[VOTE] New proposal for hiring in-house developers.

Dear people,

Thanks for the constructive feedback on the proposal.
Various changes applied, I now call a vote for the resolution below.

Your response within 72 hours from now is much appreciated.

Cheers,
Cor

-%<------------------------------------------------------------------

## TDF Developer Hiring Resolution 2022

"Whereas,

- with TDF stewarding, among other things, a well-working symbiosis of
   various companies and volunteer developers inside of the LibreOffice
   community;

- given that in the current situation, there are certain areas where
   extra developers can add value with additional activities, that
   complement the existing contributions;

- with this being an ongoing need;

Therefore the board resolves that:

- TDF will seek to hire a developer(s);

- who will report to the ED as a regular team member, and consult weekly
   with the ESC, which will oversee the technical direction of the work;

- who will work in such a way, that both volunteer and ecosystem peers
   regard them as helpful, supportive and complementing their own work;

- for whom as the initial areas of work, the board identifies
   improving RTL/CTL writing support and accessibility for LibreOffice;
   as well as mentoring new volunteers in these specific areas.
   After that, depending on skills available, Writer tables, Base,
   general regression fixing, Draw, and Math are the next focus areas;

- thus, there will be two job postings, with requirements matching the
   initial focus areas listed above, and one or two developers will be
   hired initially;

- after 6, and after 9 months following the developers starting their
   work, the board will do an assessment of the situation and results.

Requirements for the candidates:

* Very good C++ development skills;
* Proven experience with Accessibility and/or RTL/CTL, additional CJK
   experience is a strong plus;
* Love for open source;
* Team players;
* Experience with LibreOffice development is a plus.

Footnote: for a requirements analysis on the need for hiring
developers, please refer to information on the pages 3-8 of the
abandoned dev proposal:
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB "

-%<------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear board, hi all,

=
Foreword:
I here speak in my capacity as a Member of the Board of Trustees.

This part of the vote

TDF will seek to hire a developer(s);

- who will report [...], and consult weekly with the ESC, which will oversee the technical direction of the work;

is in my opinion not acceptable.
This results in TDF (the employer) paying for the staff but others will have the saying about their tasks.

Please consider this when you cast you vote.

Best
Stephan

+ 1 :slight_smile:

hi Stephan,

Dear board, hi all,

=
Foreword:
I here speak in my capacity as a Member of the Board of Trustees.

This part of the vote

TDF will seek to hire a developer(s);

- who will report [...], and consult weekly with the ESC, which will oversee the technical direction of the work;

is in my opinion not acceptable.
This results in TDF (the employer) paying for the staff but others will have the saying about their tasks.

how is this different from TDF employees Cloph, Heiko, Hossein, Ilmari, Olivier, Stéphane, Sophie, and Xisco, who already consult weekly with the ESC?

regards,
  michael

Hi Michael,

hi Stephan,

Dear board, hi all,

=
Foreword:
I here speak in my capacity as a Member of the Board of Trustees.

This part of the vote

TDF will seek to hire a developer(s);

- who will report [...], and consult weekly with the ESC, which will oversee the technical direction of the work;

is in my opinion not acceptable.
This results in TDF (the employer) paying for the staff but others will have the saying about their tasks.

how is this different from TDF employees Cloph, Heiko, Hossein, Ilmari, Olivier, Stéphane, Sophie, and Xisco, who already consult weekly with the ESC?

Maybe this is subtle but the term "oversee" for me means to supervise or control. I would very much prefer "support" because this is what I think the ESC does with its members. At least this was what I feel when I participated. On the contrary, this is the ED and BoD role to oversee what we do.

Cheers
Sophie

Dear all,

sophi wrote:

> how is this different from TDF employees Cloph, Heiko, Hossein, Ilmari,
> Olivier, Stéphane, Sophie, and Xisco, who already consult weekly with
> the ESC?

Maybe this is subtle but the term "oversee" for me means to supervise or
control.

Indeed, the ESC should be supervising the technical direction of the
work. That is intended, and makes a ton of sense (since it's an
official TDF committee, with board-appointed members, this is not in
any way something 'external' to TDF).

Best,

-- Thorsten

+1

(thanks a lot for all the good feedback, feels great to get this
moving!)

Cor Nouws wrote:

Hi all,

[if you want to skip reading the motivation for my vote just scroll to the end]

in theory I should be pleased as, regardless of how it has been done, another one of the big step forward I wanted for TDF is finally being voted on.

OTOH in a few lines it manages to put together what I agreed with Jan that should NOT be there and what also the legal consultation advised against.

In the specific:

- who will report to the ED as a regular team member, and consult weekly
  with the ESC, which will oversee the technical direction of the work;

That part has been discussed at length with Jan as he also wanted the ESC to decide on all technical matters without recourse.
The Board can accept/refuse members or even disband it but the ESC is still a committee with no legal power (and liabilities) over TDF's members of staff.

Stating the ESC "will oversee the technical direction" implies a decisional power which affects the developers work in a direct way.
As the ESC cannot impose anything other members, that could even be affiliated with other companies following their own interests, it cannot demand that TDF's staff follow any of their directions being technical or not.

Jan seemed to have agreed on that and we compromised on these sentences:
"The in-house developers will participate to the weekly ESC calls to discuss their achievements and exchange ideas/experiences with other members. The in-house developers will also exchange ideas in relation to the best ways to tackle issues in the Focus Areas.

The in-house developers will have the same rules, rights and conditions as any other volunteer or corporate contributors. Overlaps or prioritisations that find no clear conclusion between the team and the ESC will be evaluated by our Executive Director with the support of our mentors and reported to the Board of Directors for the final decision."

With that formulation TDF's staff can report back things they might not agree with and get directions from the relevant bodies.

The concept was further clarified with the following sentence:
"While in-house developers will participate also in voting sessions they will not be bound by any vote result or decision taken by the ESC. Only TDF’s team together with our Executive Director will decide, through consultation with the Board if necessary, which tasks the in-house developers will perform."

Jan was not too keen in making things this crystal clear and stated in a note that can be read in version 3:
"Not acceptable in this form, all the developers (corporate, volunteer, in-house) have to have the same rights, otherwise the balance in the community will be lost.
If tasking is the concern, it is handled separately, in the “Selecting development areas”."

If the ESC takes a decision that TDF's staff believes is against TDF's best interests, goals and mission then they can't act the way the ESC says, they will have to report to the relevant bodies and a decision will need to be taken or they will put their job at risk. I'm sure other organisations with their members of staff in the ESC would pretend to do the same.

It is a shame that this part of the analysis, that has been also subjected to legal consultation, hasn't been in taken in consideration for the sake of a KISS which will create many issues down the line.

Then this one is interesting:

- for whom as the initial areas of work, the board identifies
  improving RTL/CTL writing support and accessibility for LibreOffice;
  as well as mentoring new volunteers in these specific areas.
  After that, depending on skills available, Writer tables, Base,
  general regression fixing, Draw, and Math are the next focus areas;

Jan tried to impose the following limitation in other ways and even resigned over it:
"TDF in-house developers will not compete with commercial contributors and will not develop alternative implementations of Open Source projects actively maintained by LibreOffice volunteer or corporate contributors – like Collabora Online, mdds, or cppunit"

To avoid mentioning Collabora Online only specific specific areas have been mentioned leaving out all the rest.
It's crafty but it naturally creates it own issues.

I won't comment on the range of technical/development limitation the construction of that sentence creates as others can do a better job than me at that.

Jan and I agreed that in-house developers will contribute fixes and support for improving LibreOffice presence on the app stores, I guess it will need to be done by someone else then.

In the now ditched proposal was also agreed that the in-house developers would have played an important role in helping out with the technical evaluation of the items that have been passed on for tendering and in the evaluation of the deliverables. So it seems like this isn't a role they will be involved with any more with great loss for efficiency and accountability.

Then there is also the small issue of Article 8.

Having Thorsten, Gabor and Cor declared an "interest" on the matter but regardless of that rammed through this proposal and voted +1 on it, doesn't it make it quite problematic in terms of potential/perceived conflict of interests?

Because of my bad habit of pointing out issues and trying to fix them I'm being put in a condition of not being able to perform my role of director in these matters so I have little hope that those issues will be solved.

I only hope that new boards will evaluate things in a more comprehensive way and avoid pushing forward decisions that down the line will create issues and debates, as I believe this will bring.

Considering the above and hoping that somehow fixes will be implemented if this vote passes, I abstain.

Ciao

Paolo

Hi all,

Dear all,

sophi wrote:

how is this different from TDF employees Cloph, Heiko, Hossein, Ilmari,
Olivier, Stéphane, Sophie, and Xisco, who already consult weekly with
the ESC?

Maybe this is subtle but the term "oversee" for me means to supervise or
control.

Indeed, the ESC should be supervising the technical direction of the
work. That is intended, and makes a ton of sense (since it's an
official TDF committee, with board-appointed members, this is not in
any way something 'external' to TDF).

I have never heard about a software company which put their staff under
the control of external (likely competing) companies. The ESC is
appointed by the Board but full of staff from external companies (or
software developer). 17 of 22 members of the ESC are from external
companies (or software developer)
(https://www.documentfoundation.org/engineering-sc/).

But I'm curious about examples from the outside, where
companies/organizations follow such rules.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Thorsten,

If the ESC is an official TDF committee, where are its statutes, its functioning rules and the rules of its members designation ?

If it is an official TDF committee, why its mailing list is not hosted by TDF ?

Best regards
JBF

hi Jean-Baptiste,

Hi Thorsten,

If the ESC is an official TDF committee, where are its statutes, its functioning rules and the rules of its members designation ?

hmm i've wondered this too a while ago, i couldn't find a word in the TDF statutes about it :slight_smile:

If it is an official TDF committee, why its mailing list is not hosted by TDF ?

due to the fact that it pre-dates the founding of TDF - it exists as long as the LibreOffice project - its mailing list is hosted on freedesktop.org.

the address is: libreoffice@lists.freedesktop.org

probably migrating the mailing list wasn't considered worth the hassle to subscribers?

apparently it was called "tech steering" in the beginning? or at least the minutes claimed that was the name? hmmmm... the oldest minutes i can find also seem to abbreviate "action item" as "AA:" - that was still the case when i joined, those were the days :slight_smile:

no, found an even older minutes mail - the first one says "technical group" - dated 2010-09-28.

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2010-September/000002.html

(in case you want to send a mail to all ESC members, sorry but i don't know any more convenient way than to manually put them into the address field in your mail client...)

regards,
  michael

Dear all,

Michael Stahl wrote:

> If the ESC is an official TDF committee, where are its statutes, its
> functioning rules and the rules of its members designation ?

hmm i've wondered this too a while ago, i couldn't find a word in the TDF
statutes about it :slight_smile:

This is because the ESC is not one of the formal bodies (which are
indeed listed in the statutes), but a committee.

> If it is an official TDF committee, why its mailing list is not hosted
> by TDF ?

due to the fact that it pre-dates the founding of TDF - it exists as long as
the LibreOffice project - its mailing list is hosted on freedesktop.org.

The dev list (libreoffice@lists.freedesktop.org) has nothing per se to
do with the ESC. Whether it makes sense to move it to TDF is, I believe
not material to this discussion (we had William once volunteering to
do it, but somehow the project hit the old snag of whether posting
requires subscription).

The ESC decision-making happens during weekly meetings, the minutes
thereof are being hosted on TDF's etherpad instance.

And indeed, the ESC was grandfathered in (the old steering committee,
which bootstrapped itself from the group of forkers, and was something
like an inofficial board before TDF came into existence, decided to
set it up).

Further info:
* list of current board-appointed members is here:
  https://www.documentfoundation.org/engineering-sc/
* main wiki page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/ESC
* ESC in the org chart:
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Organization#Organization_TDF
* decisions regarding official ESC member designations - search for
  esc/ESC at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Decisions

All the best,

-- Thorsten

Hi all,

Am 02.12.22 um 12:08 schrieb Cor Nouws:

  • 1 :slight_smile:

this vote was done by the member of the sales team of a software company and who have an declared interest to influence the direction of the LibreOffice development by the in-house developers. The in-house developers will remove a lot of advantage from the tendering budget and could work on parts of the code, that otherwise could be a tender in the future, on which the company, he works with in the sales team, might bid. Thus the voter has a non arguable Conflict of Interest on the topic of this vote. Because of this he has to abstain from this vote. His vote is null.

Because of his Conflict of Interest on this topic he cannot vote, had to abstain from driving and influencing the discussion and decision of the proposal. His comments on this list and the attacks are very problematic.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi all,

+1

(thanks a lot for all the good feedback, feels great to get this
  moving!)

this vote was done by an owner and executive director of a software
company who /which have an declared interest to influence the direction
of the LibreOffice development by the in-house developers. The in-house
developers will remove a lot of advantage from the tendering budget and
could work on parts of the code, that otherwise could be a tender in the
future, on which his company might bid. Thus the voter has a non
arguable Conflict of Interest on the topic of this vote. Because of this
he has to abstain from this vote. His vote is null.

Because of his Conflict of Interest on this topic he cannot vote and
should not unduly influence the decision. The comments on this list and
the attacks are very problematic.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi,

Until someone can explain me that it is beneficial to TDF to compete with contributing members of the ecosystem, I see this attempt from Andreas as not at all interesting.

Cheers,
Cor

Hi all,

Hi,

Until someone can explain me that it is beneficial to TDF to compete with contributing members of the ecosystem, I see this attempt from Andreas as not at all interesting.

Nobody can explain to you "that it is beneficial to TDF to compete with contributing members of the ecosystem" because it isn't and TDF doesn't do it.

Now that that is sorted.

Does Article 8 of our statutes sound more interesting to you?

Isn't your and Thorsten's behaviour leading to think that there is a potential conflict of interests?

Cheers,
Cor

Ciao

Paolo

Hi all,

-%<------------------------------------------------------------------

## TDF Developer Hiring Resolution 2022

"Whereas,

- with TDF stewarding, among other things, a well-working symbiosis of
  various companies and volunteer developers inside of the LibreOffice
  community;

- given that in the current situation, there are certain areas where
  extra developers can add value with additional activities, that
  complement the existing contributions;

- with this being an ongoing need;

Therefore the board resolves that:

- TDF will seek to hire a developer(s);

- who will report to the ED as a regular team member, and consult weekly
  with the ESC, which will oversee the technical direction of the work;

- who will work in such a way, that both volunteer and ecosystem peers
  regard them as helpful, supportive and complementing their own work;

- for whom as the initial areas of work, the board identifies
  improving RTL/CTL writing support and accessibility for LibreOffice;
  as well as mentoring new volunteers in these specific areas.
  After that, depending on skills available, Writer tables, Base,
  general regression fixing, Draw, and Math are the next focus areas;

- thus, there will be two job postings, with requirements matching the
  initial focus areas listed above, and one or two developers will be
  hired initially;

- after 6, and after 9 months following the developers starting their
  work, the board will do an assessment of the situation and results.

Requirements for the candidates:

* Very good C++ development skills;
* Proven experience with Accessibility and/or RTL/CTL, additional CJK
  experience is a strong plus;
* Love for open source;
* Team players;
* Experience with LibreOffice development is a plus.

Footnote: for a requirements analysis on the need for hiring
developers, please refer to information on the pages 3-8 of the
abandoned dev proposal:
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/qofn646Jg6bmPYB "

-%<------------------------------------------------------------------

I abstain.

Cheers,

Hi Paolo, all,

OTOH in a few lines it manages to put together what I agreed with Jan that should NOT be there and what also the legal consultation advised against.

In the below you put together various quotes to prove 'your right'.

I think that is useless, since it is _literally_ a different proposal, without the potential trouble from the initial approach.
Discussion and explanation here and on other places does show that.

You are quoting parts from a process, willing to make others believe that these apply somehow. But then when Kendy was outspoken and clear finally: I am not OK, you start fighting that statement. (Again with your selection of quotes).
While if look look at the process around the abandoned proposal from some distance, you see that at many steps compromises were accepted in the hope to come to a balanced result, but that an essential element - let TDF not compete with companies contributing in the ecosystem, was pushed to a new procedure, making the result not acceptable.
That is what reads from Kendy's statements.

And that is what I saw happening in the last phase and had let to my - still standing - questions and remarks.

Most important of the quotes: you are violating rules about internal information, breaching confidentially. Stop that.
(And to other readers, I hope you can understand that a 'please' is not at it's place there.)

Apart from rules, it is problematic from multiple perspectives, also making the board not a safe place to work.
And when you asked on the boards mailing list to publish all the correspondence around the topic. I made clear that will only add noise, loads off horror on the list. Or do you think that complaints, piling up, on the tone, volume and style of mails are not for you?
We work on a _literally_ different proposal.

Because of my bad habit of pointing out issues and trying to fix them

You have for years denied to declare your personal and business interest in LibreOffice online. And seem to be on a crusade against some companies in the ecosystem. Maybe you can fix that?

I'm being put in a condition of not being able to perform my role of director in these matters so I have little hope that those issues will be solved.

This is factual not true.

Cor

Hi,

I've brought this to the list tdf-internal for further discussion.

Cheers,
Cor

Hi Michael,

=
Foreword:
I here speak in my capacity as a Member of the Board of Trustees.

hi Stephan,

Dear board, hi all,

=
Foreword:
I here speak in my capacity as a Member of the Board of Trustees.

This part of the vote

TDF will seek to hire a developer(s);

- who will report [...], and consult weekly with the ESC, which will oversee the technical direction of the work;

is in my opinion not acceptable.
This results in TDF (the employer) paying for the staff but others will have the saying about their tasks.

how is this different from TDF employees Cloph, Heiko, Hossein, Ilmari, Olivier, Stéphane, Sophie, and Xisco, who already consult weekly with the ESC?

Many thanks for joining the discussion. Much appeciated.

In my opinion the semantics of "consult" and "oversee" makes how this is different.
In the meantime, Sophie has thankfully already made some further explaining statements.

And btw... I want to express my profound thanks to all developers contributing.
Since I am personally interested in code stuff (my last books I read were about git and python) I'm a bit envious of developers' skills that I don't have at all (and will certainly never get). But I admire them all the more with all my heart.

Best
Stephan