GoKawiilOlder items: 2023: ( J F M A M J ), 2022: ( J F M A M J J A S O N D ), 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, legacy html
For a rather more polished write-up, complete with pretty pictures please see TDF ejects its core developers. Here is a more personal take. My feeling is that this action has been planned by the TDF rump board's majority for many months, if not for some years. While we have tried to avoid this outcome, it has been eventually forced on us.
Trends in TDF board membership
There are many great ways to contribute to FLOSS projects and coding is only one of them - let me underline that. However - coding is the primary production that drives many of the other valuable contributions: translation, marketing, etc. We have been blessed to have many excellent developers around LibreOffice but coder's board representation has been declining. This means losing a valuable part of the board's perspective on the complexity of the problem. The elected board is (typically) ten people - seven full board members, and three deputies as spares if needed, here is how that looks:
Another way of looking at board composition is to look at board members' affiliations over time. Of course affiliations change - sometimes during a board term, but this is the same graph broken down by (rough) affiliation:
What is easy to see is the huge drop in corporate affiliation - along with all the business experience that brings. The added '2026' is for the current 'rump' board which continues to over-stay its term and has also lost several of its most popular developer members - including Eike - recently of RedHat (because of a person tragedy) and Bjoern. In 'Interested' I include those with a business interest in LibreOffice who are not part of a larger corporate, one: Laszlo is the last coder on the board.
One of the major surprises of the 2024 election is the 'TDF' chunk in which I bucket paid TDF staff, and those closely related to them. The current chair of the TDF board (Eliane) who manages the Executive Director (ED) is curiously related to a staff member who is managed by the (ED) - arguably an extremely poor governance practice. Having three TDF affiliated directors is also in contradiction of the statutes.
It is also worth noting that for over two years, no Collaboran or any of our partners have been on the TDF board. It was hoped that this would give ample time and space to address any of the issues left from previous boards.
Meritocracy - do-ers decide
TDF is defined as a meritocracy in its statutes. Why is that ? the experience we had from the OpenOffice project was that often those who were doing the work were excluded from decision making. That made it hard to get teams to scale, and to make quick decisions, let leaders grow in areas, and also gives an incentive to contribute more among many other reasons.
... continue reading