Hi Kendy, On 14/02/2022 16:42, Jan Holesovsky wrote:
Hi Andreas,Andreas Mantke píše v Po 14. 02. 2022 v 15:29 +0100:but maybe it would be great, if you could stop to pick on someone. It seemed your only intention on this topic is to control (with your non-TDF-hat on) everything. That is not a cooperative behavior.I've told it in the public part of the Board meeting on Friday, and will repeat it again: I am very sad that this whole discussion started framed as (let me paraphrase) "TDF will hire 2 developers, it is all done deal, there are no problems" [in concrete words "Funds are available for at least 2 developers allowing us to start employing them straight away; Next steps: create and publish the job offers for developers and on-board them ASAP"].
The proposal is a proposal not a contract.
This is extremely unhelpful, as it totally dismisses views of others. There was no full agreement of this in the Board, no plan, no prioritization against other budget items and no consideration if this is the best way how to improve the situation - so please don't be surprised it lead to a challenging discussion.
I do understand your point of view as I found it "very regrettable" that my views and proposals that were clearly stated in my candidacy statement got dismissed by others.
I did have a conversation with the board trying to explain that this is a strategic decision that shouldn't be seen as a ranked project but my point of view was totally ignored by those that didn't care much about respecting others' views.
Then others tried to dismiss my proposal trying to frame it as us vs others political battle:
' + very regrettable (Simon) + to frame this as partisan - one side vs. another + particularly when one side is "the industry"'That last line is also very regrettable as "the industry" (2 suppliers very well represented in the board) seem to be more equal than others and if we don't listen to "the industry" very bad things will happen.
I am extremely grateful to Sophie, Michael W., Ilmari, Olivier H., and others (I'm sure I forgot some, sorry about that) for their patience & helpful input, and I do hope we will move to a more constructive, concrete debate.
It has been a very constructive debate which seems to show that most have understood that my proposal has many ramifications that will help TDF in moving forward in a positive way.
The good thing is that even the members of the ecosystem seem to have seen the proposal as beneficial for all the parties involved.
We should have more of these debates in public so that the team and the community can tell us if we are going in the right direction.
In my world [regardless of the hat], a constructive debate is much easier over a document collecting: * the problem statement & the need * the pros & cons of various solutions * the proposal & conclusion
Something like this?: * As shown by Italo's slides at FOSDEM again and by others, TDF is not contributing as much as it could * Up to now no strategic decisions have been taken to make TDF a more regular and active code contributor * Members of the ecosystem and others also suggested that we should spend more money in development * Bugs, a11y issues and features can be harder to taken care of by volunteers and are not always addressed by the ecosystem * We need to build up internal skills and development capabilities to speed up innovation * Lack of suppliers diversification, mostly 2 at present, is a suboptimal situation for TDF, LibreOffice and its community * Internal developers can grow to cover areas like mentoring and QA while also helping with new contributors support * TDF needs to expand its internal capacity to deal with publishing in app stores directly and manage variable levels of complexity due to ever changing rules * Some proposed projects could be developed internally instead of outsourcing them, which helps to grow in-house skills and capacity to address our donors needs * Potential App Stores revenues may allow for more developers and to invest in developing other projects * Our development mentor together with the team should propose to the BoD projects for internal development * While internal projects may cover different areas tenders and ESC proposals will be also evaluated to avoid effort duplication * This is not "just" a new project, it's an essential and strategical move for TDF to grow further in its second decade which widens the horizon for new visions and opportunities to do more and even better things for LibreOffice and our community * Funds are available for at least 2 developers allowing us to start employing them straight away * Next steps: create and publish the job offers for developers and on-board them ASAPThis has allowed to get a feel for the proposal, which seems very positive, and now we'll be working on the details but at least it showed that the community thinks we are moving in the right direction.
Then should the new developers invest 30% of their time in QA, 50% in bug fixing and 20% in reviewing tenders and deliverables? That's something we should see with the team as they have a very good feel of what is going on.
That with change tracking (redlining) turned on & possibility to comment - so that it is possible to finalize it to a form that is acceptable for all involved: in other words, to form a consensus.
We've done that or better tried to do that. When the initial direction is not yet set it has shown to be a total waste of time.
A good example was that third party company, we wasted months as some wanted to justify it at all cost while others where asking to look at the evidence showing that it was not a good idea at all. Lots of red lining and "vandalised documents" as some comments were pointing out what was actually seriously wrong.
Same thing happened for many other discussions.Let's do things in the open, let's get the community to comment on the proposal and then we can work together to go in the right direction.
So - I am really looking forward to such a document! Actually I'd be happy to start it myself, if that helped the situation; and would ask people to volunteer to work with me on that - but not sure it is a good idea just now.
Be patient.As a volunteer not earning any money with LibreOffice development or support I need a bit more time than others to liaise with the team members and start writing documents.
All the best, Kendy
Ciao Paolo -- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy 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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