Hi All, > Dear candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation, > > I would first like to thank you for running as candidates for the board > of directors. At this time, not every candidate has declared his or her > candidacy. However, I would like to ask a few questions about your views > and intentions regarding the Document Foundation and your plans as > potential directors of the entity. I hope they will be helpful in > englightening our membership and hopefully, all of you will be able to > answer them. > > 1. Do you commit yourself to have enough time and the necessary > technological tools in order to participate to the regularly scheduled > board calls?
Yes. In all transparency members should know that I very likely will not be at LiboCon 2016 due to work obligations. Looking at my record this term (minutes) you can see that I was very consistent with attending meetings and was always an active participant. > > > 2. Do you commit yourself to follow up and work on (at least) the main > items and actions you have volunteered to oversee or that have been > attributed to you by the board? Yes > 3. What are your views on the foundation's budget? How should the money > be spent, besides our fixed costs? Our budget should be used to assist the "doers" of the project. This means investing in the tools, travel, and other things needed by those who want to contribute to LibreOffice. I believe in our new grant program where individuals can request funds and hope that it will gain wider recognition over the next term. Finally, I believe that paying for team mentors is a wise use of funds in some cases, although I much prefer volunteers being given as much responsibility as they are able/willing to take on. > 4. Should we work towards broadening our pool of contributors, both > technical and non-technical? Yes. > 5. Should the Foundation -as an entity distinct from the LibreOffice > project or the Document Liberation project- engage into growing its > influence and promoting and defending Free Software and Digital Freedom? > It is, after all, an integral part of its mission per its very Statutes. > If yes, do you have ideas on what should be done about this? Yes. As others have said, I agree that the most important thing we can do is continue to put out a great product that uses open standards and is built on open principles. I think that there is room to continue improving our place in public entities and that this will be tremendously advantageous for Free Software and Digital Freedom. Furthermore, I think that the Document Liberation Project fits well within our mission and answers this question as well. Outside of our project I think that others are in a much better position (and have much more specific statutes/missions) to defend FSDF. If those organizations reach out to us to support a particular stance, I'm more than happy to review and give a +1 where appropriate. I believe that generally our donors donate money to be used on maintaining our core software and the communities surrounding that software. > 6. How do you view your (potential) role as a member of the board of > directors, given that this position does not give you any specific > functional role inside the LibreOffice or Document Liberation projects? My primary job on the board (and what makes the Board distinct from any other position, whether volunteer or paid) is to oversee that our funds are used in a responsible manner. For me this goes back to a principle previously said, to remove barriers for the "doers" to do and to provide tools for those same people to do the incredible work that they accomplish daily. Finally, this also means that we are responsible for balancing a lot of demands on our budget. Outside of this primary job, I currently, and anticipate it would be a similar situation if elected again, oversee several teams within the project. Overseeing does not mean dictating, or even actively getting involved (although I am very involved with QA still to this day), it means instead, making sure that the teams have what they need to succeed. > 7. What is the biggest problem of the foundation in your opinion? What > is its biggest opportunity? I wouldn't call it a problem but I'd say that the largest challenge has been explaining some decisions to the wider community. I believe this is entirely normal for any organization as Boards are responsible for making some important decisions (sometimes based on difficult choices) and we can't just say yes to everything. The way to resolve this is to encourage more people to join board-discuss and actively ask questions, to join the public board call (no one does which makes me sad as it's really a great time to interact with the Board and ask questions) and lastly, to blog a bit more after decisions are made. Best, Joel -- Joel Madero, Member of the Board of Directors GPG Key ID: 0x8FFB1B14 - EE32 6D0F 81FF 6FAC 5AD8 10E4 0141 27C6 8FFB 1B14 The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
