The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2023-02-20
Meeting Minutes
Date: 2023-02-20
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Thorsten Behrens
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger
In the meeting:
Board Members - Thorsten, Ayhan, Cor, Gabor, Paolo, Laszlo, Emiliano
Board Deputy Members - Gabriel
Membership Committee Members - Marina, Uwe, Gabriele (from 17:15
UTC/18:15 Berlin time on)
Membership Committee Substitute Members - Shinji
Community - Deirdre, Andreas
Team - Olivier, Florian, Sophie
Representation: None
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 7 Board of
Directors members are attending or represented in 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 meeting 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.
Recurring item: Publication of previous board minutes
* board-discuss
* tdf-members
* wiki page for minutes
* wiki page for decisions
* private minutes to the MC
Any updates regarding director affiliations?
* no changes, current affiliations see election page:
https://elections.documentfoundation.org/2021-board/candidates.html
Would any of the directors present need to declare an interest, for any
of the listed agenda items?
* 1.
* 2.
* 3.
* 4.
* 5.
* 6. Thorsten, Gábor, Cor
* 7.
The public meeting commences at 17:03 UTC / 18:03 Berlin time.
## AGENDA:
### Public Part
1. Answering questions from the community (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: Provide an opportunity for the community to ask
questions to the board and about TDF
* Any progress on Gabor's proposal wrt. tendering, discussed in
Brussels? (Olivier)
* work in progress, some discussions, updates probably as early as
next week (Florian)
2. Vote, Discuss: Review & final decision FSF AB seat (tdf-board, 10 mins)
* serious accusations around RMS & treatment of women
* March 2021: situation deteriorates, RMS returns to board:
https://twitter.com/nixcraft/status/1373905399707955202
* previous decision: suspend AB seat, until RMS/FSF situation clarifies
* our blog:
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/03/25/statement-on-rms-and-fsf/
* number of organisations issue similar statements:
* sfconservancy/outreachy:
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/23/outreachy-fsf/
* Drupal: similarly anodyne statement like TDF -
https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/statement-from-drupal-association-board-regarding-the-free-software-foundation-fsf
* EFF:
https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-richard-stallman-fsf-board
Discuss: reinstate, or permanently remove FSF?
* Quick summary of situation, reference to blogpost, key people at FSF
seems not to have changed - defer decision or make temporary
suspension a permanent one? (Florian)
* no significant change, the previous people are still around
* actually change at FSF, new election, suggest to keep temporary
suspension a bit longer (Paolo)
* When is election due? (Thorsten)
* around March (Paolo)
* shelve until April then? (Thorsten)
* want actual positive change to happen, let's see before taking any
decision (Paolo)
* Anyone not happy with shelving this until April? (Thorsten)
* no one raises hand
3. Discuss: Next in-person BoD meeting (Gabor Kelemen, 5 mins)
Proposal: Gabor would like to organize the next in-person BoD
meeting to make progress on various legal/budget/etc. issues
sometime between April-June in Budapest. Invite interested MC
members as well, as they have expressed motivation to help; also
for a bit of transparency. Location would be Budapest, one or the
other co-working space.
Questions to discuss: what would be some potentially important
topics and their deadlines? We can then choose an exact date a bit
before those.
Potential result: timely resolution of urgent, important issues
where external factors put us into time pressure.
* Have another in-person meeting similar as in Berlin (Gabor)
* happy to organize this in Budapest
* depends on how urgent are tasks to solve and what are hard deadlines
* 2nd half of April, mid-May
* coworking space can host us
* invite interested MC members, showed interest in Brussels and help
us with our problems
- Gabriele Ponzo joints 17:15 UTC/18:15 Berlin time -
* should prepare meeting upfront, have information in time (Cor)
* loves to have a meeting, want to see positive and fast progress on
various issues working on, before setting a date (Paolo)
* set tentative date, easier to solve controversial issues in person
(Thorsten)
* lets run a Nextcloud poll (Florian)
* lets not block on external deadlines, rather make sure everyone can
join (Florian)
* AI Gabor setup a poll with Florian (with weekends that work locally)
4. Discuss: Improving boards minuting (Florian Effenberger, Thorsten
Behrens, 10 mins)
Suggesting a set of steps that we can make here:
1- create audio recording
2- possibly have them in written form by making use of 'speach to
text' techn.
3- someone creates proper minutes from 1(+2); minutes give a broad
summary of statements, and clear AI's/conclusions/decisions.
4- these should be available in the
week after a meeting and to be approved in the next meeting.
* want to improve minutes, costs time, struggle for everyone (Cor)
* clearly state various positions of directors and involved people
* in the old days of TDF, had recorded phone calls (Thorsten)
* not necessary to publish the recording, but supports after-meeting
work for minuting
* What about private part of the call that touches confidential topics?
(Marina)
* can't put that into cloud services for transcript
* something running on our own servers? (Cor)
* concerned to have not much on the private part, and therefore not
improve the current situation (Marina)
* idea is to have entire call recorded (Thorsten)
* minuting is work, needs to be given time - work is the same whether
automated transcription or not (Uwe)
* agrees that minuting needs time (Gabriele)
* heard of Cabolo, never saw it in practice, no idea about cost
* suggest to have records as well as minutes (Paolo)
* people might not feel comfortable to join a recorded call (Thorsten)
* less topics and especially less controversial topics in the past (Florian)
* back then, about one hour for post-production of a one hour meeting
* time well spent, localization, involve community (which is a problem
these days) etc.
* turn into e-mail vote to record meetings (Thorsten)
* need to ask Guilhem for the technical details (Florian)
5. Status Report: Move board-discuss & tdf-members to Discourse
(Florian Effenberger, Thorsten Behrens, 5 mins)
* Status of the migration
Florian asked Guilhem: "have an up to date migration test at
https://communitytest.documentfoundation.org/c/board-discuss which is
ready for review. for the final migration i'll need to know how to
populate subscribers and their preferences, as per Sophie's questions on
https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3567#note-20 (for pt-br)"
The public meeting ends at 17:38 UTC / 18:38 Berlin time.
6. Status Report, Discuss: Improve tendering process (tdf-board, 20 mins)
Reason for privacy: legal topics
7. Discuss: Last minute item(s) (tdf-board, 5 mins)
Rationale: if there is time left, and anything is popping up after
sending the agenda
The private meeting ends at 18:12 UTC / 19:12 Berlin time.
Thorsten Behrens (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)
--
Florian Effenberger, Executive Director (Geschäftsführer)
Tel: +49 30 5557992-50 | Mail: flo...@documentfoundation.org
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
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