Hi Cor, On 07/01/2022 20:39, Cor Nouws wrote:
while the comment doesn't add much to the debate of the "attic" proposal and seems to completely ignore the actual actions I and others have taken, not just proposed, it is an opportunity to provide my point of view on selected words from the Preamble of our Statutes that, IMHO, have been a bit abused and that has been bothering me for a while.It's easy to spend a lot of words that do not give a single insight on the question if your proposed changes are respecting the boards duty to foster a sustainable meritocratic community.
Too many times I've seen these 3 words "sustainable meritocratic community" being extrapolated from its context and mostly implying to mean "the economical sustainability of major code contributors".
It is obvious to all that developers are essential for the project as are all the great people that dedicate their time to translate, document, promote LibreOffice and also those that just use it for free without contributing back much as it shows we do something useful for millions of people.
The vast majority of people invest their spare time to make LibreOffice great for all but then there are also tasks that could be too complex for individuals or small group of volunteers to take on and that's why we have to tender out some of those tasks while, hopefully, in a near future we will have some of those tasks taken care of by internal developers funded by our supporter's donations.
As clearly expressed in the closing remarks of my previous email(1) TDF has objectives:
"The objective of the foundation is the promotion and development of office software available for use by anyone free of charge."
and (to mention it in full)"The foundation promotes a sustainable, independent and meritocratic community for the international development of free and open source software based on open standards."
Those objectives should be pursued independently of the preferences of the members of the commercial ecosystem, which as independent entities are free to choose their business model and to contribute the way they can, while supporting the visibility (MarCom is a good example) of those contributors bringing value to the community (not only in terms of code) to allow them to prosper and contribute back to the project.
There are many individuals and organisations which independently created their own business models to help with development of LibreOffice, support deployments, train users and publish books. Some of them are listed on our "professional support" page, many could be totally unknown to us, and that's another area where we should further extend our MarCom plans.
AFAIK organisations delivering LibreOffice training haven't complained that we are making things too easy for users thus reducing their business opportunities as none of the publishers of books/manuals of LibreOffice complained that our documentation is so good that we make it difficult for them to find buyers for their books.
So I guess TDF is already fostering a "sustainable, independent and meritocratic community" but it's also at the beginning of a journey that, through actions like the MarCom plan and other initiatives that have been proposed, is extending the reach and support to our global community in all areas where our help is seen as necessary and useful to achieve our common objectives.
Having clarified my point of view with the above I hope we can now get back to evaluating if a way forward for LOOL can be found.
Ciao Paolo(1) https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/2022/msg00029.html
-- Paolo Vecchi - Deputy Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
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