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The Document Foundation (TDF) is the nonprofit entity behind the LibreOffice productivity suite. Most of the time, the software takes the spotlight, but that has changed in the past few weeks, and not for pleasant reasons. TDF has revoked foundation membership status from about 30 people who work for or have contracting status with Collabora. In response, Collabora has announced plans to focus on a " entirely new, cut-down, differentiated Collabora Office " project and reduce its involvement with LibreOffice. TDF's representatives claim that its actions were necessary to maintain the foundation's nonprofit status, while other community members assert that this is part of a power grab. The facts seem to indicate that there are legitimate issues to be addressed, but it is unclear that TDF needed to go so far as to disenfranchise all Collabora-affiliated contributors.
Membership and contribution
Understanding the current dispute requires going into the weeds of the foundation's governance, and its relationship with Collabora. TDF is a Stiftung, a type of nonprofit foundation, that was incorporated in Berlin in 2012. The foundation's objective is to support the development of open-source office software and to promote its use. To facilitate that, TDF holds LibreOffice assets such as its trademarks, as well as funds to support development, put on community events, and so forth.
Its statutes outline three bodies; the board of trustees (TDF's members), the membership committee, and the board of directors. The trustees elect the membership committee and board of directors; the membership committee oversees membership applications and renewals, as well as the board of directors elections. Note that this article quotes from the English version of the statutes provided for convenience; the German text is the legally binding version, and it is possible there are subtle differences.
To become a member, a contributor has to submit an application to the membership committee. For the application to be approved, the committee must be able to verify that a person has dedicated " more than three months of verifiable time and intellectual work " toward the foundation's goals; this can be any non-trivial programming, translation, documentation, creating marketing material, or other tasks. In addition, the applicant has to indicate that they plan to continue contributing for at least six months. If approved, the membership term lasts one year, and renewal is not automatic; those who wish to continue their membership have to apply to renew each year, and the committee can simply let a person's membership lapse.
A person does not have to be a member of the foundation to contribute to LibreOffice; but being a member is necessary to have a say in TDF governance by standing for the board, membership committee, or voting for the same. The board is responsible for deciding how the foundation's assets are used and how money is spent, which in turn influences the direction of LibreOffice overall.
Collabora's Productivity division was formed in 2013 when the company took over SUSE's LibreOffice business and the team that had worked on LibreOffice for SUSE joined the company. It committed to contribute 100% of its improvements to LibreOffice back upstream to TDF. To date, it has been the largest corporate contributor to the project. It currently offers products and services based on LibreOffice, including Collabora Online, which is a web-based office suite, a mobile version for Android or iOS, and a desktop version. The Online product has been at the center of controversy in the past and is again; LWN covered Collabora moving its development efforts away from LibreOffice Online to Collabora Online in 2020. TDF froze work on LibreOffice Online in 2022, and recently brought it out of retirement.
Public discussion
A blog post by Italo Vignoli, in response to Collabora's announcement, acknowledged that TDF had revoked membership from those affiliated with Collabora. It was fairly light on details, but said that TDF's community bylaws " require that employees of companies involved in legal disputes " with the foundation be removed from TDF's membership " because, in the past, people made decisions in the interest of their employers rather than in the interest of The Document Foundation ". It did not, however, provide any detail about the nature of any legal disputes with Collabora. The hint that there might be an ongoing lawsuit between TDF and Collabora caused a great deal of speculation about what might be going on.
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