Digging into Drama at the Document Foundation(lwn.net)
lwn.net
Digging into Drama at the Document Foundation
https://lwn.net/Articles/1066418/
11 comments
Having been on a board of a European non-profit(Scandinavia) in a "tricky" situation, I can kind of sense the issues between the lines, the letters of law commonly around non-profits and following strict interpretations of them _did_ make me raise an eyebrow at Collabora people being on a board awarding contracts.
At the same time, laws sometimes leaves wiggle-room to not totally shut down every interesting non-profit.
So already there we have a bit of friction, now add the friction of startup/company type people vs "nonprofit believers", both tugging at the interpretations (plus whatever mentioned issues that has been carried over from early days of SO/OOo)
In truth, startup/company type people too often see wiggle-room as carte-blance for doing things that can be illegal or deterimental for a nonprofit without an extremely loose interpretation of the laws. At the same time non-profit believers can be a bit of a pain to deal with on a personality side.
Without too much context, I joined the board of the nonprofit since I had been part of an outreach arm and thought that there needed to be some perspective from that side on the board whilst others on the board came from other parts or had no previous affiliation.
So my experience was being caught in the middle, trying to sort out issues with useful people in the outreach arm (creating needed momentum for the organisation) using the wiggle-room in questionable ways, yet managing panicking non-profit believers that couldn't see the conflict they were creating by going overboard would be very deterimental in the long run (people doing "boring tasks" but also not good at creating momentum).
Something like the LibreOffice foundation also needs to exist in "both worlds", and from my perspective both sides are probably at fault here, but in the end they need to spend more time understanding the problems seen from "the others" perspective and realize that the drama they are creating will benefit everyone but them if cannot they find "smooth" ways to resolve things.
At the same time, laws sometimes leaves wiggle-room to not totally shut down every interesting non-profit.
So already there we have a bit of friction, now add the friction of startup/company type people vs "nonprofit believers", both tugging at the interpretations (plus whatever mentioned issues that has been carried over from early days of SO/OOo)
In truth, startup/company type people too often see wiggle-room as carte-blance for doing things that can be illegal or deterimental for a nonprofit without an extremely loose interpretation of the laws. At the same time non-profit believers can be a bit of a pain to deal with on a personality side.
Without too much context, I joined the board of the nonprofit since I had been part of an outreach arm and thought that there needed to be some perspective from that side on the board whilst others on the board came from other parts or had no previous affiliation.
So my experience was being caught in the middle, trying to sort out issues with useful people in the outreach arm (creating needed momentum for the organisation) using the wiggle-room in questionable ways, yet managing panicking non-profit believers that couldn't see the conflict they were creating by going overboard would be very deterimental in the long run (people doing "boring tasks" but also not good at creating momentum).
Something like the LibreOffice foundation also needs to exist in "both worlds", and from my perspective both sides are probably at fault here, but in the end they need to spend more time understanding the problems seen from "the others" perspective and realize that the drama they are creating will benefit everyone but them if cannot they find "smooth" ways to resolve things.
> Collabora people being on a board awarding contracts.
That is indeed problematic. I think it was particularly problematic that we had a chairperson of the board who was also the CEO and (part?) owner of a company, Allotropia, that would participate in tenders (it was bought by Collabora a couple of years back).
But - that situation is resolvable, and was resolved, by him no longer being on the Board of Directors; and beyond that - is resolvable by a strong separation of the body managing tenders from the BoD, so that employees and stockholders from Collabora can't participate in the process. What happened instead is that tenders ended altogether.
> now add the friction of startup/company type people vs "nonprofit believers",
There is a third group, which is foundation employees and contractors. Our last Board of Directors contained 2 foundation employees, one person who is a regular contractor or freelance service service provider to the foundation. He has since resigned, although so have two non-employee directors (with two of the three resignations being for mysterious reasons not disclosed to the trustees).
Add to this the fact that the Directors aren't physically at the offices, and that the foundation is managed mostly by the Executive Director, who also prepares the budget, handles official correspondence (hidden from the trustees of course) etc - and you get a very interest group.
> but in the end they need to spend more time understanding the problems seen from "the others" perspective
The thing is, that it isn't two sides, one against the other. It is one powerful clique which, so as to solidify its power, expels a large group which it perceives as difficult to control. And the majority of the LibreOffice contributors are passive here. Now even more passive with the expulsions and the abrogation of the electoral process.
That is indeed problematic. I think it was particularly problematic that we had a chairperson of the board who was also the CEO and (part?) owner of a company, Allotropia, that would participate in tenders (it was bought by Collabora a couple of years back).
But - that situation is resolvable, and was resolved, by him no longer being on the Board of Directors; and beyond that - is resolvable by a strong separation of the body managing tenders from the BoD, so that employees and stockholders from Collabora can't participate in the process. What happened instead is that tenders ended altogether.
> now add the friction of startup/company type people vs "nonprofit believers",
There is a third group, which is foundation employees and contractors. Our last Board of Directors contained 2 foundation employees, one person who is a regular contractor or freelance service service provider to the foundation. He has since resigned, although so have two non-employee directors (with two of the three resignations being for mysterious reasons not disclosed to the trustees).
Add to this the fact that the Directors aren't physically at the offices, and that the foundation is managed mostly by the Executive Director, who also prepares the budget, handles official correspondence (hidden from the trustees of course) etc - and you get a very interest group.
> but in the end they need to spend more time understanding the problems seen from "the others" perspective
The thing is, that it isn't two sides, one against the other. It is one powerful clique which, so as to solidify its power, expels a large group which it perceives as difficult to control. And the majority of the LibreOffice contributors are passive here. Now even more passive with the expulsions and the abrogation of the electoral process.
Same sort of eventual political meltdown seems to occur with any organization after it reaches some critical mass.
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_...
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_...
The main discussions here from a month ago:
The Document Foundation ejects its core developers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47599305
LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652324
The Document Foundation ejects its core developers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47599305
LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652324
[deleted]
Starting to understand why Star/Open/LibreOffice has failed to catch up to Word 6 for 30 years now.
Clicked the link, "oooh, semantic document structure for scripts? Layout templates for libretti? Spellcheck rules for handling character names?" Oh well.
There's a clear intent for EU entities to switch to "sovereign" tech. That means that there's a lot of money on the table. Hence the "EuroOffice" rebadge, and this unpleasantness.
I am a TDF trustee, and that claim is a complete and total lie.
Unfortunately, the TDF's structure centralizes power so much, that such steps are not difficult to take. TDF's board of directors has also declared/decided that critical speech will now also serve as an excuse for explusion. Oh, I'm sorry, "membership non-renewal".
> Italo Vignli... said... that said that TDF's community bylaws [require the removal] "because, in the past, people made decisions in the interest of their employers rather than in the interest of The Document Foundation"".
They do not. The board of directors declared new "community bylaws" right before the explusion. But - our statutes require that community bylaws be approved by the board of trustees [1], which they have not. So, we have our board acting on the basis of fake community bylaws they didn't have approved.
These expulsions follow previous explusions of several individuals through the trick of membership non-renewal - with no procedure to establish justification for such extreme action; as well as the tampering with the elections to our "membership committee", which is also supposed to serve as an oversight body for the foundation, and is absolutely not doing that.
[1] See §10.3 in https://www.documentfoundation.org/statutes/