Board of Directors Meeting 2018-08-31

The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2018-08-31
Call Minutes

Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Björn Michaelsen
Keeper of the minutes: Michael Meeks

In the call: Simon (Deputy), Florian (ED), Eike (Board), Michael (Board), Thorsten (Board), Björn (Deputy Chairman), Cor (Board)

Representation: Simon for Marina

Deputy Chairman of the Board is in the call. One of the Chairwoman or Deputy Chairman is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.

The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 6 Board of Directors members are attending the call.

The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.

The call is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.

The meeting commences at 14:07 Berlin time.

Public agenda:

1. Discuss: LibreOffice in Microsoft App Store (Michael)
    How we can get LibreOffice in the Microsoft App Store.

     + Options: (Michael)
         + external company to do it.
         + TDF non-profit -> for free.
         + TDF for-profit -> as the bits there.
     => neither C'bra nor CIB would say no to running it
     + no price tag -> donation starvation in the long term (Michael)
     + looking for an external / new company (Michael)
         + Italo's friends -> not C++ developers etc.
         + existing people -> C# ...
         + approached both, neither confident with C++-ness
     + Windows S - can't get there without this (Thorsten)
         + if incorporate into build-process, run with it.
         + leave open quesiton on app-store bits etc.
         + if unhappy with signing that - re-visit.
         + even if free for now - can change to donations in future.
     + in Google app store - have something (Florian)
     + want to avoid perception of being an enterprise product (Michael)
         + shared concern wrt. marketing text to sell stuff (Thorsten)
AI: + ok to have Cloph look into this initially - estimate effort etc.
     + in an ideal world - having a developer populated
       package team - part of TDF staff would be smart (Simon)
          + if we have a legacy given to us or something.
          + where it fits into business - with branded versions - unclear
          + an installable binary for today's population
          + no problem with any of this - as long as TDF focus on consumer (Michael)
              + agreed with concerns here (Thorsten)
              + what about LibreOffice Consumer from TDF (Simon)
                  + and LibreOffice Ent (from parnters)
          + also concerned wrt. the funding problem in future (Simon)
     + issues we have scarce resources for packaging (Bjoern)
        + could we pit MS vs. Apple vs. Android
        + what should our release managers work on - to vote.
        + makes it clear it costs stuff.
     + prefer to script the heck out release, binary creation (Thorsten)
AI: + lots of time spend on releasing currently - find ways of reducing it (Cloph)
     + key is sustainable funding (Simon)
        + want to steer people to regular donations / subscriptions.
        + can offer a patch updater without a download store.

Public call ends 14:43 Berlin time.

Björn Michaelsen (Session chair)
Michael Meeks (Keeper of the minutes)