[steering-discuss] THD governance, project organization and membership - update needed

Hello TDF founders and SC, :slight_smile:

I'm writing to you as a community member and end user of LibO.

TDF announced its founding on September 28, 2010. It is now November
13, and I must admit that I'm rather worried about the lack of visible
progress that has been made in organization.

I'm unaware of what's happening behind the scenes, but the Foundation
still seems to be in limbo. As a result, the organization of work in
various areas is suffering or even simply not possible.

Fortunately, the code developers are continuing their work, and are
making great progress. I'd like to say big thanks to Caolán McNamara
and all the devs for that.

But, seen from the outside, and from the viewpoint of someone who
wants to contribute work to LibO, the Foundation *appears* to be
floundering around like a headless chicken.

IMVHO, a great deal of the initial momentum and goodwill of which the
Foundation could have taken advantage is wasting away.

Recently, there has been very little communication from you. I think
this post I'm writing is actually the first on the steering committee
discussions list.

1) Could you please give us an update about the situation?

2) When will appointments be made to key roles in the organization chart?

3) What have you decided about TDF membership rules?

I'm sorry to be saying this, but the lack of visible governance by TDF
is having repercussions right down the line...

David Nelson

Hi David,

Hello TDF founders and SC, :slight_smile:

I'm writing to you as a community member and end user of LibO.

TDF announced its founding on September 28, 2010. It is now November
13, and I must admit that I'm rather worried about the lack of visible
progress that has been made in organization.

I'm unaware of what's happening behind the scenes, but the Foundation
still seems to be in limbo. As a result, the organization of work in
various areas is suffering or even simply not possible.

Could you give us examples of where the organization of the work is
impossible on the LibreOffice side?
May be we could help to structure it in the mean time if you suffer
from this. There are several areas in work like the visible content of
LibreOffice (CMS, wiki), Marketing, Branding/Art, Documentation, QA,
L10n. Are you talking about something else?
As Charles said, structuring a foundation takes his time, we don't
need to rush if we want to achieve it correctly with the community
being part of it.

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi, :slight_smile:

@Charles: OK, first, apologies about having stated that my post seemed
to be the first on this list... I was looking at the Nabble, which
must be misconfigured:

http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/

These things take time. You are surely awre we posted a call for comments on
our bylaws and membership draft on this list yesterday? I trust you also
received our test PR of this week?

No, sadly, I did not see any postings about byelaws and a membership
draft, certainly due to the above Nabble problem. But I'm busy reading
now... :slight_smile:

@Sophie: myself, I'm interested in contributing in documentation,
above all, and also to marketing.

In documentation, there seems to be no lead for the English
documentation, and so there's no clear workflow. I'd love to do work
on documentation for LibO, but how to work efficiently and
effectively? If there are no candidates for the job, I'd be pleased to
volunteer (I have quite a few years experience working on technical
documentation). Please feel free to mail me if this offer is of
interest.

In marketing, over the last days, I've been working, as a personal
initiative, on trying to establish contact with Linux distributions,
to solicit contributions and collaboration on graphics/artwork,
notably. The initiative has been not unsuccessful, with helpful
responses from Ubuntu Artwork, notably. Today, I also had responses
from Debian people, too. And some response from Gentoo people, as
well. I'm certain that when I start on Fedora Core, there will be good
results, too.

But I have no clearly-appointed people to liaise with and report to
within TDF, so it is now difficult for me to capitalize on these
results, and to deal meaningfully with the people/groups who respond
to me.

So this is where there are problems in respect of the work I'd love to
contribute to the project...

David Nelson

Does look like it is not picking up SC mails - will take care of that
ASAP.

Drew

David Nelson wrote:

In marketing, over the last days, I've been working, as a personal
initiative, on trying to establish contact with Linux distributions,
to solicit contributions and collaboration on graphics/artwork,
notably. The initiative has been not unsuccessful, with helpful
responses from Ubuntu Artwork, notably. Today, I also had responses
from Debian people, too. And some response from Gentoo people, as
well. I'm certain that when I start on Fedora Core, there will be good
results, too.

But I have no clearly-appointed people to liaise with and report to
within TDF, so it is now difficult for me to capitalize on these
results, and to deal meaningfully with the people/groups who respond
to me.

Hi David, I'm currently going through my email backlog, and I will try to summarize the situation about marketing sometimes tomorrow. At the moment, I think we should concentrate on some specific objectives (because we have limited bandwidth).

Best regards, Italo

Hi David,

Hi, :slight_smile:

@Charles: OK, first, apologies about having stated that my post seemed
to be the first on this list... I was looking at the Nabble, which
must be misconfigured:

http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/

These things take time. You are surely awre we posted a call for comments on
our bylaws and membership draft on this list yesterday? I trust you also
received our test PR of this week?

No, sadly, I did not see any postings about byelaws and a membership
draft, certainly due to the above Nabble problem. But I'm busy reading
now... :slight_smile:

So great finally that you pointed that, we will be able to sort it out :slight_smile:

@Sophie: myself, I'm interested in contributing in documentation,
above all, and also to marketing.

In documentation, there seems to be no lead for the English
documentation, and so there's no clear workflow. I'd love to do work
on documentation for LibO, but how to work efficiently and
effectively? If there are no candidates for the job, I'd be pleased to
volunteer (I have quite a few years experience working on technical
documentation). Please feel free to mail me if this offer is of
interest.

There is a workflow based on OOoAuthors one for the moment. See these pages:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Produce
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation

We are working on the next CMS we will use and for this are currently
working on specifying our needs, see :
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website/Drupal/Workflows

So, if you would like to participate to this work, please subscribe to
the documentation mailing list.

In marketing, over the last days, I've been working, as a personal
initiative, on trying to establish contact with Linux distributions,
to solicit contributions and collaboration on graphics/artwork,
notably. The initiative has been not unsuccessful, with helpful
responses from Ubuntu Artwork, notably. Today, I also had responses
from Debian people, too. And some response from Gentoo people, as
well. I'm certain that when I start on Fedora Core, there will be good
results, too.

But I have no clearly-appointed people to liaise with and report to
within TDF, so it is now difficult for me to capitalize on these
results, and to deal meaningfully with the people/groups who respond
to me.

I'm not following closely the marketing list, but I'm quite sure I've
read something about contacts with the Ubuntu Art Team. May be you're
already following this thread, if not, I'm sure we will profit from
the research you've done and your work will be welcomed here. If you
need to report to people appointed as speakers person for TDF, you'll
find them on the site, but you get Italo and Charles already answering
you :slight_smile: Concerning Art Work, Christoph Noack and Bernhard Dippold are
working on this part.

So this is where there are problems in respect of the work I'd love to
contribute to the project...

Don't hesitate to come to these projects and tell loudly what you're
doing and what you're willing to do :slight_smile: A lot of people are working,
sometimes as a group, sometimes as individuals. Most of the time it
looks like nothing or very few is happening, and one day, you realize
that all the pieces form a big puzzle and are finally a very nice
picture. Currently, because of the lack of some infrastructures, we're
mostly working on pieces, but tomorrow, big parts of the puzzle will
be ready due to all todays work :slight_smile:

Again, please, don't hesitate to ask if you need more information or
help in any area you're willing to participate, either on the list or
by direct e-mail to me.

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi Drew,

I was looking at the Nabble, which
must be misconfigured:

Does look like it is not picking up SC mails - will take care of that
ASAP.

Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi, :slight_smile:

Thank you for your answers, Sophie, Charles and Italo.

I just read the Community Byelaws draft. When is this likely to be
finally adopted?

David Nelson

Hi David!

I'm unaware of what's happening behind the scenes, but the Foundation
still seems to be in limbo. As a result, the organization of work in
various areas is suffering or even simply not possible.

Therefore we recently published the list of open / worked on tasks in
the wiki:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Work_Items#legal_and_business

But you are right, that it would be helpful to have some more pro-active
communication concerning the whole TDF thing. To be honest - I think
nobody within the TDF team is currently able to listen everywhere and to
sum this up. For example, I really enjoyed the mail by Michael who
summarized the status of the Drupal website development. Thus, it would
be great if somebody could volunteer to establish / publish a weekly
summary ... the LibOLetter? :wink:

However, I hope that the work items list helps a bit...

Cheers,
Christoph

Hi, :slight_smile:

Therefore we recently published the list of open / worked on tasks in the wiki:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Work_Items#legal_and_business

@Christoph: Thanks for that link, it's an informative read. :wink: Some
kind of weekly update via the SC discussions list or, during these
early days, the TDF general discussions list would be great.

@All: I read the draft community byelaws, and they look pretty OK to
me. I sure hope it won't take too long to arrive at a final version.
In any case, I do commend the efforts that are being made to be open
with information.

I noticed how accounts about financial contributions were published to
the TDF general discussions list, and I certainly liked that. I know
it was to comply with a provision of German law, if I'm not mistaken,
but do you plan to maintain this kind of openness about the
Foundation's accounts once you arrive at the final legal
"incorporation"?

In any case, thanks for all your work. :wink:

David Nelson

Hi David,

David Nelson wrote (13-11-10 14:24)

In marketing, over the last days, I've been working, as a personal
initiative, on trying to establish contact with Linux distributions,
to solicit contributions and collaboration on graphics/artwork,
notably. The initiative has been not unsuccessful, with helpful
responses from Ubuntu Artwork, notably. Today, I also had responses
from Debian people, too. And some response from Gentoo people, as
well. I'm certain that when I start on Fedora Core, there will be good
results, too.

But I have no clearly-appointed people to liaise with and report to
within TDF, so it is now difficult for me to capitalize on these
results, and to deal meaningfully with the people/groups who respond
to me.

So this is where there are problems in respect of the work I'd love to
contribute to the project...

Great to see your enthusiasm. To me it looks however, as if you more or less missed the step to find out where your initiatives could land, before starting with them :wink:

As explained by others already: many things are being worked on, but we cannot do all at once, now, immediately and full size from the first moment.
So maybe some very good ideas must just be shifted some time (not forgotten), or need some more preparation, to get the attention they deserve or the right prepared ground to grow?

I see Sophie explained about Documentation.
There also is something else that is due rather soon: information about the features in the stable release of LibreOffice (proabaly December).
And we have the idea of short interviews with new developers, to publish on our website.

Kind regards,
Cor

Hi Cor, :slight_smile:

Great to see your enthusiasm. To me it looks however, as if you more or less
missed the step to find out where your initiatives could land, before
starting with them :wink:

Yes, I see what you mean. But I was thinking of it as a kind of "proof
of concept". :wink:

I know things take time. But I was kind-of surprised that, since you
guys had been mulling this move for so long, you didn't appear to have
any "community bye-laws" figured out ahead of the launch. In the best
of all possible worlds, you would have had a draft to put before the
world right on day one.

But, of course, we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, do
we? Never mind. I'm still happy you did it, notwithstanding. Again,
thanks for your work, and more power to you. :wink:

David Nelson

Hi, :slight_smile:

> Therefore we recently published the list of open / worked on tasks
> in the wiki:
> http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Work_Items#legal_and_business

@Christoph: Thanks for that link, it's an informative read. :wink: Some
kind of weekly update via the SC discussions list or, during these
early days, the TDF general discussions list would be great.

@All: I read the draft community byelaws, and they look pretty OK to
me. I sure hope it won't take too long to arrive at a final version.
In any case, I do commend the efforts that are being made to be open
with information.

I noticed how accounts about financial contributions were published to
the TDF general discussions list, and I certainly liked that. I know
it was to comply with a provision of German law, if I'm not mistaken,
but do you plan to maintain this kind of openness about the
Foundation's accounts once you arrive at the final legal
"incorporation"?

I hope so to, and I don't see why we should not be transparent about
that.

best,
Charles.