Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Happy Birthday, TDF!

2014-02-19 15:07 GMT+01:00 Jens Mildner <jens@mildner-web.de>:

> Florian Effenberger wrote
> > Happy Birthday, Document Foundation!
>
> Congratulations from my side, too! It's a pleasure to watch TDF grow and
> prosper.
>
> But with TDF leaving its infancy, and a new board stepping up to continue
> the success story, maybe it's time to share a thought or two about the
> future.
>
> For me, there's two key points within TDF:
>
> First is independence, the way the foundation is set up, the hard-coded
> mixture rules for TDF's bodies, the democratic process, the donation-only
> funding (combined with a careful financial planning and
> only-spend-what-you-have attitude). Especially when I look at the other big
> non-profit entity aiming at software for end users, Mozilla, I get the
> strong gut feeling (without doing deeper research) that this independence
> is
> pure gold, and needs to be preserved no matter the cost.
>
> The second point is transparency, which is key for building the trust
> necessary to make donation-based funding models work, and therefore is key
> for TDF's independence, too. I'm not only talking about transparency of the
> decision-making process here, but also about financial transparency,
> development transparency, and so forth.
>
> And while TDF is already strong at both independence and transparency, it
> could still be better. So I suggest the following things:
>
> 1) Official statement of affiliation by every member of any official body
> of
> TDF, if there's none already present.
>
> 2) TDF becoming a member of the "Initiative Transparente Zivilgesellschaft"
> by Transparency Deutschland e. V., adhering to its 10-point code of
> conduct.
> [1]
>
> Having said that, I also think that TDF should broaden its scope of
> software
> development to truly "free" the desktop. In its values, it is stated that
> TDF commits to "eliminate the digital divide in society by giving everyone
> access to office productivity tools free of charge to enable them to
> participate as full citizens in the 21st century". Personally, I think that
> things like a browser, email client, and personal information manager
> should
> also be considered as being "office productivity tools", and therefore
> should be offered by TDF in the long run, too.
>
> This is even more true when I look at the current market for these kinds of
> software. I've read many times that the one big thing missing from OOo/LO
> is
> an Outlook replacement, which would be a combined email client/PIM thingie.
> And with Mozilla going into development directions that I call ambiguous at
> best, the question about which browser to use on Windows could be hard to
> answer in the not too distant future.
>
> So, two years of TDF is surely a time to celebrate, but probably also a
> time
> for discussing the course to a future even brighter.
>
> All the best,
> Jens Mildner
>
> [1] http://www.transparency.de/Initiative-Transparente-Zivilg.1612.0.html

​Contrary to Jens' point of view as expressed above, I'd like to suggest
that, at least for the near future, TDF confines its activities to working​

​to provide «everyone
access to office productivity tools free of charge», in accordance with
its​ statutes. This, which entails battling against Microsoft's entrenched
quasi-monopoly, is a more than sufficiently daunting task, which will
require all the efforts of which we are capable. Email clients, which in an
age in which people are continually connected to the internet, are of minor
use, are beyond its purview. Those who wish to use one can employ
Thunderbird....

Rather than do many things poorly, let us do one thing well !...

Henri

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