the tired bickering in this thread illustrates.

I feel exploiting a honest and community-felt thought as the one proposed by Sophie to attack other people is unneeded and unfair. As such, I will treat the rest of the mail.

We (the current board) spent nearly 1.5 years, and donor's money, to fully brainstorm around the creation of a third-party entity, finding out in the meantime that your (and other's) proposal had some issues:
* Due legal checking wasn't thoroughly done;
* Other kind of third-party entities (e.g. fully controlled ones), achieving the same goals, were possible (and their feasibility was not even assessed - it would have taken more time, that the current Board decided instead to invest);
* The proposed setup was (more or less debatable) potentially causing Conflicts of Interest;
* Being based in UK, Brexit could have impacted it (but this is simple to see now, in hindsight);
* Last but not least, we received strong opposing from the community to the proposal itself.

I think we should end here the quarrel, or risk more damage to TDF and other parties in the meantime.

There are positive aspects of your proposal, though, which I can surely recognize: it was immediately applicable and it would have impacted even in the pandemic already; and it sparkled a lot of constructive discussions inside of the Board, for which we are now more aware of issues that can appear, and more ready to prevent them, and/or even developed new and feasible ideas on how to better serve the community and the Foundation itself.

While mistrust is a pretty heavy word, I wonder if our "mistrust" has done more damage to TDF than "trusting" everyone and every action in the first place.

Let me close with a different mood: TDF appreciates your input, Simon, it is indeed great, insightful and wise, and (I have no doubts about it) provided in the best interests of the Foundation; we will always listen to you and thank you for your involvement in the project. We are just humans, and sometimes we simply fail (also, it's simpler to spot failures in hindsight); that's why we need to relate to a community that can point out what's going wrong.

Cheers,

Hi Simon, all,

Hi Sophie,

I appreciate your comment here and (with some fear) have to respond to
amplify it.

Thank you for your support. You amplified more than my initial thoughts
which were only about solidarity, altruism and generosity.

On my point of view, it was not about achieving market dominance but
about solidarity. And TDF has failed here, again on my point of view.

Yes, I have to agree with you. Freedom, equality and solidarity used to be
the norm at TDF.> Over the last couple of years that has largely ended at
the Foundation level (fortunately our community still has many parts where
this is not true). This has led to progress grinding to a halt
through mistrust. For example, both TDC and LOOL were ended just at the
point where the external conditions suggested they were going to flourish.
Little has been achieved in their place as you observe, and as the tired
bickering in this thread illustrates.

I don't want to go back in these stories of TDC and LOOL again but they
are two very different situations for me. What I can agree with you is
that both have damaged the community's confidence in what is TDF and
what it should represent.
I've read all the minutes of the board meetings, attended several of
these meetings, and I can say this board has took several actions during
this two very difficult years without having a chance to meet. My mail
was not to address reproaches to the board, but a reaction to what
Thorsten and Michael said on the pandemic period.

Egalitarianism was replaced by turning inwards to fight unproductively
among those privileged to be allowed information - and in the process to
slander those involved before. As a result of this the Foundation has
turned even more closed, with Board inflighting leaving the Trustees in the
dark while the arguments went on. There has consequently been no spirit of
solidarity to harness to do good outside the project. As you say, that is
tragic, and I really appreciate your observation of it.

Well that's not exactly what I said, and in my opinion the board was
more open to discussions than some years before. But I agree with you
that even arguments should be more transparent and the community should
be aware when things are going worse.

If TDF is to satisfy its mission this has to stop. The new Board has a huge
opportunity and responsibility to put all this behind them and lead
positively. It must shun divisiveness and seek ways to rekindle solidarity
by emphasizing equality and promoting freedom. This will not be done
treating the motivations of some participants as suspect! In fact almost
everyone is pursuing an "interest", almost by definition in a collaborative
community!

Yes and I really appreciate the tools provided by the MC to rebuild trust.

As Maslow <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs>
observed, before higher-level behaviours can be cultivated, basic needs
must be met - especially belonging and esteem. The Foundation needs to be
more inclusive of all its trustees in its processes rather than just
consulting them for votes once every two years. It needs to be realistic
about the pragmatics of large-scale software engineering and how it's paid
for and rein-in those trying to frame "commercial" as tainted. It has to
seek ways to encourage both community and commercial activities inside its
"umbrella" rather than treating some as clean and some as unclean.

This is not what I've seen in the project, commercial is not tainted. We
need to have a balance between commercial and charitable activities. In
my very own opinion, we have moved away from this balance and we could
have reshaped it during the pandemic.

I very much hope the new Board will engage positively and unanimously on
these things. I'm not finding the current conversation encouraging but I
have hopes the new team will take a firm hold and change things for the
better.

Well this discussion has been proposed by a community member, and I find
it encouraging in the sens of I hope it will clarify who is TDF and what
it should do for its community at large.

cheers
Sophie

Hi Andreas! Hi Sophie!

On Sat, Jan 15, 2022 at 8:55 AM Andreas Mantke <maand@gmx.de> wrote:

Hi,

Am 14.01.22 um 19:14 schrieb Simon Phipps:

If TDF is to satisfy its mission this has to stop. The new Board has a
huge opportunity and responsibility to put all this behind them and
lead positively. It must shun divisiveness and seek ways to rekindle
solidarity by emphasizing equality and promoting freedom. This will
not be done treating the motivations of some participants as suspect!
In fact almost everyone is pursuing an “interest”, almost by
definition in a collaborative community!

Sure, without following an interest you wouldn’t participate and invest
your live time in that community.

But at least if you are a member of a charity’s body you need to be open
and transparent about such interests and rethink, if following them
foster the objectives of the organization. If following your interest
(commercial or non-commercial) is in opposite to that, a member of the
body has to put his interest last. If she / he is not able to follow
such rule, she / he shouldn’t reconsider his membership, because
otherwise she / he most probably will get very soon into the situation
to violate her / his duty as a member of the body.

In short: if you wear to hats (TDF / personal interest) you as a member
of a body has to wear the TDF hat in the first place.

I absolutely agree with you, Andreas. I especially agree with your observation above that vested interests can be of various kinds, not just commercial. I believe that’s an area that needs attention, as most people at TDF have a link with a community, political campaign, job, career reputation or company (and so on) that could make them act in a way that prioritises their interest over the charity.

I thought what Sophi said was relevant here:

On Sat, Jan 15, 2022 at 4:26 PM sophi <sophi@libreoffice.org> wrote:

We need to have a balance between commercial and charitable activities. In
my very own opinion, we have moved away from this balance and we could
have reshaped it during the pandemic.

I completely agree that things are out of balance, and I very much agree that we should look to restore a balance of interests, but I don’t think the contrast is between “commercial and charitable”. It is rather between the interests of individuals and the interests of the charity as a whole. We keep focussing on commercial interests, but in doing so we neglect other motivations for taking a position on the functioning of TDF. To move on we will need to recognise that TDF is a charity formed as home for a convergence of interests and that a focus too much on the harms or benefits of any one sort of interest is the origin of our problems.

Cheers

Simon

Hi Simon,

I’m deeply concerned by your comments as you are presenting a very distorted view of reality contributing in creating more confusion, misinformation and divisions.

If you are unaware of what happened within the board in the past two years then it would be better for you not to say anything about it and support all of us in making the things Sophi asked for in her email happen as some of us tried but others decided to ignore us or actively block us.

Then just some brief comments below to correct what you said a bit.

On 14/01/2022 19:14, Simon Phipps wrote:

Hi Sophie,

I appreciate your comment here and (with some fear) have to respond to amplify it.

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 11:14 AM sophi <sophi@libreoffice.org> wrote:

On my point of view, it was not about achieving market dominance but
about solidarity. And TDF has failed here, again on my point of view.

Yes, I have to agree with you. Freedom, equality and solidarity used to be the norm at TDF.

Maybe you missed the point here.

Some of us actually worked hard to prepare the ground to help others trying to act in a fair and balanced way but after months of work and negotiations someone decided that solidarity wasn’t a priority.

You once again missed completely the point when in a public meeting (22/05/2020) you said that making LOOL available “poorly thought out proposal” and that we should have focused on your proposal for LOOL on Raspberry Pi.

I know you may not have been aware of the months of well documented negotiations that preceded that proposal which took in consideration the eventual economical impact for a valuable member of the ecosystem and the need to act in solidarity of the people badly affected by the pandemic.

Over the last couple of years that has largely ended at the Foundation level (fortunately our community still has many parts where this is not true).

Fortunately freedom, equality and solidarity are still in the core of what TDF does as some fought to keep it that way.

This has led to progress grinding to a halt through mistrust.

Life taught me that trust needs to be earned and should not be given blindly.

Also since my onboarding at TDF facts confirmed that whatever I’ve been told needs to be validated and supported by clear evidences.

That first day a member of the board shocked me when he said to me “TDF is utterly broken” and that made me think many things including “What have you been doing all these years instead of fixing things” and “This guy will have to work hard to earn my trust”. Sadly that person did not put much efforts in trying to earn my trust, others didn’t even try while fortunately I can say I found many more great people that demonstrated they can be trusted and are doing their best for TDF and our community.

For example, both TDC and LOOL were ended just at the point where the external conditions suggested they were going to flourish.

I guess by now most should know how LOOL ended and why.

I was hoping never to hear again about TDC but as you mention it that’s another situation where the patience of the community and the new members of the board has been tested thoroughly.

I had some doubt about that project since I’ve heard of it and I even wrote to you before becoming a deputy member of the board to express my doubts about the way it was being setup.
Your answer didn’t convinced me at all that the proposal was good for TDF and our community and it pushed me to look even deeper into the issue.

If I recall correctly you said you spent two years in making TDC happen as a fix for systemic issues within TDF.
That made me wonder if it wouldn’t have been a better idea to invest those two years in fighting to fix the issues instead of creating a third party organisation to go around those issues.

Your answer made me also learn about a term, bike-shedding[1], its implications and to understand if we were trying to build a shed or a nuclear power plant.

It turns out that we have a lot of very clever and dedicated community members that spotted that the project that has been presented as a shed should actually have been considered as a power plant because there were many complex elements that haven’t been considered and/or fully explained.

The board received a very long list of questions and doubts clearly showing that the presented project has been underestimated in both its complexity and its negative effect for TDF and our community.

It seems like once again you missed the point as instead of taking onboard the questions, evaluate their merit and provide convincing answers, which could have included “we may have to go back to the drawing board”, you decided to feel offended and stopped responding.

Some members of the new board had to perform a full analysis of the project while the member of the board that were involved with that project kept hampering the process and sometimes coming up with alleged informations/reasons to carry on that have been disproved not long after.

Not happy about the underestimation of the size of the shed a few months ago you had the courage to state that you have “been betrayed by the Board” because TDC didn’t proceed as planned.

A very long book could be written about what the new member of the board had to endure and the tactics that have been used to force things through but that should be already enough to make you reformulate the above statement.

Little has been achieved in their place as you observe, and as the tired bickering in this thread illustrates.

If you observe carefully you may actually notice that what you see are people that had enough of being diplomatic and saying that all is fine.

If you think that little has been achieved then I suppose we have been very good in keeping for ourselves the pain we had to endure to manage to fix what was broken instead of looking for easier paths that could have been even more damaging.

Lots has been achieved even if we could have achieved more if we didn’t have to fight hard for months to define that TDC as presented wasn’t fit for purpose, to try to get LOOL to the community and to get the Conflict of Interest policy through.

The TDC issue has in a way been useful as we did the the due diligence that should have been done before presenting the project as a fait accompli and the result is only partially evident as that process has shown that the issue presented as the reason to create TDC are actually not there. The new board has now the benefit, that the current board hasn’t enjoyed, of having all the information to propose a plan that will be for the full benefit of the community.

You may now realise that defining “tired bickering” a thread where a member of the community, the staff and the board express serious ideas and concerns doesn’t help the situation at all and confirms you are still thinking that this is just bike-shedding while we have to look after a power plant.

Egalitarianism was replaced by turning inwards to fight unproductively among those privileged to be allowed information - and in the process to slander those involved before.

I personally felt that those that had information believed to be more equal than others when I joined the board and had to deal with TDC. The new members had no readily available information and those that had the information didn’t really help much as they thought the plan was OK and we should have gone ahead.

I had to spend a large amount of time digging into meeting minutes to find information that turned out to be contradictory to what I was being told.

Now we have a mailing list that contains notes and references so that the new members of the board won’t have to go through the same pain.

If some felt slandered they can simply state what they think is incorrect and I’m sure we can now find enough information to verify if they are right or not.

As a result of this the Foundation has turned even more closed, with Board inflighting leaving the Trustees in the dark while the arguments went on.

Actually we have released a lot of information but some didn’t bother reading it and called it “tired bickering”.

There has consequently been no spirit of solidarity to harness to do good outside the project.

The spirit of solidarity has been there all the time and some started acting to help while others where not so keen.

As you say, that is tragic, and I really appreciate your observation of it.

If TDF is to satisfy its mission this has to stop. The new Board has a huge opportunity and responsibility to put all this behind them and lead positively.

I believe I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (unless that’s just a train) and that after so much hard work some of the major issues have been sorted.

It must shun divisiveness and seek ways to rekindle solidarity by emphasizing equality and promoting freedom. This will not be done treating the motivations of some participants as suspect! In fact almost everyone is pursuing an “interest”, almost by definition in a collaborative community!

As Maslow observed, before higher-level behaviours can be cultivated, basic needs must be met - especially belonging and esteem. The Foundation needs to be more inclusive of all its trustees in its processes rather than just consulting them for votes once every two years. It needs to be realistic about the pragmatics of large-scale software engineering and how it’s paid for and rein-in those trying to frame “commercial” as tainted. It has to seek ways to encourage both community and commercial activities inside its “umbrella” rather than treating some as clean and some as unclean.

I’m not sure who told you that anyone is trying to frame “commercial” as tainted.
I believe you completely misunderstood the issue and you are creating an “us versus them” situation that does not exist.

Of course the commercial ecosystem is important and nobody denied that. You may also missed the fact that we launched the MarCom plan which has been developed with the precise intention of creating opportunities that lead commercial organisation to develop business models that allow the to grow and contribute but without asking us to go against our Statutes and objectives.

I may be naive but I thought this was clear to all.

The fight we had to go through were related to some people expecting that companies should have the freedom to do what they wanted without clear rules of engagement, that they were more equal than others because they write a lot of code (which seems the only thing the often mentioned “meritocracy”[2] measures) and that solidarity is OK as long as it generated leads.

Some think that freedom, equality and solidarity should have very different meanings.

Some of the things have been fixed, on some it has been shown we had no control over them but if the commercial entities finally accept to work with TDF and the whole community under clear rules for all then everyone will gain from it.

One of the things that still need to be fixed, IMHO, is that some still think that TDF should not develop any code directly and should be fully dependent on third parties.
Well, LOOL demonstrated that by being dependent only on third parties, that have a majority control over a project, we can’t guarantee we can satisfy our objectives.

I’m sure that the new board will look at the issue, it will learn from past mistakes and approve both the investment on new developers and to set clear rules for existing and new projects controlled by commercial entity to protect the rights and interests of all parties involved.

I very much hope the new Board will engage positively and unanimously on these things. I’m not finding the current conversation encouraging but I have hopes the new team will take a firm hold and change things for the better.

A lot of work has been done to make life easier for the new board members, a very well written Conflict of Interest Policy is in place as a clear guide for them and lots more information (than I had when I started) is now readily available to understand better and faster the issues we had to fix and what we still have to do.

So I’m fairly optimistic that the new board will be able to move better and faster now that the road has been fixed.

Best regards

Simon

Ciao

Paolo

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology

Hi *,

my first email with that subject wasn't really meant to start a
discussion, but make a statement.

I'll not debate individual points (or answer further in this thread);
in the end we can agree to disagree (as long as we manage to pull
together & towards shared goals).

It is therefore encouraging to see that almost all participants on
this collection of threads are trying to pull things together, and
either try to convey wisdom and vision, or finding middle ground.

Sadly, there's some divisiveness injected repeatedly. This has to
stop, for the benefit of this project & its community. It is patently
untrue that the board did everything right, and some hostile external
forces were screwing us over.

This is from the standard populist playbook, and I've had enough of
it. We've all made mistakes, and mis-calculated (sometimes badly) here
or there. Let's move on.

Two things need a dedicated answer:

First:

I would rather not stop looking at the past as it's only by learning
from the past that we create a better future.

Open Source in general, and this project (and its ancestors) in
particular have a very rich history indeed, that is worth learning
from. So let's not cherry-pick our stories, and acknowledge that a
project of this size relies critically on a working commercial
ecosystem.

Second:

> There's definitely things that TDF can do much better than any
> ecosystem company. There's also definitely things that ecosystem
> companies are likely better suited for, than TDF. The same is true for
> our volunteer community

True and that's why there is room for all to have fun and participate to
make LibreOffice and related project great.

> (which is BTW not the same as TDF, the foundation!).

This comment worries me a bit.

There is nothing to worry about. I'm stating here, that the goals of
TDF (as enshrined in the statutes), and the shared goals of our
community (all those contributing to LibreOffice) are not necessarily
exactly the same. It is useful for all of us to remember, that TDF is
there (and was founded) to serve the community, and not the other way
around.

My original comment was pointing to something else though, so this is
again a tangent. What I said was, that there's three large camps
(ecosystem, TDF, volunteer community), that ideally complement each
other in what we do. Instead of eyeing each other with mistrust.

And now - let's move on!

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Let's now stop this infighting. Nothing good will come from it.

In particular: this is a public list, so let me remind everyone that
our statutes suggest, and our code of conduct mandates:

- that we behave respectfully towards all others, including those that
  are different or think differently from yourself
- be helpful, considerate, friendly and respectful towards all other
  participants
- we don't condone harassment or offensive behaviour

Thank you all for considering, and let's move on!

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Hi Thorsten,

Let's now stop this infighting.

IMHO what is being called "infighting" has been an excellent exercise of transparency and exchange of point of view.

It was probably overdue as some members of the community, due to lack of communication, formed their own view of what may have happened during this term.

More information is now available to all so that it will be easier to ask more questions and help us moving forward in a positive way.

Nothing good will come from it.

I do agree that lowering the quality of the debate characterising members of the community as "populist" or anti "commercial" won't bring anything good.

Everyone has the right to have opinions and it's our duty to allow everyone access to actual facts so that they can validate their opinions and bring something positive to the discussion.

In particular: this is a public list, so let me remind everyone that
our statutes suggest, and our code of conduct mandates:

- that we behave respectfully towards all others, including those that
   are different or think differently from yourself
- be helpful, considerate, friendly and respectful towards all other
   participants
- we don't condone harassment or offensive behaviour

It is a very good reminder for all, I'm sure that both Michael Meeks and Sophie Gautier, which are surely following with interest these conversations and are members of the Code of Conduct support team, would have flagged any behaviour that goes against the CoC.

More information and contact details here:

https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/code-of-conduct/

Thank you all for considering, and let's move on!

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Thanks for contributing to open and constructive conversations.

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Sophie, all,

what I find interesting is, that everybody in these thread(s) around Sophie’s mail is asking for balance. And let me add, I do too.

But what I could observe is, that independent of what is about in the daily work, is it coming to decision making or formulating a text or even just defining a reasonable and fair process to get such a result/decision/text, everybody is within his/her own frame and not much interested in getting a compromise/a consensus. Proposals for such “coming together”, no matter from where they come, are often not enough “fitted” for the own interests (with some few exceptions which were very hard work to get) and getting questioned again and again in long and exhausting processes.

And that makes it hard to get results and even more it bounds our all time resources and motivation instead of doing other good things. And I am thankful, that Sophie was speaking up for one aspect of it, out of these bounded resources we all did not manage to use our really good status in/of TDF during the pandemic for helping, showing more solidarity with people who hit it a lot more than TDF or even community members of TDF, of which we sometimes do not know that they are suffering.

So, my personal conclusion of this is, we could become better if we all really value all sides of it more and show our respect to “the others” in more often acknowledging a compromise even if not all of the own interests are in it, or facilitating a consensus. Coding contributions is a critical part and nevertheless as well as all others like documentation, translation, marketing, quality assurance, local activities of the volunteers independent where, mentoring, certifying, organizing and maintain the infrastructure,…

We would not have these good status of our foundation during the pandemic when we did not have all of them. They are all intertwined and dependent on each other. And indeed, we should use this status more for doing good within the founders will.

It is never too late to do so.

Thank you all for your various contributions,
Lothar

Am 15.01.2022 um 17:26 schrieb sophi:

Hi Simon, all,
Le 14/01/2022 à 19:14, Simon Phipps a écrit :

Hi Sophie,

I appreciate your comment here and (with some fear) have to respond to
amplify it.

Thank you for your support. You amplified more than my initial thoughts
which were only about solidarity, altruism and generosity.

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 11:14 AM sophi [<sophi@libreoffice.org>](mailto:sophi@libreoffice.org) wrote:

On my point of view, it was not about achieving market dominance but
about solidarity. And TDF has failed here, again on my point of view.

Yes, I have to agree with you. Freedom, equality and solidarity used to be
the norm at TDF.> Over the last couple of years that has largely ended at
the Foundation level (fortunately our community still has many parts where
this is not true). This has led to progress grinding to a halt
through mistrust. For example, both TDC and LOOL were ended just at the
point where the external conditions suggested they were going to flourish.
Little has been achieved in their place as you observe, and as the tired
bickering in this thread illustrates.

I don't want to go back in these stories of TDC and LOOL again but they
are two very different situations for me. What I can agree with you is
that both have damaged the community's confidence in what is TDF and
what it should represent.
I've read all the minutes of the board meetings, attended several of
these meetings, and I can say this board has took several actions during
this two very difficult years without having a chance to meet. My mail
was not to address reproaches to the board, but a reaction to what
Thorsten and Michael said on the pandemic period.

Egalitarianism was replaced by turning inwards to fight unproductively
among those privileged to be allowed information - and in the process to
slander those involved before. As a result of this the Foundation has
turned even more closed, with Board inflighting leaving the Trustees in the
dark while the arguments went on. There has consequently been no spirit of
solidarity to harness to do good outside the project. As you say, that is
tragic, and I really appreciate your observation of it.

Well that's not exactly what I said, and in my opinion the board was
more open to discussions than some years before. But I agree with you
that even arguments should be more transparent and the community should
be aware when things are going worse.

If TDF is to satisfy its mission this has to stop. The new Board has a huge
opportunity and responsibility to put all this behind them and lead
positively. It must shun divisiveness and seek ways to rekindle solidarity
by emphasizing equality and promoting freedom. This will not be done
treating the motivations of some participants as suspect! In fact almost
everyone is pursuing an "interest", almost by definition in a collaborative
community!

Yes and I really appreciate the tools provided by the MC to rebuild trust.

As Maslow [<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)
observed, before higher-level behaviours can be cultivated, basic needs
must be met - especially belonging and esteem. The Foundation needs to be
more inclusive of all its trustees in its processes rather than just
consulting them for votes once every two years. It needs to be realistic
about the pragmatics of large-scale software engineering and how it's paid
for and rein-in those trying to frame "commercial" as tainted. It has to
seek ways to encourage both community and commercial activities inside its
"umbrella" rather than treating some as clean and some as unclean.

This is not what I've seen in the project, commercial is not tainted. We
need to have a balance between commercial and charitable activities. In
my very own opinion, we have moved away from this balance and we could
have reshaped it during the pandemic.

I very much hope the new Board will engage positively and unanimously on
these things. I'm not finding the current conversation encouraging but I
have hopes the new team will take a firm hold and change things for the
better.

Well this discussion has been proposed by a community member, and I find
it encouraging in the sens of I hope it will clarify who is TDF and what
it should do for its community at large.

cheers
Sophie

Hi Paolo, hi all,

IMHO what is being called "infighting" has been an excellent exercise
of transparency and exchange of point of view.

I agree, a lot of new (at least for non-board people) information came
out from this thread, although the topics I proposed in the first email,
regarding, as per subject of the thread, counterproposal(s) to the
"actization" of LibreOffice Online, were barely discussed.

I also think, and I hope those that have written here will agree, is
clear that we need fixed and strong rules for projects hosted at TDF. I
hope source-only projects will not happen again.

All the best,

Marco