Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi Charles, Dear members of the Document Foundation,

On Mon, Nov 02, 2015 at 05:38:59PM +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for the initiative here!
 
> 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.

> 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. I am confident to be able to continue to volunteer time for both the
foundations broader goals and tedious chores as I have in the last four years,
first as a deputy then as a director. Also I do not foresee stepping down
before the end of the term from the position I am applying for.

> 3. What are your views on the foundation's budget? How should the money be
> spent, besides our fixed costs?

Both LibreOffice and the Document Foundation already made an amazing history
and the budget available to the foundation grew along with it, which we should
consider extremely fortunate. Yet, for the goals of the foundation, the
foundations budget is just one part contributing. Thus in addition to the
desires of the members of the Document Foundation, multiple other groups have
to be respected and taken into account: the donors, lest the foundation will
lose its funding; those sponsoring developers and mentors, lest the project
will not continue to onboard new contributors; and most importantly those
donating time and sweat by contributing to the project themselves. "Taking into
account", however never means that the foundation should divert from the goals
set in its statues.

The most clear cut investments the foundation can make is when there is an
effort or resource that allows to kickstart, bootstrap or unblock volunteers
and contributors into a self-sustaining mode that is beneficial to the
project. Experience shows the most scarce resource at the foundation is time
donated to project coordination, communication and leadership -- as such,
proposals that can show promise in that area, or do not require much support
beyond plain funding, have a huge bonus here.

Also in the name of transparency and in respect to all the stakeholders named
and with the constraints given above, proposals that proactively show their
progress in public help all members, donors and contributors to the Document
Foundation see that the donations are well spent. Not only is this helping for
marketing the projects themselves, it also prevents in-project jealousy and
builds trust in our governance. Sadly, this is not possible for every effort,
but wherever possible its is greatly helpful -- in justifying the funding
itself and beyond.

> 4. Should we work towards broadening our pool of contributors, both
> technical and non-technical?

An unconditional and enthusiastic yes! I would even say that this is the
primary goal for the foundation as all other goals depend on this. An important
follow-up is to ensure these contributors can become self-supported.
 
> 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?

The Document Foundation engages in promoting and defending Free Software and
Digital Freedom: Document Liberation and LibreOffice are lighthouse projects
for both. This comes with a lot of responsibility: Hardly anything would hurt
the goals given more than omissions or negligence to nurture our core projects
for which the Document Foundation has the ultimate -- and largely unshared --
responsibility. There is some room for the Document Foundation to go beyond its
core projects for the broader goals, but given the constraints described above,
it should be clear that this should be mostly focused on unblocking
self-motivated volunteers.

> 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?

The role is simple (and yet hard in the grinding routine and attention to
detail needed): Enabling, supporting and unblocking those actively contributing
to the projects (technical or non-technical).
 
> 7. What is the biggest problem of the foundation in your opinion? What is
> its biggest opportunity?

Five years of LibreOffice is a long time. Both LibreOffice and the Document
Foundation grew through both skill and also a 

Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Andreas Mantke]

Am 02.11.2015 um 17:38 schrieb Charles-H. Schulz:
> (...).
>
> 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. I already did that in the last nearly four years. I asked my
employer for some days of vacation to attend all in-person meetings
(including informal ones).
And I have no issue to use the tools provided by the TDF infra team.

>
>
> 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?

I did that already within the current board.

>
>
> 3. What are your views on the foundation's budget? How should the
> money be spent, besides our fixed costs?

The project TDF and LibreOffice needs a good technilogical
infrastructure. We invest already in this area and had to go further in
this way. This means not only invest in hardware and the use of free
software but also in growing up the infra structure team that drive this
area (e.g. organize frequent infra meetings/hackfests).
Beside this we need to invest more resources in building local (and
global) communities with technical and non-technical members. We need to
make more local meetings and especially also such with attending devs
and non-technical members.
We should focus more on educating people about our free office suite and
the importance of free standards, especially the default use of ODF.
Thus we need to spend more resources and  money on traveling of
especially local people to events, schools, universities and other
opportunities to get our messages across.
TDF will support the growth of the ecosystem and will point of the
opportunity of business entities to contract developers for implementing
features, fixing bugs etc.

>
>
> 4. Should we work towards broadening our pool of contributors, both
> technical and non-technical?

We already have a vital community of developers and we just contracted a
mentor for (especially new) contributors to the LibreOffice development.
But I think it's important to focus in the same way onto the more
non-technical part. We need to invest more in helping and growing up our
local communities, e.g. support more local community meetings, local
marketing (roadshows, events etc.) (and joint meetings of technical and
non-technical contributors).

>
>
> 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? 

It's part of the mission and I'm promoting free software and open
standards as often as possible, e.g. I attended meetings about open data
for this reason and talked there about the use of ODF as standard.

> 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?

The members of the board are responsible for running the entity
according to the regulations. Aside this they are only member of the
community with their area of contribution. Their opinions etc.   - like
those of other community member  too - may have some bigger influence in
the discussion process because of their experience and knowledge. But
that has nothing to do with sitting on the board.

>
>
> 7. What is the biggest problem of the foundation in your opinion? What
> is its biggest opportunity?
>
I would not speak about the biggest problem, but it is always an issue
of organisations and it's the field of our biggest opportunity at the
same time:

Organisations as well as groups tend to have their own language and
struggle always with openess, transparency and the culture of welcome.
TDF has done a good job in this field already with making decision,
income and spendings as transparent as possible. We need to go further
in this direction. This is not an easy task, but it is worth to put some
effort into this, especially to strengthen TDF's widely recognized
organisational culture. This will help us to attract more (also
non-technical) contributors and to get supported by other institutions.

Kind regards,
Andreas

-- 
## Developer LibreOffice
## Freie Office-Suite für Linux, Mac, Windows
## http://LibreOffice.org
## Support the Document Foundation (http://documentfoundation.org)
## Meine Seite: http://www.amantke.de 


-- 
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 

Re: [tdf-members] [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[pierre-yves . samyn]

Hi

>De: "Charles-H. Schulz" 
>I would like to thank the candidates who already took the time to answer 

+1

>I hope their answers will help our members get a better idea

Certainly, in my case and I expected answers with great interest.

So I would also like to thank Charles-H for his initiative.

Best regards
Pierre-Yves

-- 
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

Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[toki]

On 02/11/2015 16:38, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:

> 1. Do you commit yourself to have enough time and the necessary
> technological tools in order to participate to the regularly scheduled
> board calls?

Can you be more specific with what you mean by "necessary technological
tools"?

By way of example, one organization that has been trying to recruit me
for years, uses software that is only available for Windows 7, for their
board meetings. (Software that doesn't run under WINE.)

jonathon



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Joel Madero]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1



On 11/28/2015 09:57 AM, toki wrote:
> 
> 
> On 02/11/2015 16:38, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> 
>> 1. Do you commit yourself to have enough time and the necessary
>> technological tools in order to participate to the regularly schedule
d
>> board calls?
> 
> Can you be more specific with what you mean by "necessary technologica
l
> tools"?
> 
> By way of example, one organization that has been trying to recruit me
> for years, uses software that is only available for Windows 7, for the
ir
> board meetings. (Software that doesn't run under WINE.)

We use phone and Google Hangouts for our meetings - some people don't
use Google products so they just call in to the conference line with a
phone which is perfectly fine. Then computer access is usually required
to see live minutes (not OS specific). We currently use Google Docs for
a few things due to the live collaboration/viewing but hopefully will be
able to move to LibreOffice Online at some point next year.

That's the technology that comes to my mind that would be required to
actively participate in board calls.

Best,
Joel

- -- 
Joel Madero, Member of the Board of Directors
GPG Key ID: 0x8FFB1B14 - EE32 6D0F 81FF 6FAC 5AD8 10E4 0141 27C6 8FFB 1B
14
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint


-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux)

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJWWe3PAAoJEAFBJ8aP+xsUwtgH/A8s1feLoIUEjfCZvobDo4LX
juQJbZxm2v0favmKWq1Vo2dscM08hw5CsOUcu+fIxAxgNOwssB9M/RSuCTXLltzD
UWdN8oBVKBFkEjqEHsTikpmwP36yKJDJC8SXqI93JMXO/DbNhA06XE4N66d/p7o8
Sd8qIQx2Epdb62X73L79dTa9sv96mH+SF0O1q2CG07snUSCIz83Nxq4dqz7xk8NL
3YRJHoVIHzgwCfbcosQ6wK/55rR9czjW9d/FMWCGzXV+AgxlB7YbSirvtWq1w50p
Zn2itI4pkm4upA/hwuvHsv/268QcHOny5dW2PNUitnj5KLL3m5ET0KoxmiJ1UbY=
=KJ+r
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

-- 
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

Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Joel Madero]

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 

Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Charles-H. Schulz]

Hello,

I would like to thank the candidates who already took the time to answer 
my questions and the candidates who will soon reply :-) . I hope their 
answers will help our members get a better idea on the opinions and the 
vision of each candidate to the board!


Best,

Charles.

--
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

Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Eike Rathke]

Hi,

To answer Charles' questions:

On Monday, 2015-11-02 17:38:59 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:

> 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.

> 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?

* infrastructure TDF provides to run website, wiki, repository, gerrit
  and other services (including people to improve and keep it running);
  well, these are fixed costs..
* marketing to spread the word and encourage use of and migrations to
  LibreOffice and attract contributors
* employ people for core duty tasks, i.e. administration, mentoring leads
* regional events (hackfests, small conferences) for community building
  and attracting new contributors
* decide on grant requests (TDF introduced a process this year)
* assign budget to specific areas to be developed (tenders, ...)
* sponsor LibreOffice conference attendees' travel costs

> 4. Should we work towards broadening our pool of contributors, both
> technical and non-technical?

Yes, of course.

> 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 and No. TDF should grow presence and influence and have agreements
or friendship with organizations who are active in these fields, and of
course by providing a home for collaboration for those who contribute to
the software TDF projects develop. This includes promotion of Free
Software and Digital Freedom in general, but I don't see TDF in
a position to defend these freedoms by getting actively involved into
politics or legal affairs. There are other organizations that are much
more effective on these grounds.

> 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?

I do have a functional role in LibreOffice anyway ;-)
The role of the members of the board of directors is to oversee the
foundation and its projects and drive things into a direction that makes
projects attractive and help them grow.

> 7. What is the biggest problem of the foundation in your opinion? What is
> its biggest opportunity?

I actually couldn't name "the biggest problem". One challenge is to
wisely spend the money donated to TDF with a perspective on the future
of two years to have a stable ground on which TDF can operate. One
opportunity in my opinion is to develop and strengthen the position of
TDF and Free Software and LibreOffice in countries where we are not much
present yet.

  Eike

-- 
GPG key "ID" 0x65632D3A - 2265 D7F3 A7B0 95CC 3918  630B 6A6C D5B7 6563 2D3A
Better use 64-bit 0x6A6CD5B765632D3A here is why: https://evil32.com/
Eike Rathke, Deputy of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, Germany
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: [board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Simon Phipps]

I see Charles asked some questions. Here are my responses (in-line).

On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 5:38 PM, Charles-H. Schulz <
charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>
> 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.


>
>
> 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?
>

The budget should be delegated to Directors and staff to minimise the
rediscussion of decisions each time spending is required. TDF's income
should be spent primarily on tasks for which there are no volunteers but
which the Board and Trustees have identified as important to unlocking
future volunteer contribution. Current activities promoting technical
tendering and community engagement are good examples of worthwhile
expenditure.


> 4. Should we work towards broadening our pool of contributors, both
> technical and non-technical?
>

Yes, although we need to take care not to create intrinsic motivations that
conflict with the extrinsic motivations of contributors.


> 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. TDF should continue to carefully grow its scope, as it did by adding
DLP. TDF must take care that its growing mission and influence relates to
documents, communications and the standards associated with them, rather
than branching out into unrelated evangelism.


> 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?
>

I covered this in my candidate statement.


> 7. What is the biggest problem of the foundation in your opinion? What is
> its biggest opportunity?
>

TDF needs to remember its roots and purpose as it grows. It's important to
balance growth and stability, so that neither dominates to the detriment of
the other. TDF has great potential addressing the needs of the software
freedom communities regarding document-centric communication and
collaboration, and this is sorely needed because of the dominance of
proprietary solutions in the lives and minds of the world's computer users.

-- 
*Simon Phipps*  http://webmink.com
*Office:* +1 (415) 683-7660 *or* +44 (238) 098 7027
*Mobile*:  +44 774 776 2816 *or Telegram *

[board-discuss] Questions for the candidates to the board of directors of the Document Foundation

[Charles-H. Schulz]

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?



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?



3. What are your views on the foundation's budget? How should the money 
be spent, besides our fixed costs?



4. Should we work towards broadening our pool of contributors, both 
technical and non-technical?



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?



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?



7. What is the biggest problem of the foundation in your opinion? What 
is its biggest opportunity?



Thank you for your answers,

Charles-H. Schulz.

--
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