Re: [board-discuss] Privacy Mission Statement

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 5:22 PM, Thorsten Behrens
 wrote:
> Florian Effenberger wrote:
>> the Board of Directors has discussed and approved a Privacy Mission
>> Statement [..]
>>
> Thx Florian & team for tirelessly working on this rather substantial
> document!
>
> In this day and age, I'm glad we're taking a stand for privacy and
> freedom not only with the software we publish, but also on how we run
> our websites & services.

2.3 Private hardware and software may only be used within the scope of
the operating procedures for telecommuting/home office for the
processing of personal data.

'may only be used' means that anything that does not match the
specified conditions is verboten.

"within the scope of the operating procedures for telecommuting/home
office for the processing of personal data."
is not something comprehensible to me.

Norbert

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] Re: [tdf-members] Preliminary results 2015 Elections TDF Board of Directors

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Thorsten Behrens
<t...@documentfoundation.org> wrote:
> Cor Nouws wrote:
>> The proper results should read:
>> Directors are the candidates, in this order: Marina Latini, Michael
>> Meeks, Thorsten Behrens, Jan Holesovsky, Osvaldo Gervasi, Simon Phipps,
>> Eike Rathke.
>> And as deputies: Norbert Thiebaud, Bjoern Michaelsen, Andreas Mantke.
>>
>> My apologies for the initial announcement and thanks to all people that
>> responded.
>>
> As someone affected by this change: I accept the new ranking, and
> trust the MC is doing the right thing here.

As someone affected too, I concur with Thorsten.

Norbert

-- 
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: [tdf-core] [board-discuss] Marketing Budget Approval for FUEL GILT 2015

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Charles-H. Schulz
 wrote:
> Le 25 octobre 2015 16:40:31 GMT+01:00, Italo Vignoli  
> a écrit :
>>FUEL GILT is one of the largest conferences focused on localization
>>issues, and is organized by a number of TDF community members in India
>>(those who have attended the conference in Aarhus). They have invited
>>Sophie and myself to attend the conference, and the idea is the I
>>attend
>>2015 and Sophie attends 2016, to foster the connection with the Indian
>>NLP and promote LibreOffice and ODF in the Indian market.
>>
>>The conference happens in Chennai (Madras) on November 20-22, and I
>>will
>>present a paper on LibreOffice localization (edited with Sophie's
>>precious help) and one on the ODF document standard (and associated
>>issues, such as free fonts for interoperability).
>>
>>Travel expenses will be lower than 1,000 Euro (flight is around 600
>>Euro, hotel is less than 75 Euro per night, and other expenses are low
>>in comparison with Europe).
>>
>>For more information on FUEL: http://fuelproject.org/gilt2015/index.
>>
>>I ask Charles to approve the expense from the marketing budget.
>
> Excellent idea. Approved.

Guys, do you actually keep track of 'the marketing budget' ? or is it
just assumed to be bottomless ?

Norbert

--
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] Design team leads

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 10:56 AM, Mirek M. maz...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi,
 Astron told me that the idea to have positions within the design team was
 not well-received and that I should discuss it with you. What do you find
 problematic about having positions within the team?

 To be clear, leads would be there to make sure that things get done, that
 the process by which they get done produces the best results, and to resolve
 controversial issues if they arise.

Just to pile up on what has already said:
'lead' has a loaded history in the project
so is the bestowing of 'title'.

That being said, as a team, the notion of coordinator is not offensive
per se, and as long as it is a de facto acknowledgement of a actual
function and not a de jure title it is perfectly fine imo.
But one is such coordinator because he/she is actually 'coordinating'
with the approval and agreement of the people being coordinated (no,
no need for an election or such.. if you need a formal election it is
already a 'fail')
This is a natural extension of the meritocratic principle at the core of TDF.

Norbert

-- 
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

[board-discuss] Re: [VOTE] Rules of Procedure changes

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 9:18 AM, Thorsten Behrens
t...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 The draft text was not fully ready during our board call on Wednesday,
 I'd therefore ask the new board plus deputies to vote via email on
 this list:

+1

Norbert

-- 
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

[board-discuss] Nominate Lionel Mamane

[Norbert Thiebaud]

I'd like to nominate Lionel Mamane for the upcoming Board of Directors election.

Lionel as been an active volunteer contributor to the project for 3
years, becoming our de-facto Base maintainer.
He is very smart, patient, considerate and has demonstrated a capacity
to work well with others.
I believe that these qualities will make him a very good Borad member.

Norbert

-- 
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] asking permission to use name / logo

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 4:36 AM, Cor Nouws oo...@nouenoff.nl wrote:
 5. Enclosed you find a document with three possibilities for a 'logo' at the
 header of the website of the trainingcenter.
   A is the one that a designer drafted after my initial info.
   B is extended mentioning OO
   C is a different approach.


For Info:
In the attached document, C looks bad on mac with lo4.0... the Text
LibreOffice -  has blank zone around it that 'erase the underlying
'Door NouOff'

in B the color of 'en OpenOffice' is not quite the same than the one
of 'Trainincenter and the fact that the later is a bitmap and the
former a text also shows in the sharpness of the edges of the
letter...

A looks ok, modulo the grainy font edge due, I suspect to the logo
being a png and not a svg

Norbert

-- 
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] new BoD call time due to daylight saving time

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 8:07 AM, Olivier Hallot
olivier.hal...@documentfoundation.org wrote:

 UTC is very handy, believe me.

Sure I find the whole DST mess stupid to start with...

but... _practically_ the meeting time is adjusted so that it always
occurs at the same CET time. so the announce could be made using UTC
for convenience, but in fact that UTC time has changed and will change
according to the DST setting of CET... so instead of figuring out how
many hours behind 3,4,5 you are from CET, you have to pay attention to
the specific UTC time of the meeting, which will vary up to 2 hours
depending on the specific date of the meeting.

Note:
1/ I re-iterate that the reference time can be a certain CET time, and
yet the announce can contain UTC time for convenience
2/ And the end of the day that was just a suggestion... that I made
because we were running into the same problem with ESC meeting... I
have no strong feeling about it... especially for a meeting that I
rarely attend to start with :-)

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] new BoD call time due to daylight saving time

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 3:32 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,

 Norbert Thiebaud wrote on 2013-03-29 18:09:

 may I suggest, to avoid that twice-yearly dance, to set the time based
 on CET once and for all.. rather than UTC with 2 adjustment a yer when
 CET switch in and out of DST.


 I specifically went for UTC, as I have received many complaints in the past
 from people who did not clearly know what CET is (particularly from Northern
 America).
www.google.com CET enter

 I think UTC as reference time fits best, since it's an
 international standard.
Well, the issue here is that UTC, of course, does not have that funky
'daylight-saving' thing... so if you pick UTC then you will have to
ask for a vote like this 2twice a year for the foreseable future...
Note: you can announce the time in UTC but still have an agreement
that the time is _based_ on a CET time... so that you won;t have to do
a vote for a 'change' twice a year.

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] FTP space for LibreOffice Server Install GUI

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 4:32 PM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,

 Florian Reisinger wrote on 2013-03-15 20:57:

 I continue to work at gerrit. I just wanted to ask, when I am able to
 re-publish my program? (In other words: When I am able to publish @TDF
 FTP?)


 if I understood Norbert right, the plan is to host it inside our git
 repository?

Sure, but the build artifact need to be uploaded... most likely in
gimli somewhere...

Florain (Reisinger)
what does it take to build your project ? can out make a cygwin-based
shell scrip to run a build  ? (ideally stored in the porject itself)
in that case I could have one of the tinderbox to build the project on
occasion and upload the binary artefact somewhere... the 'same' way we
do daily build of lo.

It may be possible to set-up something so that you could trigger that
from gerrit itself...  or even maybe using jenkins and a windows (VM)
slave... david may have an idea about that, since he is developing
gerrit buildbot-plugin that way... (well, except for the windows part)


Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] FTP space for LibreOffice Server Install GUI

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 8:04 AM, Florian Reisinger reisi...@gmail.com wrote:
 Am 05.03.2013 09:45, schrieb Florian Reisinger:

 Hi,
 [...]


 SI-GUI maybe??


 Do I have the rights to do git push IMHO not...

4 days ago I asked you:

1/ I need you to register to gerrit.libreoffice.org and send me the
email you used to register (so I can give you proper ACL on the new
repo)


I have no received such information, so I can not possibly assign
'rights' until I know which user to assign it too.

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] FTP space for LibreOffice Server Install GUI

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Thorsten Behrens
t...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Florian Reisinger wrote:
 So I am asking for TDF webspace as a place for releasing the
 program. As the current size is extreamly low, I wouldn't need more
 than 50 -70 M to keep ~30-50 version of the program itself + some
 auto-generated files by VisualStudio.

 Hi Florian,

 appears folks are generally happy with that - though we would like to
 ask you to move the git repo over to our gerrit (with some more added
 benefits ;)).

 Also, please add proper license headers to all source files (if you
 are the sole author, you are free to do so). The preferred
 LibreOffice license is this:

 /* -*- Mode: C++; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; c-basic-offset: 4 -*- 
 */
 /*
  * This file is part of the LibreOffice project.
  *
  * This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
  * License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
  * file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.
  */

 your sourcecode

 /* vim:set shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab: */

 (adjust comment style to file type in question, of course).

Adding headers etc. is fine... but the project is already licensed
under LGPLv3 which is fine for the purpose.
( 
https://github.com/reisi007/LibreOffice_Server_Installation_GUI/blob/master/doc/LICENCE
)
So I don't think there should be a requirement of re-licensing here.

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] FTP space for LibreOffice Server Install GUI

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 8:08 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,


 However, someone has to check Florian's product and see if it fits into TDF.


So, I have not looked into deep details (and I won't since it is in
C#). but on principle it seems to address a useful problem: helping
people do QA more easily on windows
by helping them having multiple version concurrently... iow allowing
them to test a new version without messing with the stable version
they rely upon.

I would not mind hosting the source repo on gerrit... and then we
could poly host the binary on gimli... neither of them are big.
This is not unprecedented, we are doing that for few 'satellite'
pieces already like cppunit and others...
The difference being mostly hosting 'binaries'... which incurs an
extra layer of 'trust'...

So, my personal opinion is, we should encourage and support such
satellite project, whose main aim is to make thing easier for QA
people on windows... and QA is a very important thing, anything we can
do to get more people involved and productive there is a 'good thing'

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] FTP space for LibreOffice Server Install GUI

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Thorsten Behrens
t...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Florian Reisinger wrote:
 So I am asking for TDF webspace as a place for releasing the
 program. As the current size is extreamly low, I wouldn't need more
 than 50 -70 M to keep ~30-50 version of the program itself + some
 auto-generated files by VisualStudio.

 Hi Florian,

 appears folks are generally happy with that - though we would like to
 ask you to move the git repo over to our gerrit (with some more added
 benefits ;)).

Florian

1/ I need you to register to gerrit.libreoffice.org and send me the
email you used to register (so I can give you proper ACL on the new
repo)
2/ Can you pick a repo name that is not insanely long..
LibreOffice_Server_Installation_GUI  is really too long for confort.
losig.git maybe ?

to give you an idea here are the kind of repo names we have so far

binfilter   
buildbot
core
cppunit
dev-tools
dictionaries
gerrit-etc
help
libcdr
libexttextcat
libmspub
libvisio
mcm-database
original-artwork
sdk-examples
templates
test-files
translations
voting

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] Development Budget Request

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,

 Thorsten Behrens wrote on 2013-01-29 18:25:


 We looked into some offers, and it seems e.g. Hetzner's EX4 is
 economical in terms of spec/price ratio

   http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4

 , and goes for 49.00 € / month including VAT.


 [..]


 In total, the request would be, for 2013, a budget of

   ** 8.000,00 € **

 for this setup (plan is to start with one EX4 and then ramp it up,
 thus we don't incur the full cost in the first months).


 Is a Gigabit connection required for the machines? I doubt, but wanted to
 clarify, since that would add 39 € per month per machine.

No


 Plus, dues the above sum take into account the fee of a Windows Server
 license for those machines? Since we cannot bootstrap this on our own (i.e.
 cannot install a separatedly bought Windows license), and virtualization is
 not desired, we need to take Hetzner's offer here, which costs 15 € per
 month for web edition and 25 € per month for standard edition.

Then we need to find another provider.

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] Splashscreen Startscreen proposals for the 4.0

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 8:34 AM, Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com wrote:
 So, votes should happen only on mailing lists. We can decide to get the
 random opinion of users on Google+, but it should be clear that this is
 not going to have the same value as the same concept expressed on the
 mailing lists.

If I may suggest: wile I favor 'poll' to get input about what the
mebership at large thinks of different proposal... as _one kind_ of
input to the decision process.
I would rather not such poll to be 'binding' votes

Unfortunately 'logo' and other design element are prone to
bikesheeding... everybody has an opinion, everybody is an expert... so
using 'us' the membership as guinea pig to get some feed-back is one
thing.. but delegating that decision to a 'general' vote seems not
that great to me.

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] Format of the BoD votes announcement

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 4:23 AM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
 Hi :)
 but there are times
 when a vote needs to be taken anonymously.

Can you give a concrete example of such time ? I mean for a BoD vote.
note: there is a distinction between private deliberation, temporarily
non-public and 'anonymous' BoD vote.
I can think of cases where the 2 former are justified or necessary,
for privacy concern or legal reasons... but I can't think of a case
where the later would be justified.

Norbert.

Re: [board-discuss] Format of the BoD votes announcement

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Joel Madero jmadero@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm wondering if this would cause a group think mentality within the BoD.
 I know that if a name is public, being the only dissenter might dissuade a
 current or future BoD from dissenting.

Dissenting are usually not expressed at the vote level, but usually
during the discussion prior to the vote.
more often than not the vote reflect the consensus...


 Ultimately I'm wondering how much
 adding names helps the project move forward.

As I said earlier. in a representative system the 'representee' need
to have a way to make an educated decision to choose the ones
representing them.
The voting record of an incumbent candidate is an important piece of
information with that regard.

 I know that we adhere to a very
 open policy but with voting, sometimes anonymous really encourages the best
 deliberation.

Not withstanding the fact that our statute call for public BoD
meeting, except for limited cases, in any case voting _is_ public.
The information is already mostly there... just not in a form that is
easy for the membership to process.
Some vote occurs online, some other occurs on public conference
call... on rare occasion there can be vote during in-person meeting of
the BoD
in any case the result of such vote are posted on the ML. The only
proposed difference is that these 'result' be a bit more complete as
to allow the membership
to get a better picture of what their representatives are doing... and
since they do vote for individual and not a 'group', the voting record
of each BoD member is important.

Beside adding the name would also provide a easier, less error prone,
for each BoD member and interested observer, to make sure that the
'minutes' are correct, at least wrt the voting record. (it is easier
to detect that your name is in the wrong column, rather than deduce
that based on the Yeah/Nay count)

And yes... the vast majority of votes are unanimous... that is
expected since most of the votes are not controversial in nature, and
a well functioning BoD would search for a consensus before getting to
a vote... iow function primarily as a consensus based entity not a
'majority rule' entity.
But if that good pattern where to be disrupted in the future, the
Board of Trustee (the members) will have to try to remedy things at
the following election, and again, the voting record in this scenario
would be a useful tool to make an educated decision.

It is better/easier to establish 'good practice' and 'precedent' while
we have well functioning institutions.

Norbert

[board-discuss] Format of the BoD votes announcement

[Norbert Thiebaud]

I'd like to suggest that the summary of the BoD vote as exemplified
below be slightly changed to included nominative informations relative
the the vote.

In a representative democratic system, like it is the case here, where
the BoD represent the Board of Trustee, It is important that the
represented body can evaluate how it is being represented by each
candidate it designated to do so, in order to be able to make and
educated decision during the following election.

Certainly today such information is mostly available in the ML by
parsing the individual +1, or by listeneing to the recording of the
Bod meeting and again extracting the vote from there... but that is
quite a time consuming an error prone process, and surely we want the
acces to information to the Board of Trustee to be as low as possible,
so that the Board of Trustee can make the most informed decision as
possible.

So I would recommend that future summary recorded Vote by the BoD
include the name associated with the vote. I edited the example below
with fictional names as an example.
This is just an example, and I'll be satisfied with any variations one
may prefer that fulfill the goal : nominative voting record :-)

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 7:03 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hello,

 The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders
 without deputies. In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 of the
 Board of Directors members, which gives 4.

The Following Board of directors member have participated in the vote:

John, Phillip, Robert (representing Jean) and Caroline.

For a total of 4 member: The vote is Quorate


 A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 3 votes.

 Result of vote:
 3 approvals: John, Robert, Caroline
 0 neutral
 1 disapprovals. Phillip

 Decision: The request has been accepted.



Note: if the decision is unanimous one can have

Result of the vote: unanimous approval/disapprovals

To avoid re-naming everyone participating in the vote.

Norbert

PS: 'private decisions', if any, should be the object of the same
summary vote and posted in the BoD private list as the decision is
made, and forwarded to the BoD-disucss list as soon as the rational
for the 'private' status become moot.

Re: [board-discuss] Incoming call: LibO at nonprofit

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Florian Effenberger wrote on 2012-10-25 10:36:

 Volunteers?


 From the board, MC and their deputies, that is; otherwise I cannot share the
 call details, since it was directly to TDF and therefore should not be
 shared with third parties

Hummm, every member of the Board of Trustee would qualify no ?

Norbert

[board-discuss] Re: [tdf-core] change in membership confirmed by authorities

[Norbert Thiebaud]

Now that TDF is fully established, It is time to perform the final step of the
bootstrap process and to have a membership-elected MC.
I that spirit, I hereby resign from the Membership Committee.
I will continue to carry on my MC duty until such time as a duly
elected  Membership Committee is in place.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] Travel Expenses Reimbursement Policy

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Jean Weber jeanwe...@gmail.com wrote:
 The Travel Expenses Reimbursement Policy
 (http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Travel) appears to
 say that if one chooses not to fly the cheapest way, or chooses to
 stay at an expensive hotel, then no reimbursement at all will be
 allowed.

 I would think that the policy should say something like only the cost
 of low-cost economy airfare will be reimbursed;

That open the doors to 'what _is_ the cheapest fare' ? what degree of
reasonableness should be applied ( the 'cheapest' fare could entail 3
stop and an overnight lay-over...
and cheapest _when_ ?... on a typical flight there are more fare than
there are seat on the plane...)

I think the trick is to get approval _before_ the fact with a
'budgeted cost'... and reimbursement would be 'up-to' and approved
sum.


Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 7:55 AM, David Emmerich Jourdain
jourd...@gmx.de wrote:


 If the MC need help to translation, I think I can help, 'cause I have
 knowledge in some languages. I already had offered my help in another
 situation and I offer again, if the MC wishes.

As I said earlier, that should not emanate from the MC

What you are welcomed to do is to work within the community to let
them know that you can help them interact in English with the MC if
they need it.
Doing so will help the MC and also that means that you would probably
have a better understanding of who the candidate are and what they
did, so the MC can ping you for clarification if need be.

The other thing, which is not MC-related, is to make sure that the
statues are translated and available... on the Wiki I supposed would
be a nice place for them...

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hello,

 However, most of us is not all of us, and indeed it is one of our strenghts
 that we have a wide, open and diverse community, active in many countries
 and on many languages. I really feel uncomfortable excluding people who
 contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the foundation, just because
 they don't speak English.

Just to be clear: It is not my position that we should be
excluding people who contribute to the success of LibreOffice and the
foundation, just because they don't speak English.

But, as far as communication with the MC, for membership purpose, I do
not want to put the burden on the MC to find translator to be able to
handle request in any languages.
Presumably someone, who does not speak English, must be active and
interacting with other local people, and surely at least one of them
must speak enough English to help them fill the form properly, and
decode the answer they receive from the MC.


 While of course the main language of the MC should be English, finding ways
 of having proxies, people helping to translate, would be very much
 welcome.
I would suggest that the burden to find such proxy is on the
applicant... and that is actually an exhibit of proper interaction
with the community.


 I think practically, we can do it similar to the statutes. The official
 form and rules are in English, but for convenience, we can provide localized
 versions, given we find volunteers to translate them. The binding
 variants, however, should solely be the English ones then (except for legal
 texts, but that's another topic I don't want to touch here...).

Agreed, but without exception :-)

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 5:59 AM, drew jensen drewjensen.in...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, 2012-05-22 at 08:25 -0500, Norbert Thiebaud wrote:
 On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:36 AM, sophie gautier.sop...@gmail.com wrote:
  This is what language communities are supposed to do : give those who don't
  speak English a chance to be part of the project. We can't rely only on
  English speaking people to grow the community and represent it every where
  in the world. This is why settling each of our actions on an i18n point of
  view first is very important.

 That conjure to me the following quote (from a brazillian TDF member
 on the aooo-dev ML)

 4 - Suddenly, TDF was requesting that every person who wanted to be called
 a contributor should fill a agreement request in order to be
 recognized. So we became to be concerned about that huge amount of people
 who contributed and didn't want to fill a formal agreement to a foreign
 organization that don't speak their language and has a lot of channels,
 many of them obscured.
 5 - In addition, people who we were fighting bacame key persons in TDF. One
 of them became a brazilian member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when
 brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them
 didn't vote for him.

 Which, to me, indicate that the language barrier is being use and
 abuse to mislead (*), and the underlying 'nationalism' is disturbing
 to me. the notion the TDF should be the UN with 'national
 representative' is pretty scary (**) :-(

 Hi Norbert

 I think you make too much of the statement from one person. Some people
 will leave in a huff, no matter what policies are in place.

Drew,

I quoted the statement above not for the specific of the case but for
its illustration value:


 I also think that what you refer to as a problem with Nationalism is
 not,

let me narrow the quote:
One of them became a brazilian member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when
brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them
didn't vote for him.

isn't the author arguing that a BoD candidat that happen to have
nationality X must have the majority support of the members that also
share that irrelevant trait.
and reciprocally, isn't the author complaining that the artificial (in
our context) subgroup defined by that irrelevant criteria is not
properly represented as such ?

Considering that the irrelevant criteria in question is 'National
Origin', how is Nationalism not an accurate description ? Maybe
'Chauvinism' ?

To go back to the original issue:

1/ I have no problem with TDF developing alternative way to
'recognize' people. But that is more a Internal Marketing/Community
Management topic than a MC topic.
2/ Volunteer can translate and help people that do not know any
English, including our Statue/Bylaw and other Foundation related
document, actually I'd encourage that, as it would help avoid some
confusion, apparently.
3/ I have a practical problem receiving Application/Renewal request in
anything but English. English is _not_ my native language, but that is
a practical, and relatively simple(*), working language. And as much
as I would like to, I cannot be expected to speak all the language of
the planet, nor is any MC member. So, official/formal communication,
like membership application and renewal, must practically be en
English. I'm very open to review and correction so that we avoid
Idioms and other complex formulation is such documents, but it shall
still be in English nonetheless.

(*)I've dabbled with few languages, by curiosity... I took German and
Latin in  middle school, I did a short stint of Spanish.. I even
glanced at Russian, Japanese and Chinese...
English, as it turns out if a pretty simple language. Very little
grammar, almost no conjugation, no declination, fairly limited
vocabulary... as a consequence it is fairly easy - compared to other
languages -  to reach a level that allow written communication.

Norbert

Re: [board-discuss] membership application/language and supporters

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 3:57 AM, Cor Nouws oo...@nouenoff.nl wrote:
 Hi all,

 When inviting people in the Dutch language community to consider membership
 of TDF, two items showed up.

 1. Not all active people are familiar enough with the beautiful English
 language to feel comfortable to use the application page ( related info).
   has partial translation been considered, and if not, can it be?

From a practical stand-point, the only actual prerogative of members
is their ability to vote for BoD and MC.
How could one make an educated decision as to whom to vote for without
basic understanding of who the candidates are and what they stand for,
hence, in most case, without understanding of basic English ?


 2. Not all supporters are active in a way that they feel like applying form
 membership.
   the idea 'supportive membership' has been mentioned before.
  Has it been discussed too?

I'm not sure what that means... can you elaborate ?

Norbert

PS: I do think that current member should 'invite' people they know to
be active to become member (and drop a heads-up/recommendation email
to the membership committee).
PS2: the main problem with non-conventional 'activity' is the ability
of the MC to objectively measure it... having existing member vouching
for such activities would go a long way, I think, in making that
happen.

Re: [board-discuss] next BoD call on Wednesday

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Norbert Thiebaud nthieb...@gmail.com wrote:
 At the very least, one could, once and for all, until revoked, make a

actually one _should_ , since missing a call is not always a planned event :-)

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] Rules of Procedure

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,

 Norbert Thiebaud wrote on 2012-02-27 20:35:

 Our bylaws are an internal non-german-legal document that we use as
 _our_  constitution. it is not meant to be used in court.


 wrong.

 I recall one rule where the board is not allowed to change the bylaws in
 case of a dispute, until that dispute is settled. (Don't nail me down on the
 exact wording here...) If the worst case happens, someone could claim that
 in court.

Yes but what would be disputed in court if anything would be the fact
that the BoD did not honor the block, which should be a statute side
thing, and not the object of the block (i.e the actual change of the
bylaw. iow the things being blocked could be a logo (no language), and
the rational still apply. the court does not need to understand the
content of the change to rule on whether the change was procedurally
correct.

In my mind the court should be involved only to rule on the form of
the decision process, not on the content of the bylaws.

furthermore, isn't there already a wordage to indicate that the bylaws
cannot overrule the statue. iow we could have a bylaws that says: in
order to be a member you need to pay a $1000 fee.
Such rule would be valid as long as it does not contradict the statues...

My argument is not that the bylaws have precedence over the statute,
but that the English version of the bylaws is the reference version:
if there is a doubt in what the bylaws means, the English version
govern, since that is the one that _has_ been approved by the
membership and not the version translated in German or any other
languages.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] AB-Member and ESC-Member on TDF-Website

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Andreas Mantke ma...@gmx.de wrote:
 Hi all,

 I looked on the TDF-Website and found out that there is no entry about the 
 member of
 the AB and of the ESC. Although they are no organs of the TDF (like BoD, MC 
 or Board
 of Trustees) they are very important for TDF and the development of 
 LibreOffice. I
 think we should create special sections on the TDF-Website for them and 
 publish the
 AB-Member and ESC-Member (the information is currently a bit difficult to 
 find only
 in the wiki or blog) on the website.

 But before we create such sections on the TDF-Website, we should ask the 
 AB-Member
 and the ESC-Member, if we should publish only the companies / institutions or 
 also
 the representatives and what information they want to chare about themselfes 
 / their
 company (in relation to TDF/Free Software) with the public.

ESC member are there in an 'individual' capacity. Their company
affiliation is only relevant to the extent that we try to avoid one
company having too much weight...
As for disclosure. The minimum is the Name (one cannot be an
'anonymous' ESC member) I guess that public disclosure of the
affiliation, if any, could be optional (someone may work for a company
but do not what the company name mentioned because his participation
to the ESC is not a company sanctioned/sponsored activity)

We will bring that topic-up on the next ESC call and provide a list
with the appropriate/agreed-to details to this ML.

For the AB, that is exactly the oposite. people are there representing
company, so the affiliation is the mandatory information... the name
of the individual representing that company is less important and
susceptible to change at the discretion of the AB-member. so trying to
keep that public list up-to-date with individuals name is an
unnecessary burden IMO.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] call recordings or only minutes?

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hello,

 I was wondering whether we should upload call recordings as we did in the
 past, or only keep them internally until the minutes are done, and then
 upload them to the wiki.

 I seriously doubt anyone listens to the recordings, as the minutes provide a
 much easier way to keep up to date.

actually, I do, when I'm not on the call itself...

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] PostgreSQL project - Document Foundation liaison

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 3:17 AM, Lionel Elie Mamane lio...@mamane.lu wrote:
 Hi,

 As main maintainer of PostgreSQL-SDBC, the native driver for
 LibreOffice to connect to a PostgreSQL database server which is going
 to be bundled with LibreOffice 3.5, I'm putting myself as manager of
 the The Document Foundation organisation on the postgresql.org
 website and related resources.

sure... go for it :-)

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] [RESULT] New Membership Committee voted by the board

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 7:28 AM, Andre Schnabel andre.schna...@gmx.net wrote:
 Hi Thorsten, *

 Datum: Wed, 9 Nov 2011 14:08:21 +0100
 Von: Thorsten Behrens t...@documentfoundation.org

[...]
 We would like to ask all successful candidates to formally accept
 their vote, by replying to this email.

 I do accept that vote and am looking forward to working with the other
 established and new memers of the MC.

Ditto.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] Membership Committee

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 1:01 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton
dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote:
[...]

 First about the ASF.
This is not about ASF. ASF is just a mean to an IBM goal in that story.


 Now, some individuals
This is not so much about individuals either... AOOo owe its existence
to Corporate politics and interest. It was by no stretch of the
imagination a grass root movement.

[..]
 in the public interest.
Can you spare us the marketing line. Every similar 'Foundation'
operate under the same 'public interest' banner, which is a very broad
one, and does not means, contrary to what one would expect, 'in the
interest of the public'. (1)

[..]
 There are no recriminations, there is no litmus test,
You mean except signing an iCLA ?

 Drew will always be welcome to contribute in any manner he chooses.
Sure, but If Drew ask to be named V.P. of Community Development at
Apache, will he automatically get the job ? oh wait, no; I suppose he
has to, at least, become ASF member first...
wait, how one does become member at Apache ? humm... seems pretty
vague one cannot 'apply', one need to have buddies in the place
already to be 'proposed' for membership more like a Guild...

In the mean time Drew _is_ a member of TDF and as such is entitled to
run for BoD or MC, and of course to 'contribute in any manner he
chooses'... actually that later one does not even require membership,
or even signing up open ended liability agreement.

The question at hand is -- to avoid running BoD and MC election
concurrently, which would be a bad idea due to the necessary oversight
of each body on the election of the other -- how best organize the
transition to an elected MC. One proposition, that seems to be
favored, is to postpone the MC election to the middle of next year and
to re-conduct the current MC in the interim.
The problem is that the current MC does not have enough member to
conform to the foundation statute, as amended to fit the Host State
requirement. So we need to fill 1 MC member position and 3 MC deputy
positions.

Out current Bylaw provide that it is the prerogative of the BoD to
make such appointments. The only restriction established in the ByLaw
is that such appointees must be TDF members.
So every TDF member is eligible to such position, but none have any
'right' to it.

Just the same, I thought it strange that there was a question of any conflict 
seen in Drew Jensen's participation on Apache projects.

Since it is BoD's members prerogative to make such appointment, it
does not seems strange at all that they'd ask questions, publicly or
privately, to prospective candidate and other interested party to make
that decision.
And surely, when seeking a position of representation of the
membership  -- which is the case of the MC, which represent the
membership in the process of evaluating the somewhat subjective
criteria of 'substantive contribution' -- it is expected that a higher
scrutiny be applied to questions of allegiance and purpose.

Of course all that will become moot in few months, when the membership
at large will be called-upon to make that decision. Still I would not
be surprised if that sort of questions -- if still of relevance --
were to pop-up during the election cycle.

Norbert

(1) One could create an 'Charitable Association' whose purpose is to
help anyone prepare and fill software patents. That would most likely
fit the tax requirement to get a 'Charitable' tax-exempt status, which
is a 'public-interest' Association... It is nevertheless very arguable
whether that Association would be 'in the interest of the public'.

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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] Membership Committee

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton
dennis.hamil...@acm.org wrote:
 I am not questioning the prerogatives of the TDF to govern itself in any
 manner. Norbert is correct that I have no standing in the matter.

I don't think that was the meaning of my reply, if that is what you
take out of it, allow me to apologize for my failure to communicate.
I did not meant to imply that _you_ are 'questionning the prerogative of TDF',
and even less challenge question of your standing.


 Norbert, you can make my note mean whatever you want. I stand by it as
 written.

I'm not following... you must have read in my message something more
personal than it was intended.


 One more thing.  I have found folks on ooo-dev who are cynical about the
 honesty and character of TDF members, too, but nothing so blatantly virulent
 as was just inserted here.

I'm sorry, since you are top-posting, it is hard to known which part
exactly you are objecting to. Are there any facts in dispute ?

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to board-discuss+h...@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: [steering-discuss] Preparing elections for the membership committee

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
 Hi :)
 I have assumed that Thorsten has not stepped down from MC or something.  
 Whatever he was stepping down from was in order for him to be able to do some 
 work that he is being blocked from doing anyway right?  So until the job 
 needs to be started i think Thorsten is still on whatever it was he was going 
 to step down from.

 Sorry, i just got a bit muddled.

The MC is in charge of supervising the BoD election so clearly someone
running for a BoD possition cannot be member of the MC
The MC is in charge of supervising Solemn Address and Impeachment of
the Board of Directors. again that create a conflict of interest if
one is allowed to be BoD member and MC member.

So, MC membership and BoD membership and candidacy are mutually exclusive.
This has been overlooked during this election cycle. Thorsthen should
have resigned of his MC position as soon as he declared his intention
to run for a BoD position.
I don;t think that there is any suspicion that this 'irregularity' had
any impact on the election, and clearly Thorsten election and behavior
are beyond reproach.
Still, The forms do matter, and even the impression of impropriety can
create un-welcomed drama/suspiction/FUD etc...
Hence the necessity to rectify the situation, hence Thorsten stepping
down from his MC responsibilities.

Does that clarifies it  ?


Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] appointing Thorsten as election officer for MC

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Simon Phipps si...@webmink.com wrote:

 On 30 Oct 2011, at 15:34, Florian Effenberger wrote:

 Hi,

 Charles-H. Schulz wrote on 2011-10-30 16:34:
 +1 from my side... do we only need one?

 IMHO one is enough, as we had it for the BoD elections.

 Note that, for the BoD elections, Thorsten operated the election software 
 under my supervision and with the MC observing (I actually asked multiple 
 members of the MC to validate the results).  I recommend that the BoD 
 continue this approach, with all Election actions conducted in sight of the 
 full BoD.

I agree: the BoD election should be supervised by the MC and
vice-versa. The 'Election Officer' is just the point man, the
'executive officer'. He can be any member designated by the body
having oversight of the election.

Norbert

PS: although I have no direct standing, +1 for Thorsten as Election
officer for this MC election.
PPS: To complement my previous message regarding a delay between MC
and BoD election:
Let's say the foundation is effective January 1st 2012. the new Bod
would be in place until January 1st 2013 right ?
We can designate the current MC as the 'initial MC' until June 1st,
and have the soon to be elected MC enter in function June 1st 2012 to
June 1st 2013

If the view is that the current BoD mandate expire End of October
2012, then the same reasoning apply except that the new MC become
'active' April 1st.

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Preparing elections for the membership committee

[Norbert Thiebaud]

2011/10/26 André Schnabel andre.schna...@gmx.net:

 We had some discussion, if we should freeze again the membership process.
 BoD should decide on that (I personally would not like to have again some
 weeks where we do not accept new members, at the other hand it might be easy
 to challenge the vote, if we don't freeze.)

'Freezing' the membership does not necessarily means stop processing
applications, but just that the list of eligible member for the
election is 'frozen' at that date.
The list of member can still grow, but people that get membershp after
the freeze date are not eligible to vote in that election.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 9:38 PM, David Nelson li...@traduction.biz wrote:
 Hi, :-)

 Minor addition after a few hours sleep and before starting work:

 This kind of design documentation is really essential for various reasons.

 What would happen if there was some kind of disaster and we were to
 lose the essential core of our lead devs for some horrible reason?

Seriously ? for a distributed open source software, _that_ is your
doomsday scenario ?
If that were to happen, it would probably means that your immediate
problem would be survival: finding food and shelter. Computer software
will be the least of our problem for few generations...


 We'd be scuppered. Among the other members of the LibreOffice project,
 is there anyone who knows how the thing works? Is there any record,
 useable by a non-geek

No amount of documentation will turn a 'non-geek' into a core dev.
Clean, well written code, with the least amount of 'trick' is the best
documentation: It is by definition accurate, complete and
authoritative. Quality that no Documentation ever equaled no matter
how much effort you put into it.

, of the state of evolution of the code base?

 We say that people are free to take the source and do what they want
 with it, but - at the moment - they'd have to reverse engineer the
 whole code base. How open is that?

Reading source code is not 'reverse engineering'... That is what any
software engineer do on a daily basis to maintain existing code.
It is 'open' because anyone have access to the source code and
therefore _can_ read it and figure out how it works (or doesn't).


 No, I apologise for insisting, and I realise that this initiative will
 take some initial footwork, and will require on-going maintenance, but
 it really should be considered to be essential work.

 But I firmly believe there will be a pay-off in quite a few ways.

 In any case, I'll be at the next couple of SC/BoD meetings to follow
 up and discuss the idea.

There is no need for that. You can find volunteers and start working
on that without the blessing of anyone. It _is_ free software, and
_this_ is a meritocracy.
If you _do_ something in that line -- the wiki is a perfect place for
you to make that work available and gather with like minded volunteers
-- no-one will get in the way.

What do you expect the BoD to do ? issue an Edict ? Give you a
size-able budget to hire technical writer ? If your proposal attract
people from the community (our even better attract new people to it)
then your proposal will become reality, regardless of the BoD opinion.
That is how it is supposed to work.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 4:22 AM, David Nelson li...@traduction.biz wrote:
 Hello Norbert,


 No amount of documentation will turn a 'non-geek' into a core dev.
 Clean, well written code, with the least amount of 'trick' is the best
 documentation: It is by definition accurate, complete and
 authoritative. Quality that no Documentation ever equaled no matter
 how much effort you put into it.

 No, the very best is clean, well-written code accompanied by
 good-quality documentation. Sorry, you will not convince me that
 design documentation is unnecessary.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm merely giving you my
opinion, grounded on having been in the trenches, designing software
and writing code for a living for the past for 20 years...
Anyway, I am apparently in good company: http://kerneltrap.org/node/5725

A spec is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big
enough to be useful _and_ accurate. Linus Torvalds

I'd also refer you to :
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm#ProjectSuccess

 [..] code base is *not* fully
 implementing the best principles of an Open Source project. Ask the
 FSF for an opinion about this.

I've been hacking gnu make recently... please do point me to such
documentation (no, not the _user_ documentation, the supposedly
indispensable 'design spec' )
so... I don't know about their opinion, but I do know about their practice...



 No, I am not going to s*d off and reverse engineer the code base
 myself. I am asking three of our leading devs whether they would be
 willing to collaborate with me on this perfectly-justifiable
 initiative.

We must have a different definition of 'collaboration' than me.
If you you are not going to s*d off (what-ever that means) and
reverse engineer the code base yourself, it sound that you conception
of collaboration is 'do as I said... I'm watching', or as we say in
french 'Armons-nous et partez


 What do you expect the BoD to do ? issue an Edict ? Give you a
 size-able budget to hire technical writer ? If your proposal attract
 people from the community (our even better attract new people to it)
 then your proposal will become reality, regardless of the BoD opinion.
 That is how it is supposed to work.

 I put my question to three of our leading devs, and I will wait for
 them to reply to the original posts.

Then this is the wrong list... if you want to ask devs, you should do
that on the dev mailing list.


 Sorry, Norbert, but your responses do not change my views in any way.

I have no such hope. I merely re-stated to you the reality of a
volunteer based effort. If you want something to happen, you need to
roll-up your sleeves and _make_ it happen.
Trying to extract election promises out of some people, on ground
completely unrelated to the office they seek, is not going to get you
there.


 Your arguments resound with the sideways logic and suave patter of a
 dishonest used car salesman combined with the moral values of a
 larcenous banker. :-D

 (Above to be read tongue in cheek with a smile.)

You can add all the smiles you want to an insult it is still one.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [tdf-announce] BoD Election Candidates

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 3:01 AM, John Rose
john.aaron.r...@googlemail.com wrote:
 I applied to be a candidate 5 days ago. Please advise me as to why I am not
 on the list below.

You did inded and Simon answered to you

John:  Are you a TDF Member as per the election rules[1] please? I can't find 
you on the list[2].

Cheers

Simon
--
Simon Phipps
Election Officer, TDF 2011 Elections


One pre-requisite to be a candidat for the BoD of the Foundation is to
be a Member of the said Foundation, as you can see in our ByLaws.
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/CommunityBylaws

Another, implicit this time, prerequisite to hold a position of Board
Member of the Foundation is to be familiar with its ByLaws, which one
would be tasked to enforced.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] [tdf-discuss] Seat at the BoD

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Jim Jagielski j...@apache.org wrote:
 If people feel that it would be helpful to TDF to have a board member
 who has a tight relationship with Apache, I would accept a
 nomination if it would be useful.

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/CommunityBylaws#Voting_to_Elect_Members_of_the_Board_of_Directors
Candidates must be either Members of any of the Foundation's Projects
or Contributors to the Foundation


Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Base - a new mailing list?

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 2:05 AM, David Nelson li...@traduction.biz wrote:
 Hi,

 On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:47 AM, Jonathan Aquilina
 eagles051...@gmail.com wrote:
 Why not find a way to integrate connectivity to all the major databases such
 as mysql and MsSQL servers?

 Yes, that would be great indeed.

 I can hear Michael Meeks thinking, Well start developing the code then.

 Anyway, I think it would be a great pity to give up on Base, because
 it has the potential to be an enormous power feature of the
 LibreOffice suite.

 As a general thing in the LibreOffice project, I think we need to
 think seriously about a determined recruitment drive, for Base and for
 various other areas of the project. Just waiting for people to
 volunteer does not seem to be enough to cater to our needs for
 contributors.

 Marketing guys, can you give this consideration?

yes but not _here_ 

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Base - a new mailing list?

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
 HI :)
 Base needs to have some documentation to help devs understand what it's 
 trying to do.

 With the other apps it's much easier to have an overview even without having 
 any documentation but Base is a lot more complex.  Also there needs to be 
 some discussion between devs and other people to decide what to use instead 
 of java, and the direction to take generally.  Apparently the default HqSql 
 back-end is fairly troublesome but there is a new project MariaDb that is a 
 drop-in replacement for MySql that might be much better as a back-end.  
 MariaDb is basically almost the entire community that worked on MySql 
 including some of the original people plus a load of new people that joined 
 since the project broke free from Sun/Oracle.

MariaDB is like MySql, so it is a nice and powerful database, but too
heavy weight(*) for a 'default' back-end. SQLite sound like a much
better match for the task.

(*) by too heavy weight, I'm referring to installation, configuration,
need for started-task/daemon, need for periodic maintenance etc...

 Anyway it needs a small team of people to try out different back-ends to see 
 which are viable as back-ends and which might be easiest to have as the 
 default one.  Perhaps bringing their recommendation back to steering-discuss 
 to make an informed vote.

That's not how it works... voting is not the answer... doing is. I'm
pretty sure that if somebody step up to make a viable support for a
self-contained back-end, it will fidn its way into the code by
consensus, without the need for a 'vote', or getting the steering
commity or future BoD involved in any ways.
BTW this is already listed as an 'Easy Hack' :
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks#default_to_SQLite_not_HSQLDB_in_Base
So clearly this is not a technical/political disagreement, but just a
matter of  someone stepping up to do the work...



 As i understand it the current infra-structure is leading to Base gently 
 crumbling away through neglect.

It is not an infrastructure problem. it is a lack of interest problem.

  Experienced devs steer well away from Base.  New ones need to learn more 
understanding about coding or about Base or about both.  Every time an 
individual joins and is keen to work on some aspect of Base they realise it's 
a completely tangled mess and they would be the only person working on it so 
they get discouraged and give-up.

That is true for every part of the product. the effort needed to find
your way in the code is high, and base is not special in that regard.
I seriously doubt that it is easier to find your way around writer
than it is to find your way around base.


 Yes it would be great to have input from the entire devs list but
 1.  They are not interested in Base
That is indeed a problem, but I fail to see how starting to section
the community vertically ( vs horizontally like the ml are now) will
help

 2.  The non-coders that want to do non-coding work on Base (eg Documentation, 
 perhaps marketing, perhaps design of aspects of the UI that only appear in 
 Base, the wizards and so on) would be unable to understand.

I don't understand what you mean with that paragraph...

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] SPI BoD meeting

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 4:30 PM, Sophie Gautier gautier.sop...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi all,

 The Board of Directors of Software in the Public Interest, Inc., will
 hold a public board of directors meeting on Wednesday, 14th September
 2011 at 20:30 UTC.

 The agenda for the meeting is open for additions and is available at
 http://www.spi-inc.org/meetings/agendas/2011/2011-09-14/
 I'll attend the meeting.

sophi. I've been to the 'donation' page...

http://www.spi-inc.org/donations/

and the credit-card based page linked from there

https://co.clickandpledge.com/advanced/default.aspx?wid=34115

does not allow for a donation earmarked to libreoffice.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] LinuxCon Europe

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 4:45 AM, Simon Phipps si...@webmink.com wrote:

 On 26 Aug 2011, at 10:32, Florian Effenberger wrote:

 Hi Italo,

 thanks for your engagement!

 Italo Vignoli wrote on 2011-08-26 11:04:
 Including food, I will spend a maximum of 300 Euro. I am asking the
 Steering Committee to approve this reimbursement.

 Given that we can pay this from SPI (paying from FrODeV is a bit problematic 
 when it comes to travel costs and foreign countries, due to tax regulations) 
 - +1 from my side.

 The only point we should talk about is food - as a general rule, normally 
 reimbursements should only contain hotel and transportation, but no food. 
 TDF has no rules yet on this, but maybe we should limit it to that?

 That's an odd rule. A reimbursement for a guest or for an emissary should 
 include Travel, Accommodation and Living. The only place in recent memory 
 that has told me it does not pay for Living is TDF.

Indeed, even the Tax-Man acknowledge that 'reasonable' meal
re-reimbursement - during a remote mission - are tax-deductible (i.e.
are not a 'compensation in kind').
Surely it is more a matter of 'reasonableness'  and 'frugality' rather
than a question of principle.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] decision on screenshots

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 6:34 AM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
 Hi :)
 +1

 Possibly omit the middle paragraph.

I agree with that. The second paragraph serve no practical purpose.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] decision on screenshots

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
 Hi :)
 I think that unnecessarily exposing TDF (or people doing work for it) to a 
 risk
 in a way that could NOT be fix easily  quickly would be really dumb.  It is 
 an
 easily avoidable risk.

I think it is unnecessary to worry about fabricated convoluted legal
scenario without precedent.



 The fact that one person is ignorant of the risk (or chooses to ignore it) 
 does
 not mean the rest of the Steering Committee are.

Did you pool the steering committee member individually ? what basis
do you have to claim that just _one person_ think that this legal
angle to force a POV is a strawman ?

  Indeed, there was a meeting
 that came up with the rough draft of the 2 paragraphs prepared by Florian.
 There is still no mention of where the responsibility would lay if the 
 perceived
 risk did happen but as the meeting wrote it, the potential threat should be
 avoided by using GnuLinux if easily possible.

using Linux and/or Gnu does not avoid the alleged risk. Neither own
the copyright on icons that would be displayed in a screen-shoot.



 With GnuLinux screen-shots there is NO risk.  It also means the Documentation
 Team can keep doing what they are already doing = aiming towards 
 professionally
 consistent documentation.
Yes the 'consistent' argument is indeed valid... but the so-called
legal risk is a straw man

  The licensing of GnuLinux tends to be copy-left
 allowing people to copy and adapt anything they like.  By contrast the Windows
 Eula is very restrictive

The Eula could demand that you give away your first born child, that
would still not make that the Law.
actually the French version of the EULA for Windows 7 Basic, Section
27, spell out clearly that Eula does not trump the Law of the Land.

 and people in the discussion even highlighted
 paragraphs that showed that any editing of screen-shots in a way that would 
 make
 them useful for documentation would be a violation.

 There was a suggestion earlier in the discussion that if TDF did get clobbered
 by MS for using screen-shots on their OSes then it could
 1.  Let MS target individuals that produced the screen-shots or
 2.  TDF could counter-sue the individuals themselves

Apparently we don't even need Microsoft to conduct FUD campaign, we do
just fine on our own :-(

 The post also suggested that TDF should reject any documentation that was
 produced using non-Windows screen-shots.



 In the MS vs TomTom case. TomTom were forced to pay substantial damages to MS
 for saving data.

What patent do screen-shoots infringe ?
And how did you get access to confidential settlement terms ?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10206988-56.html :
Specific financial terms were not disclosed. 

[snip irrelevant US-patent non-sens ]


 Yes, everyone is exposed to a large number of unknown risks of a variety of
 types but this is a known risk that is easy to avoid.  Why ask people to beat
 their head against a wall when they could just walk around the corner?

Or just easily not enocurage those that manufacture brick wall in their path.



Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] funding for system operations meeting

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 2:43 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi David,

 David Nelson wrote on 2011-07-28 15:09:

 *Some*  being the operative word... I never heard about this... Was it
 publicized at all on the website mailing list and I missed it?

 no, it was in first place a board decision of the German association, so it
 was published in their meeting minutes (in German). However, since it
 affects TDF, I wanted to raise the topic here.

Now you are getting me really confused.

Who decided what, and who is paying what ?

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] funding for system operations meeting

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,

 Norbert Thiebaud wrote on 2011-07-29 17:35:

 Now you are getting me really confused.

 Who decided what, and who is paying what ?

 the board of directors of the German association, which will stay an
 independent entity also after TDF has been funded, but in the meantime is
 the legal entity behind TDF, decided that in their board of director's
 meeting.

 So, a decision by the German association, *not* by the TDF SC.

 However, since more money then offered by the German association is needed,
 and the weekend was for the TDF admins, I'd like to ask if the SC is
 agreeing to spending some of the TDF money for it.

Ahh, so you're asking TDF to cover the 600 euro budget overrun. Now I get it :-)
Thanks for the clarification

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@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/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] wording on TDF website

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 3:50 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,

 David Nelson wrote on 2011-07-12 03.59:
 My suggestion would be to replace the words meritocratic Foundation,
 created by with meritocratic organization created by. Maybe that

 that would still create the impression that TDF is already an
 organization by itself, which it legally isn't.

it may not be a 'F'oundation (as in German Stiftung) yet but it
certainly _is_ an 'organization' by all reasonable definition of the
term.

That being said... it has been 'inaccurate' for 10 month... it can
certainly remain so for the few weeks left before it become finally
'accurate'.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Re: screen-shots Documentation Team

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 6:30 AM, Alexander Thurgood
alex.thurg...@gmail.com wrote:
 Le 09/07/11 23:26, Bernhard Dippold a écrit :

 Hi all,

 Someone suggested I sling in some caselaw or other references on whether
 copyright protection is available for UIs :

 US
 Just one caselaw review :
 http://www.legalserviceindia.com/articles/crind.htm

 Europe
 In European Union Court of Justice Case C-393/09 :
 http://kluwercopyrightblog.com/2011/03/24/protection-of-guis-graphical-user-interfaces-some-comments-about-the-ecj-%E2%80%98s-preliminary-ruling-in-bsa-v-ministervo-kultury/

 involving the BSA against the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic
 relating tp television broadcasting of user interface.

 What the latter ruling states is that copyright is not available under
 the Computer Program Copyright Directive 91/250/EEC, as that is intended
 to protect code per se. However, copyright is available for UIs under
 the more general Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC, providing that they
 meet the criteria for awarding copyright, i.e. originality, author's own
 work, etc.

What the ruling also say is:
In a second question, the ECJ was asked whether television
broadcasting of a GUI “constitutes communication to the public of a
work protected by copyright within the meaning of Article 3(1) of
Directive 2001/29”. The ECJ answers that if a GUI is displayed in the
context of television broadcasting of a programme, television viewers
receive a communication of that GUI in a passive manner, without
having the possibility to interact with the program. According to the
ECJ, as individuals do not have access to the essential element
characterising the interface, that is to say, interaction with the
user, “there is no communication to the public of the graphic user
interface within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29”.

That same rational apply to screen shoot in a documentation.
iow common sens still prevail despite BSA's effort.


 So to all those naysayers who think that no-one sues anyone else over UI
 elements - wake up, and take stock. Am I paranoid ? No, but people do
 get sued. Do I represent the BSA ? No, but I know peers that do, and
 believe me, love it or hate it, the BSA do sue people.

I'm sure that people sue, and some jurisdiction are indeed very prone
to frivolous law suit... but does that means that we have to abdicate
basic freedom and right ?

If you are that concerned about liabilities, make sure that TDF itself
does not author nor 'publish' any documentation... and have a
money-less French loi-1901 association to do the publishing... The
fact that TDF 'endorse' the content of a book does not make it liable
for real or imaginary infringements in that book.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Re: screen-shots Documentation Team

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:19 AM, Simon Phipps si...@webmink.com wrote:

 On 8 Jul 2011, at 13:09, Tom Davies wrote:

 Hi :)
 Except screen-shots in Windows can't have any useful arrows or circles to 
 point
 out the exact thing being talked about in the documentation.

 Only screenshots of /Microsoft/ products.


Isn't that exactly what 'Fair Use' is all about ?

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

[steering-discuss] Bootstrap BoD campaign (was: Joining the OASIS Consortium)

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 1:58 AM, Florian Effenberger
flo...@documentfoundation.org wrote:
 Hi,

 this is indeed a good point... what do the others think? We can give our +1
 as recommendation to the new BoD, but I guess it will indeed be hard to bind
 them on decisions they have not taken.

Talking about BoD,

Maybe the SC could bootstrap the BoD campaign, by calling for
candidate, so that the day the Foundation papers are finally
completed, we could have an election and be fully operational ?
I means, it is expected that potential candidates be given enough time
to trow their hat in, and some time to communicate to the membership
what they stand for and what they aim to achieve, iow
'campaigning' there is no reason not to start that in advance of
the actual filing of the paperwork of the foundation.

Maybe wait for the next MC meeting and freeze the eligible membership
pool at that point(1). (the bylaws call for a 45 days notice minimum,
and we must have the election done before Sep 28th (the one year
anniversary of the 'public' launch)).

Norbert

(1) The freeze is not explicitly stated for general elections in the
bylaws, but the rationale for that freeze is latent in the Impeachment
section. This is needed, I think, to avoid even the appearance of
conflict of interest between a role in the MC and being a candidate
for a BoD position. Note the freeze is with regard to the member
eligible to vote, but does not need to apply to eligibility to be a
candidate (iow a member should be able to be candidate even if is not
eligible to vote as long as he is a member by the time he propose his
candidacy and that that candidacy is proposed in a timely manner.
Deadline are not specified in the bylaws (which is fine bylaws don't
have to be that detailed). I would suggest a 2 weeks period for people
to declare themselves candidate, followed by a 3 weeks period of
'campaigning' and a 2 weeks period of 'voting' (that is 49 days,
consistent with the mandated 45 days notice). I would also suggest
that deadline be based on Wednesday 00:00 UTC
And while I am on a roll, may I suggest that a election@ ML be setup
so that the campaign related stuff be accessible easily and only if
one is interested.

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] MC-meeting minutes 2011-06-16

[Norbert Thiebaud]

2011/6/16 André Schnabel andre.schna...@gmx.net:
 Hi,

 meeting minutes are at the wiki:
  http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Committee_Meetings#Minutes_2011-06-16

 (Cor, Fridrich - please edit the wiki, if I forgot something important.)

 I'll inform the approved members (and rejected applicants) within the next
 few hours and update the website after that.
is there a reason not to announce new member on a mailing list ?
(It is not that easy to scrub the web-site page to see what has changed...)

and preferably with some indication on what these new fellow members work on ?

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] About elections

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote:
 Hi,

Thanks for the explanations...
[...]
 Then we communicate the anonymous token to the voter, and tell him to
 write it down somewhere so that he can check his vote later.

how does one figure out what information is in the token ?
iow. given my token, or any token for that matter can I independently
verify what voe is encoded in it ?

[snip]

 Funny - I *just* realised that you meant tamper - I honestly thoughht
 you wanted to temper (ie harden) the process. Sorry - that just amused
 me - not picking on your grammar or anything.

:-D

I'm painfully aware of my weak spelling/grammar, even in my native
language I do a lot of these :-)
It is not helped by my fingers inability to keep up with my
thoughts... and my notorious laziness in proof-reading :)

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] FYI: Apache Incubator is now voting

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 3:09 PM, Greg Stein gst...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi all,

 I just wanted to bring an FYI that the Apache Incubator has begun
 its voting process on accepting the OO.o proposal to become a
 podling within the Incubator.

Thanks for the update
[...]
 If you wish to make your voice heard, then I would encourage you to
 respond to the [VOTE] thread on gene...@incubator.apache.org (I would
 think gmane[2] is your best way to respond to the thread without
 having to actually subscribe).

I think I had the opportunities, as a guest fof he incubator mailing
list to expression my opinions and sometimes more ;-)
At this point, I feel it would be over-staying my welcome to interject
myself in an Apache procedural vote.

Have fun and Good luck with your brand new 'massive' baby :-)

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] About elections

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 7:25 AM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:




 - Original Message 
 From: sophie gautier.sop...@gmail.com
 To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org
 Sent: Mon, 6 June, 2011 12:35:04
 Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] About elections

 Hi Tom,
 On 06/06/2011 14:20, Tom Davies wrote:
 [...]
 
  Hi  :)
  Agreed.  But the founders have shown good strategic planning and  good
planning
  for the future as shown by the way things have played out  in the last few
  weeks.  I think it would take time for newly  elected people to have such
  commitment to the long-term  vision.
 Thanks for the flowers as we also say in French :)
 
  I  have to point out that i am not a founder and not even a regular member.
I've
  had disagreements and arguments with founders but  have always  had good
reason
  to respect even the ones i disagree with.
 Even if no  more a member of the SC, I will still consider me as a founder. 
 But
it's not  what is important to my eyes. The importance for me reside in the 
fact
that even  if I'm not a SC member, I'll still have a say because I'm a member 
of
the  Foundation, and though can express my feeling and my wills for the 
present
or  the future of the foundation and it's community.
 And I'm sure that the new  formed SC will take them into account, we're not 
 new
and have always shared our  knowledge and experience.

 Kind regards
 Sophie


 Hi :)
 True.  Weirdly i hadn't thought of that point lol :)

 I think the important issue to vote on is the Apache issue.

Vote on what exactly ?

  I was wondering if
 it might be possible to collaborate with them to put a wiki-page together on 
 the
 TDF wiki so that the different lists can vote

I don't think we have a say and even less a vote on what Apache
Foundation is going to do.

First we have to see what they decide and if they are indeed going
forward with their plan to fork, (granted there is not much suspense
there)
Then we have to see _how_ they're going to do it
Then we have to see _when_/_if_ the poddle graduate
Then we have to see _what_ they end-up doing.
Until then it is pretty much vaporware and there is not much to do,
even less to vote about.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice] Hello! ... and lurking :-)

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 6:01 AM, Sam Ruby ru...@intertwingly.net wrote:

 Let me start with a request.  If we are going to have a productive
 discussion, it would be best if it were done using respectful terms. If,
 however, as described below it is the intent of TDF [...]

we can start by working under the predicat that, unless specified otherwise,
any comments are the author's own and not representing anybody else?


 OpenOffice.org is not uniformly licensed. [..]

 If is licensed to many under one license, and LibreOffice has continued with
 that license.  It is licensed to others under a different license.

I thought we were talking about FLOSS here... not about what
proprietary forks may or may not have done.

 I believe that the key phrase in that comment is objections to contributing
 code to be used in proprietary apps.  A fundamental goal of the Apache
 license is to satisfy the needs of those that wish to include the code in
 Free and proprietary software alike.

Yes, I am aware of that 'feature'. I just happen to consider it a bug.

 I believe that if we want to attract everyone alike to contributing to a
 common code base -- wherever it resides -- then we need to establish this as
 a common goal.

How exactly encouraging proprietary fork will attract contribution ?
you are relying on the ethic and moral sens of corporation ?
If only we had real life examples to give us clues on how realistic
that is... humm...


 If we do this, clearly there is much work that would need to be done. It
 will involve getting the consent of those that participate in this
 foundation and LibreOffice to relicense their work.  It won't be easy, but I
 will be a part of making it happen.

The very reason I decided to show-up was because 1/ the license was
copy-left and 2/ TDF dropped the copyright assignment.
(of course I found many other reasons to stay... but that's another topic :-) )
So I'd say... yes it won't be easy indeed, but I guess it won't be
harder than to convince AF not to cater to proprietary sink-hole...

But there is another solution, one that has happened in the past:
convince the company with a proprietary fork that if they are truly
interested in community
support and contributions, they should join that community under terms
that protect both our interest, not just its interests.

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

[steering-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice] Hello! ... and lurking :-)

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Greg Stein gst...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi all,


 If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, then please feel
 free to direct them my way (on whatever list). I'm here to listen and
 understand, and to offer up answers where I can.

I have a question:
Why would Apache contemplate helping IBM pull a Jenkins/Hudson on us,
fragmenting the license of a project that has been with a uniform
licensing so far ?
(Oracle could merge our changes... they elected _not_ to do so because they
wanted a Copyright assignment on top of the code, but that was not
a licensing incompatibility)

You (Apache) are lending your good name to a nasty endeavor, for the
benefit of a company
that has an history of screwing you over (Harmony ?)

Ironically what seems to be happening at Apache is very reminiscent to
me to the ISO/MSXML debacle...
Some corporation exploiting the letter of your governance to better
abuse the spirit of it.
(that is _if_ I understand what Apache stand for... but maybe I'm misguided)

Norbert

PS: I strongly encourage you to read:
http://www.itworld.com/software/170521/big-winner-apache-openofficeorg#comment-9942111
That shed a very illuminating light on IBM's involvement in OOo, and
why it is hard to take seriously their grandiose promises... that
would by far not been the first time, and there is no reason to
believe that the outcome will be any different this time around...
except that both the OpenOffice brand and the Apache reputation will
be tarnished in the process...

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Recent incomplete or non-existent records of SC meetings

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:00 PM, David Nelson comme...@traduction.biz wrote:
 Hi, :-)

 In addition to the recording of the SC meeting of 2011-05-12 [1] being
 incomplete (which is a pity since it contained some *interesting*
 discussion about the Brazilian community and about the MC), the same
 also applies to:

 * 2011-05-06 [2]
 * 2011-04-30 [3]
 * 2011-04-21 [4]
 * 2011-04-06 [5]
 * 2011-03-26 (no recording at all)
 * 2011-03-16 [6]

That must have been a recent glitch, because I do recall having listen
to these recording in their entirety a the time...
actually I think that is a problem on your side. I just re-listen to
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/1/16/Talkyoo-537138-2011-04-30-1473097.mp3
and it is fine and complete

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Re: [steering-discuss] Recent incomplete or non-existent records of SC meetings

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:19 PM, David Nelson comme...@traduction.biz wrote:
 Hi Norbert, :-)

 On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 23:12, Norbert Thiebaud nthieb...@gmail.com wrote:
 That must have been a recent glitch, because I do recall having listen
 to these recording in their entirety a the time...
 actually I think that is a problem on your side. I just re-listen to
 http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/1/16/Talkyoo-537138-2011-04-30-1473097.mp3
 and it is fine and complete

 I have an excellent Internet connection, and looking at some of the
 file sizes tells me that they really are incomplete...

And I just actually _listen_ to one of the one you said was
incomplete... and the last seconds of the record is 'ok then..this is
all.. goodbye... goodbye... goodbye... click' (i'm paraphrasing)
so it sounded to me that it was the complete call., furthermore I
_did_ listen to every-one of these recording available on the wiki,
and, at the time at least, none of them felt like they were truncated
in anyway.
So... I'm not disputing that your experience may have varied, but I
provided a data point that tend to suggest that any problem would be
on your side of the connection (and bandwidth is not the only thing
involved, the OS, the browser, the plug-ins and any number of factor
may be involved)

But, even
 putting that aside, the lack of notes at some meetings and the falling
 attendance are both indisputable...

_I_ have not commented on that at all, hence I have not disputed your
position on that either...

but since you mentioned it. I would note that the lack of attendance
seems to be correlated with whether the meeting was held on a week-end
or on week-day.
iow the usual conflict between volunteers schedules and full-staff schedule :-)

Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

[steering-discuss] Announcing the ESC?

[Norbert Thiebaud]

not to nit-pick, but I've just re-read the ByLaws, and nothing in
there require member of the ESC to be Member of the Foundation.


The Engineering Steering Committee [ESC] is composed of developers
who are appointed: they are not required to be elected, and the ESC
can be staffed by as many members as necessary. 

here is is 'members' as in member of the ESC, not Member as in Member of TDF.


The ESC is neither an elective body nor an elected committee: it
provides technical guidance. It can be placed under administration by
the BoD; in this case, the BoD will have the power to appoint a new
ESC, in whatever manner it deems appropriate.

e.g. the BoD could appoint Linus Thorvald if it wants, regardless of
whether or not Linus filled a TDF membership request... or even is
eligible.

Granted that, since The Engineering Steering Committee provides
technological guidance on strategic matters and, hypothetically, will
be composed of the Community's best engineers., one could argue that
ESC member are expected to be eligible (modulo the 3 month waiting
period, and the 6 month 'moral' commitment :-) ) to TDF membership,
but they don't have to be effectively Member in good standing.

iow: the ESC composition could be announced independently of the
advancement of the work of the Membership Comity.


Norbert

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted