Hi Mark,
On 25/03/2022 23:39, Mark Hung wrote:
Hi Paolo,
The list is too long to follow. I have few questions here that I don't
find them addressed in the document:
Yes the discussion has been taking place over a long period of time and
across many threads so it is difficult to get all the answers in an easy
way.
To try to make it easier to follow a discussion and the various
proposals the "Decidim startup proposal" has been presented for approval
in the budget and I hope it will find a full consensus within the board
to invest on it.
Is that hiring annualy or long term?
( Apologize if this is clear to others. But I don't know how hiring is
done in TDF. )
It's a long term employment project, that's why I asked the board to not
consider it as a budget line (like tenders) but as a long term strategic
investment.
What's the lost / cost to TDF if someday the board or future board
want to dismiss the developer, in case something bad happens or it
doesn't work out?
The cost to TDF could be 0 or quite a lot, like in any organisation,
depending on why the board would want to dismiss an employee.
Employment contracts allow for "trial periods" as far as I know, not an
HR expert, where if we see that the new employee doesn't fit with the
organisation he/she can be fairly dismissed while if the new employee
and TDF are both happy then I don't see why there should be any issue
with a long term employment.
After hiring in-house developer, TDF might become a
scapegoat directly, for not fixing users bugs.
What would the expected response be?
We do what we can with the resources that are made available by
users/donors.
Whatever we do there will be complains but I think having the internal
resources to tackle issues that otherwise would not progress is an
important step forward.
What I hope is that people like you will notice that the proposal tries
to create opportunities for better interaction and mutual support in
tackling difficult issues.
I've read some of your and Shinji's presentations and that's one of the
many reasons why native languages are at the top of the list of my
proposal, together with a11y, as it seems like the vast majority of the
global population isn't yet well served by LibreOffice.
2 in-house developers will not solve all the problems for all the users
especially when, as you and Shinji rightly pointed out in your
presentations, you must be a native speaker to understand and fix some
issues. The xkcd in page 8 of your AsiaCon 2019 presentation is spot on
in this case as even having the top developers in-house there is a
limited amount of fixes/algorithms they can push if they don't have your
support.
Could you suggest action points and priorities that I can add to the
proposal so that we can see how to tackle together some of the issues
that are stopping you from contributing and further improving CJK support?
Is there any preventive measure for the unfair situation mentioned by
Michael Stahl[1],
in which enterprise users who deployed for free, and eventually they
don't contribute, then endanger the sustenance of the project?
[1]
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00290.html
It is unfair that millions of LibreOffice users that have the luck of
being able to contribute don't do it as they don't seem to appreciate
the efforts that each one of us put into the community.
It would be even more unfair if we weren't contributing to LibreOffice
for the hundreds of millions of users that are not so lucky and would
have no other options.
Of course unfortunately there will be cases where some try to abuse the
system and it would be great if we spot all those cases. Most will be
spotted while others will go through but hopefully they will be
benefiting the majority of users and not specific business cases where
companies/institutions could have contributed to it.
Your question lead also to other questions:
What about the tenders we pay for with donors money which could also fix
enterprise issues/features?
Should we reject tenders that are not fixing bugs and features that are
clearly not for a personal use of LibreOffice?
Should we consider that Japan is a quite wealthy country so language
issues should be funded by local enterprises and institutions?
As you see the issue could become much more complex than just having a
few fixes slipping through the net.
Our Next Decade Manifesto does not take in consideration the capacity to
contribute of each individual, LibreOffice is free of charge for all
without distinction.
Funding TDF so that we can all invest in many areas, in and with many
communities, is essential and I'm sure that by giving TDF more internal
resources to help each others we will also increase the willingness of
people to donate (in many ways, not just money) and with a larger user
base many organisations will see that is better also for them to invest
in
