Re: [board-discuss] Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house developers to address our donors specific needs

Hi Thorsten!

Thanks for your positive contribution which I agree with completely
(although I do have a comment, see below).

On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 5:09 PM Thorsten Behrens <thb@documentfoundation.org>
wrote:

> Hi *,
>
> with the lively discussion ensuing here, it is perhaps worth sharing
> my position ahead of the board call tomorrow:
>
> Paolo Vecchi wrote:
> > Enable TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice with in-house
> developers
> > to address our donors specific needs
> I think it is worth considering, whether TDF should employ dedicated
> developers. I'm not in general against it.
>
> It is putting the cart in front of the horse though, to start with:
>
> * we want TDF to contribute more code to LibreOffice
>
> and then follow with
>
> * therefore we must employ two developers
>
> I believe it is more productive to start thinking about what we want
> to achieve, in order to fulfill our mission. It is therefore
> encouraging to read some good thoughts about that (RTL/CTL, a11y, and
> other under-developed areas with little ecosystem contributions).
>
> The board can then ponder what is the best way to achieve those goals,
> relative to other demands. It is possible, but by no means certain,
> that actually hiring specialised staff is indeed the most economic way
> forward (e.g. for an area like a11y).

For Accessibility, my preference would be to tender for a specialist
organisation to either triage accessibility bugs or implement capabilities
for a fixed period followed by a performance review and re-tendering
(possibly for a longer period). By doing that we would avoid having to also
develop in-house engineering management and product accessibility
expertise. This is beyond the current tendering practice in that we would
ask the successful applicant to also direct and design their work.


> It should be noted though, also to manage expectations, that mastering
> even a small area in LibreOffice takes many years to learn. So hiring
> for a role has long-term implications then on which kind of tasks,
> features or bugfixes can be done in-house.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- Thorsten

-- 
*Simon Phipps*
*TDF Trustee*