Hi Stephan, thank you for your comments.
It's good to see that we have staff members that are actively participating in discussion to help improving processes within TDF.
On 05/11/2022 00:04, Stephan Ficht wrote:
Hi Simon, Am 31.10.22 um 01:38 schrieb Simon Phipps:I would suggest you "look down the telescope the other way" and ask what the Board's actions (or rather the lack of them) tell us about the existence of a CoI.With regard to PI/CoI (personal interest / conflict of interest) it's an interesting approach to "abuse" a telescope that is originally designed to see things more clearly. Being a child I had fun to see things far away "having looked down the telescope the other way round". Nowadays I prefer to use it the right way in order to get the macro effect without neglecting the whole picture.
What a telescope can't help in seeing, as Simon said, is the lack of some actions that finally started appearing since a couple of BoD meeting with a basic declaration of personal interests.
It is a start which helps in refining standard procedures, which are generally handled by you Stephan, so that all members of the board follow their fiduciary duties by preparing for the meeting reading and evaluating the relevant information so that they can also start sending the list of their personal interests and avoid influencing the relevant discussions/votes.
weaponising CoISorry, Simon, but IMHO I don't think this is the right wording.PI and, if there are, resulting CoI's are clearly defined and written down in all the paperwork TDF has established and agreed to or in binding German laws. Not explaining a conflict, IMO, doesn't mean that it does not actually exist. Otherwise that would be too trivial.
I kind of side with Simon in the specific example of the investigation against me in relation to LOOL. I found it very odd that our chairman started the investigation against me while he's the director of a company reselling LOOL's fork and 3 others, 2 representing the vendor and 1 is his employee, voted to start the investigation and spent a considerable amount of time focusing on me without looking at their own position.
So in a way a CoI could be "weaponised" by dragging on an investigation for 3/4 months, I don't know when they actually started it, to censor a director.
It seems clear that the process needs to be improved so that personal interests that are obvious are declared straight away and in case of doubts investigations should not last longer than a month unless the reasons for the delay are clear and documented.
Someone in the past said that they always acted as if they had a CoI Policy already but it seems we needed to implement an actual one to get the right processes in place. I'm sure all directors will slowly adjust to the new procedures as they are eager to show they want to remove any doubts about potential conflicts of interest.
Feel free to suggest any improvements that will help streamlining the processes.
Cheers Stephan
Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
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