 some information before starting on Monday we sent out the tokens for the election so please check check your spam folder or in any other folder you are filling the messages and if you can't find the email with the tokens and the instructions please reach out to us apart from from these this is the last session of this experiment we are trying to make so I hope you enjoyed the previous and we have published the recording of the second session unfortunately we had an issue with the with the audio of the first session and that one is not really usable so I will I will send out in any case a note also for the community members that are not TDF members so in onboard discuss explaining that that recording is is not available and apart from these as usual welcome and thanks a lot to all the candidates for finding the time for yet another session and of course also to the team that is helping with the technical part of these sessions and of course thanks to the community members that are joining asking questions and making the sessions interactive so I think it's now a kind of tradition to start with a round of introduction I know that can sound a bit weird for the candidates that were here already the previous two sessions but we have new people around and so I think it's good so as usual five minutes where the candidates will introduce themselves and will tell why they want to run for the board and which are the they are let's say plans for the for this term so starting in order I'm just following the the list I can see here and Jitsi the the first one is Kaur the stage is yours sorry yeah I'm always muted at home why is that um I'm I'm Korn Ous the Netherlands I'm involved in in open source office software since 2004 when I started a small company in the Netherlands and that was with openoffice.org I had some experience with Microsoft Office and Loads Notes IBM but somehow I felt not comfortable with with big company's policies and open source fit as well because well it cares more for the for the people who use the software so I got involved in in a small business and in openoffice.org and and naturally I joined the community because it's fun to talk and to meet with people and we had meetings and we did QA and localization stuff etc and so gradually well all all evolved and I had a lot of vacations on the Libra office conferences sorry the open office conferences I I had most apart from 2005 I didn't show Kopa Kopa um I was I was at a meeting in in in in Budapest where we decided to start the document foundation and so back in 2010 we started and of course I continued with being active with QA testing etc and I got involved in the document foundation in the membership committee I think I was there four or five six years and the last four years as a member of the board and I'm always pleased by to see the document foundation especially when I compare it with the old days from openoffice.org of course there were a lot of lovely and great people at that time but uh well the trouble of course was the government governance the in the end it was only one company soon later her uh oracle that that that set the directions well we all know the history so when we found the TDF we had the idea it must be possible to to have a broad community and so we did and and I think that that's quite unique how there's a stage for all kind of interests of of just uh just software and to just users with all kind of things but also for companies smaller larger companies that uh both love open source software and need to make money to pay their bills and and and I think it's quite funny that I know all the sides I've myself small company in the Netherlands and gradually over the past years got more and more involved in uh and collaborative productivity where I do most of the marketing anyway I'm heavily involved in doing marketing there now and that that's my biggest customer uh so so I know all sides and I think that's uh interesting to uh to be uh to bring that experience and various for you in in the board and that's why I love to be on the board I love to be here as a candidate again yeah that's it I think maybe there are questions Gustavo if you want you can directly translate not just in the chat I think it's uh it's faster instead of typing I mean as you prefer but typing is better for me because I will uh heard the information and write in the chat it's okay okay questions for corp for the moment so the next is Emiliano so uh hi all I am Emiliano Vavasoli I'm from Italy uh I work as a network administrator system administrator help desk support uh my involvement with the project it's quite new to be honest in comparison with uh with one with corp but I was doing advocacy for the free and open source software since 2001 so again I think I have some some understanding of how the the communities and and projects inside the free and open source software is going on I'm actually a director of you know of the document foundation but I would like to re-candidate as I think there are some opportunities that as a foundation we can tap and use to allow the community to shine and to provide a better experience for the users that's it I think that's mostly make it if there are questions Emiliano nowadays what are your involvement in the Italian project so as you as most of you might know we have a branch of well we have another association which is Libre Italia which is the local community around the Libre office and all the the software in free open source software to be honest and I thank you very much for the question because we just we will have our annual conference in today's on saturday it will be a an hybrid conference so there will be a person in in presence in Venice and we are going to stream that conference online so you can attend directly from the website I will leave the the URL in the chat so everyone can can read it and you you might try to follow Italian I think that probably Spanish Spanish people might understand some some of the of the talks but anyways we have some some fellow community members Florian that is invited so it would be also a good experience for anyone else everyone here is invited for that thank you very much again for the question anyways so next is Paolo Paolo Vecchi I'm well I'm not the Italian I think we are just all over the places but I've been moving around as well I live 15 about 15 years in England and now I'm living in Luxembourg just by by chance I just was just working on an open source project for the European Commission that's been for some odd reason migrated from England well from the UK to to Luxembourg and that's how I discovered this place which is actually quite quite nice it allows me actually to be in contact with many European institution so I can promote open source and work with them actually to implement open source I think probably also influence some of the policies that they have at the moment and we will influence them even more because at the moment that they are looking at laws that are related to the the digital market so at least from the European side here I'm trying to do my best to help the open source community in finally getting more space in in the market I've been working with open source for the past at least 20 years and 35 years in IT probably even more now and practically I evolved from using the usual vendors into open source when I was already in England went back to Italy and I think I opened the first distributor specialized on open source software so created the network of partners in Italy then moved back to England did the same and and now I kind of changed direction seeing that you know there is probably no need anymore for distributors in that the market now is kind of ready for open source software and now instead I am promoting a cloud platform while private and hybrid cloud platform all based on open source just to demonstrate that we don't need to be a slave of you know the usual Amazon or or Microsoft but actually we can take control of the data take control of the the technologies and naturally LibreOffice is one of these technologies that allow us to actually get towards sovereign well digital sovereignty so meaning that you know correlating all this pattern together all the open source solution together we can have actually the alternative you know for home users business users European and global institutions so we can we can do it all from that point of view naturally part of my my personal effort which naturally benefits us so TDF has been during this term while I've been deputy director my job is actually has been to actually prepare the European institutions to actually work more on on open source and I've been promoting for a long time also ODF which is the file format that at least will remove some of the objections in terms of interoperability because other people naturally say yeah but we got to be able to open the uh Microsoft document and things that yes LibreOffice the you know and the developers of LibreOffice did an excellent job in in trying to be compatible with Microsoft but it's true that every so often something something happens something doesn't work quite quite right because you know even their format in a way evolves so being able to actually promote ODF like I did by the way in England I've been one of the guys that convinced the UK government in adopting ODF as a standard file format if you can do it also in Europe then that will help maybe even Latin America and and and other regions to take that as an example and and and hopefully we will help actually the transition to ODF for everybody so we get rid of one of the the the the objection in relation to the to the file format then on top of it during this term I also worked in legal compliance legal documents revisions of also let's say various legal issue that at the end turned out that will allow TDF to do much more than what has been done up to now so we have a huge number of new opportunities where we can expand extend and involve you more the the community to do actually more and one of the the the thing that we like to do is actually to start employing so in general developers to to to move faster because we we actually need to be so you know seeing that we are promoting digital sovereignty and technological sovereignty in TDF should lead by example so have a list of core number of developers that can help us in in creating our own technologies um let's let's say I mean there's plenty more I could go on for an hour if you want to questions don't be shy okay so next one the question was will you learn portuguese one day well probably yes the answer you can do paolo what i do for spanish and portuguese and french i do a mix of the three and i speak spanish you know yeah well i was reading actually uh what gustavo was writing and actually i i can understand why are you writing that's not bad at all but not speaking portuguese not yet it's all true okay okay so no questions let's move on with the with the rounder so next in the list uh it's yeah okay yeah i presume you can hear me yep loudly excellent yeah so um i'm kalamik mera i work for red hat um i work in red hats desktop team and i have been involved in labor office from start and i was also involved in predecessors of open office at arc and i did a steam tweet uh star office with some micro systems just being joining them just about a few months before where they was initially released as open office at arc so i'm familiar with the history of labor office uh i work on related technologies as well i i i also submit a code to a whole bunch of other related projects so i'm familiar with uh and co-maintain hunt spell the spell checker the saris mytheas hyphen and contribute then to a whole bunch of the other ecosystem around labor office the various third party libraries that we we make use of um the ones that use for this as spreadsheets and uh so forth so i'm familiar with some of the other people that are part of the labor office wider community wider developer community and they don't always make themselves uh visible within the specific labor office community uh for my perspective uh i'd like running for the board to bring that developer perspective to the board just to let people know on the board kind of have a better conduit to the ordinary developers out there i know there are have been other members on the board members of the ec and the board before but i'm also remember that ec help bridge that gap i think i can help out with specifically with uh some of the budget tendering things there and try and just maybe kind of make that process a little bit more streamlined um yeah i'll leave it at that then any question seems now for the moment so next is uh gabor okay another microphone check okay is it better now yep okay so there is something with this device so uh i'm gabor karaman from hundry and i have been involved with uh labor office since about 2012 when i took over the localization project and in the last five years i was involved in a governmental project here in Hungary that tried to introduce a labor office into public administration and uh i think i had some very valuable uh experience during these years especially in the area of interoperability so this is why i'm running for uh for the board to help the foundation and especially the board uh better understand what are the most pressing uh problems when it comes to interoperability and and making people actually move in towards our software solution so in short this is all and i have recently joined allotropia uh gmbh because because of personal reasons any questions the community is quite silent for the moment so if uh there are no questions we can uh move directly to gabriel yeah so hello can you hear me yep loud and clear okay thanks uh so uh i'm gabriel massey i'm a senior cc++ developer at one and one company uh where my main task is to integrate a labor office online and collaborate online projects into into our online office products as far as i know we are the probably the biggest employer of we were the biggest player of labor office online and we are the biggest employer of collaborate online with tens of thousands of documents edited on a daily basis i'm a i'm a developer for more than 17 years most of this time i was a windows developer and uh since three years ago i came into contact with the open source community through LibreOffice and i was very pleased and surprised i met a lot of uh high skilled open minded and passionate people and i like that very much and uh beside my contributions as developer i decided to to try to contribute in in another way and that's why i decided to stand for for the membership of the of the board um now and um i think i think that's it from my side thanks any questions uh yes i have just one uh gabriel um you you said that you are deploying uh collaborative and uh online in a very large space you said 10 000 documents but you don't say how many use how many users you are supporting uh i don't have honestly i don't have that information because i i know the numbers only at the application level uh because uh the users the the users level is outside of collaborate online so i don't know there are users which edit a single file and there are users which are which edit multiple files so i don't know the number of users yeah okay thanks uh just a small question uh where do you leave i'm from Bucharest Romania okay okay thank you thank you thank you thank you any other question since no so the next last one on the list it's candy hello uh thank you so much that you took the time to be here and to listen to us so i'm Jan Holczowski um most of the people that know me as candy mostly in the online world but my friends in the real world as well so i live in Prague in Czech Republic uh i'm open source contributor um since decades uh i joined SUSE in 1999 then several years later i became a volunteer um to open office org i've implemented the kd integration there then worked on the filters and i don't know porting to 64 bits and and stuff like that and uh well over the year like from the developer like well and also of course like i was i was involved in the in the birth of uh of LibreOffice i was one of the founding members there so over the years like i'm less of a developer still like developing when when i have the possibility to do that but other than that i'm mostly a manager in cobra productivity and there i focus mostly on mentoring the team members so that they are efficient in contributing to to LibreOffice and and to the online uh so mentoring and welcoming newcomers is something that uh that i just love doing and like this is also the main reason uh i would like to stand for the board uh because i i think that is extremely important uh to like make the community happy and make it easy for the contributors to to actually get things done so that's that's about me i think mostly hopefully it wasn't too fast Any questions? Seems no Oh yes, too little. I made a question uh two days ago and uh just one seems to to answer that it's about uh documentation and what vision everyone has about that i explained uh we have a vast documentation but today most of it is uh odg or pdf and this this becoming difficult in others devices like uh tablets or or phones and i i presented an example Gustavo had the link bookshelf uh it's a project and this project uh presents the the books and html version to see in browser or phones whatever so what do you think about the documentation what should be done from now on to to present the documentation in easier format yeah thank you uh for the for the subject again to Leo it's uh one thing that that comes to my mind especially when you mention uh the modern devices one of the projects that my company was involved in was the implementation of an export to e-pub format which is not uh yet perfect but that was quite a nice thing and maybe it's an interesting approach uh if documentation team looks in that direction now i know the documentation uh we have for LibreOffice which is a very rich extensive etc so having that converted immediately in a in a correct e-pub format and that's that's not going to work but maybe it's it's a good direction to look at and as i said in a previous session um if there are needs or if there are ideas then i think the board could could could look if if there's some money available for extra tooling or to give the kick start or whatever so so that would be my idea at the moment candy you are on mute sorry wrong button um so i i put down the hand and not not open the microphone so um yeah i i thought about like my vision in the in the session that we had previously and it was something that that i worked on already like when i was was in the board of the directors i was serving for two years sorry for two terms actually so for four years once as a director and once as a deputy and my vision then and it hasn't changed much was to try to consolidate like what we have as the help and was what we have in the books in some some kind of format that would be like much easier to to write and edit and also this format would be possible to somehow tag like what is supposed to be in the help and what is supposed to be in the books and what is supposed to be like in the online version of the thing or maybe like exported in some other formats like the the EPUB or anything and we have worked with Olivier Hall a lot at the time and like he has done great great achievements there we are in much better situation than than what we what we had previously the Olivier was was able to to improve also the the the format of the XHP and worked on prototyping the the viewer and editor like where you can see like directly what you are editing which is a huge improvement over like what was there previously for the help like whether you had to edit it in the in the library office itself and put some some macro on that so that it produces this XHP stuff and so I hope that it is still possible to somehow like you know congregate these sources of information into something that would be like a big pile of information from which like we can do some targeted outputs that's the hope anyone else that wants to reply to this question yeah well just to repeat what we said in the last time to be honest because there was a pretty similar question so yes I think there is a lot of need for online or usable documentation on smarter devices I don't know if that's the that's how you can put it but there could be a direction to take as a core set there could be some some money to put on that so if you have any actual possibility to get out I see Tulio has already done some of the of the needed step please provide that for the for the round of budgeting so we can have that in the budget and we can move on. Gustavo do you want to raise a question? Yes okay let's go ahead so the first question this is my first question I have two questions for you I sent in the last session and it's about our current TDF refund policy so we have a problem in Latin America we have key members without resources to buy tickets to travel to an event and get the refund after that so the reason of the question is get ideas because it's important to talk about this question because our ecosystem depends mainly by the events by the events and I know we won't solve this question right now but we should try to find a way to do it together the new board the membership committee the staff and I would like to hear our ideas about this question and again you are fast this evening yeah yeah it's very important that you ask Gustavo and from a normal board perspective it's not easy to be honest it's always you have costs and then you have a receipt and then you get refunded that's one side the other side your question is honest and there's a problem so I think I would definitely be willing to look at the solution but somehow I think it should be done in cooperation with with the local community the people that know the situation you know each other and that we have to talk about it how we can solve it and so from my perspective the board should put in some effort some new ways but as I said in cooperation with would be my idea okay well I don't naturally have an answer now I've seen your question I understand the show from other participants that we've seen what I've seen so I force them when we could still meet in a way coming from all over the world and understanding yes I mean they have to pay cost in advance and it could be quite complicated as a board member at the moment I don't have an answer because I think we got to look at for example an answer from first of all the well the accountant should tell us okay can we create a budget send it maybe to I don't know another known-for-profit entity that would be created in in some local countries transfer the money we need a natural local guarantor to know that the money would be spent correctly and maybe that could be a start of creating let's say satellite offices of TDF so actually where we can have an official presence maybe in the country this is something that I propose will be we were discussing potential business entity a while back and I thought well maybe could be the start of you know looking at how to create additional offices around the world to actually support directly and locally the community that is something that either is no let's say financial and fiscal tax issues that are found by the accountant by our executive director maybe something that we could put together maybe it's not that difficult probably you can tell us okay what is the complexity actually of opening a known-for-profit linked and owned maybe by TDF in in Latin America maybe you can give us some answers there's something that you can look at where you can look at so that you can give us some idea so my idea is quite tangent to to the one that Paolo has explained at the moment so I think that for sure it's an issue that key contributors from the local communities cannot attend to their international conferences what I think about is probably it's much more effective to bring international activities inside the local communities so having much more events like the Latin American Conference you all had in last year I know that Daniel contributed very much to to the organization of also since the usually local conferences are organized by empowering the local community to get the the sponsorships so probably this sponsorship can be maybe I'm not a lawyer so I cannot say that for sure but maybe part of that sponsorship can be invested in bringing to the conference venue that the people that the tar key contributors and that would probably help so that's another way I see that unfortunately lately there wasn't there was well issues in traveling and meeting and that's a shame but let's say we should see a brighter future so we should start in some time to have newly the possibilities to meet in person and probably going in the direction of taking the international conferences much more wide and in the world is another idea. Candy? Yes so somehow like hopefully easier solution than like selling up things or could be but like it doesn't work in all the countries yet but for example like in Czech Republic it is possible and that is like that like somebody can buy by a credit card a ticket like here in the Czech Republic for somebody living in the Czech Republic and my hope is that like this is more and more possible for other countries as well that like the TF would be able to pay from their like corporate credit card a ticket for somebody living in Brazil or something I appreciate that it is still not possible like in all the parts in the world because in some cases like people need to be accompanied by the credit card from which they have bought it but I hope that the world in general is moving in the possibility that like you just get the QR code as a ticket and just show it so that's my hope. Any other idea? Any other feedback on this topic? I'd like to say thank you for the candidates and well as I said we won't solve the problem right now but let's put on the table to the next board and the membership committee and the local communities and the staff to work together to have each situation we have to solve for each member who want to participate in an event or something like that. Okay I have another question for you let me put in the chat it's about to improve the membership with an idea to to allow to the member voting in something which can improve the applications. I have this idea inspired by my son when I saw his engagement to vote for a new character for a new mob in the Minecraft elections I think we could do something similar for our members to put some to put additional value in the membership I will share some like some link to to you it's a question so then it's in a context to improve what to improve what the member can do inside the TDF. Yes so I'm happy to say that we worked already in the last board on that not probably to the best effort for many many reasons but our idea was to enlarge the the decision-making process to the any members really so it was much more on the board side than the ESC side but again the the tooling is there we Daniel tried to provide some efforts to put that in in some some use unfortunately it didn't put an end with that and the the platform is there we have to tailor it for our for our needs and I think that would be a good asset for the future so to leave the members to be able to say what they are preferring and to voice them in a much direct way. By the way the platform is Decidim so there's already an instance at TDF we didn't follow it through but I'm happy to share the work and take it on. Paul? Yeah that's more or less what I wanted to say I think Daniel proposed a platform that was so looking at as called Decidim that was being developed by CTO Barcelona and it actually allows not just to vote but actually to start having conversations so actually the whole community can start their own polls can start the their own question to see if there is something that actually you know comes out as an idea that I shared by many so that actually we can start acting on that so it's not only in relation to you know development but anything else shall we organize a new event in Brazil or or whatever else you know it's one of these things that then so the communities or the group the local groups can start organizing themselves through these tools and probably so from the board maybe instead of using emails which are a nightmare because you know I would like to get for example your idea and try to get it on a kind of board where we can all look at and bit by bit adding additional ideas to refine what we have and to find solutions so something like Decidim may help if you're able actually to get into it or maybe if you find all the similar tools that can be more adequate for what we want to do then let's do it we got to find a way to get thousands of people potentially to cooperate and probably as the board it's gonna have to find a way to share with you know thousands of people what we would like to do what we are doing or if the community want to tell us to change the direction it's not easy so come up with some ideas with some tools so that we can implement it you know but already even before the election would be nice to have it sorry before the next term it would be nice to have it ready for the new for the new board and then there is a note from Sophie saying I think I see me passing by or somebody else to answer perfect Sophie in contact with Decidim and I've seen that there was a so another question that we should have answered or not probably no I lost it don't worry don't worry we will follow with the questions okay so next is Karl yeah yeah one of the funny thing of the of an open source community is that we organize people who are working on stuff I remember somewhere 2012-13 there was a company working on Libre Office and iOS and whatever it got acquired by LinkedIn and then it it disappeared but the guys had a had a nice green t-shirt that I used long time when I was out running in the woods and it had get shit done printed on the on the t-shirt and I think that the fun of the community is that we encourage people when they have ideas to actually do it and if there are problems we try to help people with information if you want to get started in QA and you have a problem and on ISE or whatever you we have a there's a guy who has experience or a girl who has experience and so you get information that helps so it is basically in order to get somewhere we need to encourage people as much as possible to do something rather than spending a lot of time about talking on ideas of course sharing ideas having thoughts on that it is important but I think it's not really the center of for what we are in TDF sorry I forgot to mute myself can you yes I would like to add to what what Thor is saying because like I hear it that that like if you want to do some some kind of like a poll for something that should result in implementing something you should feel encouraged to do the poll and if you need some kind of budget like so that like it gets implemented you can always ask the board so like they have the they have the means of like giving budgets to ideas so so definitely like normally like it is split some way but like at least at the times when I was in the board like it was still possible to to find something somewhere for good ideas so so please feel encouraged that like if you have an idea to do at all that should result in something like bring this idea to the board and and you know give a price that price tag to that and yeah we can see we can see if I get in I could see but if I don't okay well my my my example my proposal was just a more like a marketing trick than a case to to develop something the user wants it's more um to link the member the tdf member with the membership uh so uh the the big point is uh related with the next question from from Philippi uh with with a little change what what we can do to attract new members uh to the foundation uh so uh this is the is the most important of the question but let's go ahead with the Philippi's question uh is in the chat can the candidates share some ideas on how to attract more volunteers to the project and Paolo was faster yeah right well I was faster so to say that this is an incredibly difficult question and we potentially so difficult difficult solution um I mean I'm seeing it when uh when I campaigning for example for uh more privacy are you pretty much involved in actually in uh uh making gdpr uh being actually uh implemented not just a load uh get getting known uh and I see the you know the vast majority of people are totally unaware uh that they have rights for privacy that they actually found fundamental rights that should be respected and the there is a huge number of organizations they just you know make a huge amount of money spying on them but then then they don't realize the type of damage that this type of organization and the way they use the data is going to do to them but especially to our kids I think that's about my kids uh because they are being tracked now they are being profiled now and that's going to affect the the other schools about what they do when they go to the other schools or they going to find the job or something like that so already that shows uh uh unfortunately we are you know moving toward a society that is more made of consumers than people that want to actually act uh in in certain things climate change is something actually the now uh is let's say seen everywhere so there are there are a lot of activists in the in the side while instead the moment uh uh you know freedom you know software freedom or digital rights is not seeing a priority by by by many but in a way there's there are so many things that are interconnected because naturally to be able to make a change or so for climate then naturally we need to have support of uh let's say certain type of media which naturally is in the hand of those that earn more by uh by propagating on controversies and not trying to get people to get to find solutions so they are all all in in in between so it's a difficult situation and at the moment the only thing I can see is that we have to make an effort well each one of us you know to actually get person by person interested in the uh in uh in the community by led by example uh and then naturally well in my answer to the to the question and say well probably we go to increase even more our marketing budget is so that we don't have the billions that Microsoft and Amazon and and Google can spend uh in in marketing but probably there is something else more kind of aimed to certain certain type of people that we could we could do to actually get some some more people interested then if you can do again some you know live events then naturally it's going to be easier because to be those events be that there's going to be generally people are really prepared naturally to accept a certain level of um commitment to to certain community but remotely is a bit more complicated so we still got to do a lot of work on the ground ourselves and this is what each one of us naturally is is already doing uh in you know their own ways so for the moment let's carry on like this candy so from my point of view um the problem is not to like how to attract the volunteers but how to keep them because it is still uh that like people are coming to the office and get interested in some way uh the most important thing is their first experience so they need to feel welcome and they need to feel like that somebody cares so uh because like when somebody like creates a first batch to the code like most probably like it will be not like mergeable in the state that they they do it and if they just you know it stays there and nobody integrates it for you know several days they just move on and go somewhere else but like if somebody like actively tries to to handhold them and you know get it in even like if it is not in the ideal form or gets helps them to to like get integrated it is much more probable that they will come with second and third batch and it is similar like with with like translations it is like very similar similar with like the design team that I have helped to like bootstrap um years ago and so so like what what we have um as the document foundation as like the possibility here how to like use this potential are these people who are responsible for some kind of mentoring of these new people so like we have now hossain who is who is like responsible for for you know when somebody appears on the irc and asks the developing question like there's a bot that like informs like that is somebody new and hossain's work is supposed to be like you know grab them hook them and and don't lose like you know help them to get their page and everything and I think like this experience is is like what is important like from my personal experience this was like what what's like got me into into open office or initially because I was lucky enough that that I've met some friendly people on the rc who have been helping me at the time and even though like my first page was was integrated after one and a half year I still like you know kept there just because the people are still talking to me and and yeah so so that's that that word and like later that was that was something that that like was like working working for me at least to to get more more developers and like when as I say like I was trying to bootstrap the the design team helped me there as well luckily like now we have hyco in design design team and so and others others for for the other teams so that is that is helping but still like having this like in the blood of the community that like when somebody comes we should we should like immediately notice them and we should be friendly to them and encourage them in their work so that they feel that they have the power to change things I think that's important and that that helps to get more volunteers and more contributors if I may reply to this candy I absolutely agree with what you said the the mentoring of new people it's it's really important something we are missing I think it's also a good onboarding for the tdf members for growing them into the role that could bring them in the future for I don't know running for the board for the mc so for the governance on this I think we are still not on the on the good path we need to do we need to find a different way because if you look at the number of members tdf members I mean and contributors the difference it's definitely to to hike and we have active contributors that are not tdf members so that it's something so so I would I would encourage the the membership committee to actively like find these people and and try to encourage them to apply for the membership I think that was also the idea by the to have the dashboard that like that shows like who contributors where and how so that like it's possible to to to see like who is somebody like who is doing great work but it's not not the member so definitely like that reach out to them that is a step but still we have a contributors that are simply saying I don't see any need to be a tdf member or I can continue to contribute to the project without being a member so the membership it's something not perceived as something important and that that's true and it's important that we we show as a good team and that we etc however we are free people if people find it somehow fun to contribute but are just not interested more than than showing that it's fun and helpful more than that we cannot do I think or yeah maybe we can give them a bonus if you become a member you get a a box of it wine or with with nice mugs just as a starting bonus but or a t-shirt t-shirt yeah but but but look look at if seriously if you look at at what Mike so and others are already doing doing in showing active members and sending out stickers and with the badges etc so I think really a lot of things are already done and and of course when when when I was part of the membership committee marina we also looked at it and and we put some effort in it to encourage people to do it and it is important but but yeah yeah probably we should have a we we don't know where they live so it's dedicated to uh to to that actually paid a team just looking after the community also because I mean talking about community we're talking about so many different type of people I mean you you may have somebody that just want to add some code and it doesn't care about anything else because you know he's happy with that somebody else that want to see cool things in the in the user interface so the the graphics ux and things that are yeah sorry folks I mean I know how it works I'm not saying that we should force people to to join the the board of trustee just for the sickness of increasing the number of members what is concerning is to see members living or members that are not aware of what is the meaning of being a member of the board of trustee and this is also a problem because when we have elections we are just always having the very same people running from jumping from one body to the other and it's not healthy it's not sustainable so if we want to improve the the the health of the foundation growing the ecosystem we should also look at how to grow in a healthy way growing people into the role the people that should be in the board of trustee was it my turn for ideas or not yet sorry marina anyway sorry I was jumping on the reply and I I'm sorry there was Gabriella first yes well so I just wanted to discuss more about how we can attract volunteers in in our community and this is something that I mentioned in my letter of intention I just want to elaborate I think that we should more get in more contact with with people with potential volunteers that wants to contribute and we can do that by exposing what we have what we have more valuable in our community and of course the most valuable assets in our community are humans and the most valuable from from members of our of our community are the most experienced ones and I think that we should involve them in different I don't know projects through which we we we can get into in in through which they can get in contact with the potential members why why experience because experienced members know very well the application the the community and so on and they can expose very interesting parts the most interesting parts of our community of our projects and so on and I think that we can do that by by organizing some seminars or meetings interactive meetings in which both both both sides can be can be involved and so on and so yeah so this is this is this is my this is my idea thank you the next was Emiliano yes thank you I just want to mention that for once attracting new contributors is it's not a simple task to to try to to solve so we have some ideas maybe yes they were shared by by all the the candidates for sure we have to try to implement that but we need to to have ideas shared and we must all collaborate for that another point I would like to touch very quickly is that the retention of the membership is yet another problem it's a different one and it's an important one do not do not misunderstand me it's really important the point is probably it's not something so mechanical there's personal issues cultural issues um something different that we need to analyze and tackle before trying to solve that that thing so I think DMC is much more than empowered to do that uh I think as a candidate I have the the how can I say uh the the need to make the what DMC would like to implement a reality so that's it mostly I think DMC is the perfect place for analyzing how we can attract these people and how we can retain people in the project that's it Carl was next yes thanks um apart from what what has been said uh I heard I heard a lot of things that that are important uh an idea that I had recently to be honest yesterday as a result of one of the the previous sessions we had um and looking at how uh we work in the board uh we get regular updates from all uh all groups in let me say groups in in the community we hear about developers about the documentation about qa etc uh so so we know what what is happening there and now and then we talk with people but maybe it is an idea that uh once in a while we just have a meeting dedicated uh to talk with people just from documentation just a meeting talking with people from localization that you really have to time to relax to look from all angles and that uh such a meeting gives an opportunity uh to to people to share a bit more easily ideas to share a bit more easily needs that they have because in the end it it's the people who are doing documentation who are doing qa uh know the best uh what what is going on and also will have the best ideas uh on how to make it more attractive for others so that's an idea and I hope someone is making notes of all the good ideas I hear from Paulo, Kendi, Emiliano etc to to discuss in the board sounds like a good plan I did so let me copy again the question because in the meantime in the chat there were more messages so I would like to have a feedback from the candidate on this topic so uh topic it's something that is uh uh touching all of us from a lot of time now so it's clear that during the start of the pandemic we had um several people looking at uh library office for having alternatives and things to use for the homeschooling and so on uh but uh TDF was not doing uh anything uh officially for uh for that so for approaching I mean schools university etc for helping them so the question is uh how we could uh improve for the future which is the the view of the of the candidates for the future given that I don't think we will uh get rid of this pandemic so soon and this time uh Paulo was faster yeah let's say that uh I uh I naturally seen the issue uh in a way first person and I think there is a so uh Marco here but so uh Paulo from the diffuse which is an organization that is managing uh the it for quite a few a few few schools in uh in uh in Italy and uh the the issue was the at the time the only thing I could do is actually to try to find something to do online because naturally uh school did they had uh you know the the people the knowledge uh and naturally the staff that could go to school and do what because uh you know nobody could go to school uh but then we we manage actually to uh uh to start offering services on online okay so video conferencing, file sharing, lots of nice stuff that then evolve also in uh interesting opportunity uh for for some organization to actually show to the school that there is an alternative to teams, an alternative to uh uh to to drive in and and things like that so I'm not sure what we could have done uh in in a in a way because it was too late then uh we should just start getting ready now for the next because now you know it seems like the pandemic is easing away for a moment that then is going up again so this is the moment to to see if we can create more strategic alliances for with the educational sector uh to see if we can actually get more school to implement liberal office on on laptops maybe with leadership like they're doing now in germany for our province uh and and and that is what we can do at the moment at a certain moment in time and that connects in a way so with another question I seen we could have actually helped uh those courses by providing online everything tools but then something happened uh so TD TDF uh wasn't able in a way to help out from from from that point of view uh and I should be sad but I think looking at looking at the future well I think we we should actually work now to promote even more uh uh liberal office and to join forces so we other producers of open source software uh to to you know to be there and help you know when when the actual the the need is there not when it's too late when we are in the middle of the the pandemic uh I saw before me ian or is it izan but it's down now I don't know if uh yeah very quickly very very quickly I was involved with with some projects in school for oh hi torsten uh I was involved in a project with uh with schools back trying to make a uh free open source software available in in schools so I completely understand the point of view of people that are asking for TDF to help schools and organization probably in this case is the point is much more on non-profit organization to be honest uh I see the point uh unfortunately that turned out to be pretty difficult in the situation we were uh we are going to we need to watch into them and try to um find a way to get more on school sense on there are programs that were uh well we tried to start them but the pandemic wasn't particularly good with us and we didn't we didn't do yet a good start for the ambassador uh the scholar and ambassador project for example and that's that's something that we need to push forward I think sorry that's it cor sorry it was muted yeah and I think how helping out schools is a good thing I think uh the document foundation has as great uh software and great technology and uh it's it's clear for all that uh a Libre Office online as uh as a project moved to uh to be collaborative online but it's it is it is an ecosystem uh uh partner in in the document foundation it it's fully open source people can join there's free versions etc uh so uh from that point of view um from being available uh for all to study to share to improve etc uh I think there's that I don't see any reason to start uh having much trouble on that side uh but if there are ways to to improve uh uh information to schools uh etc and support them that that's always good um I've also seen projects in countries where uh schools companies etc work operating but but we all know from uh and anyway I think all people who are involved in uh in in migration project and I've seen a lot of them I've done quite a some of them as well uh that that it's always uh complicated and to get something done very fast uh you always are depending on people that are already in an organization that know open source that have their experience uh already various tools uh uh ready for that um so yeah maybe if you talk about preparing something for if it's it's urgent again uh finding some coalition of whatever but then you should make choices about uh let's make a combination of these types of software uh and make them available but that would mean that you have make choice to leave out others while the force of open source is that it's freedom and that you allow people to go to the various open source projects and pick what they are needed so uh it's it's it's I understand the question uh but it's it's it's quite a hard to give a solution that that that fits all needs I'm afraid well uh at least looking at what we had uh in uh in Italy uh was not a matter of going with uh one open source project or another open source project the problem we had was called Microsoft and was called Google they went with the Google suite they went with uh all the other solutions and there's nothing open source there that it's a shame we really lost the opportunity yeah yeah yeah and but that's not because there is no open source offering somewhere uh and that there's no good open source offering but that's because how the powers and the influence on the marketing are organized and uh yeah breaking that it's just a long long run we do with marketing with improving the product and growing the ecosystem etc it's not only on the power of others to be honest it's also that the probably the how can I say the the presence of the the the free open source project that we said was not on par to be honest uh so they they were not so known instead of Microsoft and Google which yeah for sure that's that the obvious ones to look at but you know of course but being known and being visible means power too because we all know the the efforts that Mike Italo and and and more volunteers in in the marketing project are taking but well you know uh what others can pay on on marketing and and and so that's power too yeah okay um thanks if you can hear me so I'm terribly sorry for being late but it was some very unfortunate unscheduled and uncoordinated disclosure of a security vulnerability so that kept me busy and the laptop here and um having had a funny crush as before anyway glad to be here um my name is Thorsten um I'm running for the board um and um you have my my introduction on the mailing list so just under some if I if I get this right this is about like how to um how to get to the the educational market so there was a question from Marina earlier and and I think um I think I have a perhaps a little slightly more encouraging story to tell but which is that surprisingly um pervasive use of free and open source is there it's like kind of self-sustained and and um the fact that um liberal office is usable in in very many ways on very many devices and platforms and um it's also easily accessible which is mostly um free free download or or um already comes with the operating system um makes that pretty easy so so I would it's a bit this question is the glass half full or is it half empty and and my impression but it's clearly very non-objective if not subjective um is that in this particular market um we're going pretty strong if that was the question um whether tdf should do should and can do more than obviously the answer is always yes um as as an open source project we're always resource constrained there's always more to do than than we can possibly manage and then it's a question of priorities and and to a large extent also like what what do people what is what is driving me what is driving a million or what is driving other people on the board or in the community and then we to a large extent we do what what what we enjoy and and if we happen to have contacts in the educational sector then probably that's going to be really excellent and if that's not the case and then that was the case during the um with the outgoing board then perhaps it's a bit underrepresented okay um I would probably need some help with translating because Gustavo okay um well let's see because I'm I'm talking with Marina uh in the backstage about the the last uh question to you uh let's go ahead with the Marcos question what do you think of the current situation of liberal office online how can it be improved with solutions you propose so so that's the question for me I guess uh no no to to the group to the group you can start okay um because it's our probably your last question let's see uh uh but you can start with you Thorsten no problem okay yeah I don't have to um since I'm already talking so um yeah that's that's one of the the more unfortunate um events from from the last from the outgoing board I was personally very unhappy with um with the outcome there I I I do have rather lots of um understanding because I'm I'm kind of sitting in very many boats there um I was trying to uh with the old company um I was trying to um to build some business with liberal office online um with the new company um we're partnering with Collabra so I'm also trying to build a business there but around Collabra online um with the TDF hat on um that was clearly a massive loss um maybe for me the the lesson learned was that um it's very easy to destroy it's very easy to kind of fork and and walk different ways and it's pretty hard to find compromise and and leave space for others and and do something jointly especially after so many years without at least an open source land in a real competition so so when that distance outside outside competition from from from Microsoft otherwise it's it's mostly that we're fighting um each other and that's not very fortunate and I think that's something where we're almost everyone is losing so how to improve the situation with liberal office online there is right now no liberal office online that's both talking about there's there's a stale branch so if that is something the community is interested in then the community needs to pick that up or some companies in the ecosystem need to find customers who are willing to pay um and and then grow that again I think right now the situation is as it is and it's very difficult um without upsetting many more people um again um to get out of that except for from from my perspective working with the status quo as as best as as possible I have some um I have some side project we're doing um to to get uh liberal office core like the the the actual core code um that is maintained and that's running on android and it's running on desktop operating systems to get that into the browser by by cross compiling it with web assembly um but it's probably a few days out to have a useful product there um so bottom line is always um you look forward not backwards and try to build bridges and make the best out of the cards that you hold in your hands um and then just take opportunities if and when they arise that will be my my take tonight I presume yes of course thank you um right let's say that uh it's always useful to look at the past to learn not to make the same mistakes uh but naturally uh I I arrived on the board I you know look at the history of the of the project what was available what was advertised on the website so it seemed like a tdf had a liberal office online um let's say that the big issue that I seen uh with the project uh there were no clear rules so yeah the project has started in cooperation with tdf uh 98 percent of the code has been uh likely written by collaboration so naturally was there the there were investments um but then at the end there was no kind of clear agreement in in terms of saying okay what is the relation between tdf and the project this is one of the mistakes we have to learn from because uh I really would like for tdf to invest in other projects but it's important for tdf in the community to understand uh if we make an investment there's going to be naturally some reward for the company that invested in that but then at the same time there should be something as well for the community so the issue with liberal office online is the I got the feeling that we never had a liberal office online uh in a certain way uh because unfortunately then it has been moved forked uh when the certain documentation started being available to make it easier so at this point the the code is a year old uh there are some known bugs so if you want to unfreeze it so if people want to contribute well naturally uh I think Emiliano and Torsten are talking about it and hopefully tomorrow we're gonna know more about what they discussed about the future of a liberal office line I would like really to see at least the repository open for for those that would like to play around with it those that would like to make a different uh type of platform different type of experience and then it's going to be the community that will decide uh if that code that says in each file this is a liberal office project should be moved forward or not understanding that there is naturally a so a member of the ecosystem that is actually the main developer so naturally it would be nice to find an agreement between TDF and this commercial company to see if we can both have something for the community and for the commercial market that's it for the moment yeah it's it there is no distinction between the community and ecosystem partners in the community I think it's it's a good thing if the board acts in a way that it's not uh discouraging contributors and encouraging them to to move away because the situation becomes too too too risky for them and that's actually what happened in the in the past uh past board and I think that Thorsten said some wise things of being very careful and and look forward uh see what you have and and work from that point of view and and still there is an old repository so and any developer who is interested in that uh rather than joining uh the product that uses the LibreOffice technology and also as such promoters the LibreOffice brand which is actually happening but uh if developers would prefer to work on on the LibreOffice online brands as such uh they're free to do so I guess how? The repo is frozen they can't commit anything on that so you are inviting a potential member of the community to fork a repo that is frozen yeah and this can be seen as something healthy for TDF at all yeah but of course it's clear that if if there are developers in the community that say oh we want to we want to start working on it that it's it's it's not complicated to unfreeze it but it all depends uh talking about development and things that should be done that that's always easy uh having developers paid doing good work uh and making it actually being done that that's another thing so if there are people who are uh actually able to do it and willing to do it uh yeah if it's their choice would be my would be my take now are you speaking with your TDF at or with which one sorry no there's no difference there's no difference candy okay so first of all um I can assure you uh that with my TD uh with my collaborator ahead we love Liber office so you can see it that like the contribution to the Liber office project like never ceased and it is still the same or even like bigger than what it used to be so uh so the move had like no no change on like what we are doing in the core and like why the move happened um like you can you can like read the reasons like from from the from the time like when it has happened um but let me remind you like another thing that happened in 2010 like when there was open of this orb and some developers weren't happy with like what is happening and so they formed something Liber office and then like people in Liber office are unhappy that Apache open office like even if nothing is developing there like the project is still like not willing to accept that the development has moved somewhere else how is the different situation here so there were some reasons like why to move away from me for my point of view uh like my biggest reason for me like why I think it's uh it was uh it worked in the end was that like it was really hard for us to get contributors and volunteers like when we were on the TDF umbrella and we tried hard we tried to attract people we did the google summer of codes for contribution into the online and we had like one two contributors that way now when it is on github we get like several several commits from random people just because it's only github so the the license didn't change it is still under MPL it is open source project so like I don't see a reason like why there should be a competing project under the like like big name or figure office that we know was hard to attract somebody like who who uh like develops in javascript because Liber office is known for C++ while on github like that's the natural place like where people like work in javascript like that's the biggest biggest source of people who work on javascript so and as I say like we do love Liber office we do contribute to to Liber office and this is not going to cease we support Liber office technology like we have put that logo into the about box we link to the pages of Liber office technology so it is still visible that coopera online is using Liber office and that is like important thing for us so that's it for me okay paolo is next yeah just a brief a brief comment um because uh at the end uh I mean the reasons uh for what happened are many I don't want to bore you with a lot of details uh and uh and exchanges uh for me the important important message is the uh one of the things that naturally I want to do and I started the really try to do uh during this term and I will uh carry on the next one is actually to uh make the the this type of a relationship clearer uh so naturally uh Liber official line is a project that started as a partnership uh it should have had some uh some rules that a certain point uh say that the reason uh that the fork happened uh can be anything uh what we lost in a way let's say as a wider community because uh naturally yes there is a commercial side that naturally needs to uh to make money uh and and then there is naturally what we know also 90 95 percent of users that don't uh let's say um commit anything back code or money or time it takes that naturally we go to work uh a lot on uh on the side but then especially uh during the pandemic uh or anyway in uh let's say uh when talking so with the public sector the education sector sometime is easier uh as well to make a breakthrough and maybe being able to uh to get hundreds of thousands of millions of more users if you know the the connection starts from a foundation so that there is let's say the commercial uh potential uh barrier for certain a certain type of organization and then the commercial sector naturally comes in to offer to offer their services i would see it beneficial from both sides but then naturally is the commercial partner that's going to have to take the decision for me it was a point of view of being able to benefit all so the wider community and the commercial community then we see from the future project how we can define these rules better so that you know this type of works won't happen again Andy your turn yes so um as i explained i do not agree that that the that LibreOffice has lost so um as i say like the the code i guess it gets more contribution uh more contributors and that way like LibreOffice is used more and it is like known and we like actively promote that collaboration online is based on LibreOffice so i do not see any kind of loss here okay core please yeah it's yeah i'm am muted uh it's clear as Paolo says uh it's discussion that uh that need to take place in the board um and it it's the responsibility of the board to make sure that the whole community is is a place for sustainable development and i'm sure that the lesson tdf we as board learned in the past term that that that it will be used to do the good things the next term that's it we because discussing uh uh files of details is not going to work here Torsten please yeah i think um so while i think it's it's useful to to discuss that and um and to answer question on on on that and and perhaps sound out like different positions of um of um board candidates i think as a board it's not very useful um and perhaps also not as a community to re-litigate this because it was it was actually quite quite painful um for for quite a number of people and what i said earlier is like we can't change the past the only thing we can change is like look forward look ahead and then do the right thing going forward um and that doesn't mean that we shouldn't learn learn from the past but but constantly developing on the past and wounded what wrong or what what the exact reasons for for some actions but i think it's not profoundly helpful instead um accepting the situation as it is now and making the best out of it that's always my my my approach off on on that and um as people said this is right now it's it's um it's a project that is dormant there's another project that has moved on um that uh is contributing back massively into the core code and then there's a number of options um where this can go including um convincing or encouraging colabora um to to return this back um or trying something else um or focusing on um fostering community in the wider sense which is this liberal office technology idea which is like regardless of whether it's hosted on github or on garret you can always say this is liberal office technology and it's a great a great marketing story and it's i think for the for the outgoing part of the project is always great to focus on the on the positives and rather not so much on the negatives all that said it's it's as i said it's a loss for the project okay any other comment okay silence so we have uh around two hours of this session so it's uh a bit late in europe then uh i will open the last minutes for any comment from the candidates if you want to to say something for our community in this side of the world felt free to uh give us some words uh before our the end of our meeting torsten please sorry again for for um exceptionally not having the time today would have loved to to attend the full two hours unfortunately there was some really really urgent security issues i look forward um to meet you all again in person hopefully soonish i would just totally love to have a conference uh on on the american continent um so uh if that's that that would be probably my my my question or my message that would just be be awesome to do more um on that side of the world um at least like lots of things are happening it's that nothing happens that's just like um for for for the liberal office as a community like worldwide community to do something like have to focus there for example with the conference thank you yeah uh i i was waiting for a voice yeah yeah thanks all people for for for joining and and asking questions and uh let me say um just apart from tough discussions we have it's also encouraging work at the board so uh i would say uh feel encouraged to uh be uh to apply for a membership of either the board or the membership committee uh in another term it's it's good work thank you thank you Carl Emiliano please your turn so very quick very quickly uh thank you very much for participating uh i attended the last uh i think the american conference right after the the conference last year i was impressed there was really a lot of good work put there so i think that i share completely the what what thurston said i think that that is a must that the conference and international conference would be held in in that region for sure so thank you again very much for for your questions and your comments and thank you thank you Emiliano paulo yeah was what i mean uh i enjoyed the call uh you know in organizing uh more conferences uh your side of the atlantic uh so that we have a solar opportunity to come over uh as well uh but the the other important thing until we can actually all meet physically is to uh find a platform where we can exchange ideas and and start working on projects together uh in a more structured way because uh you know apart from uh you know the uh uh the uh the big problem of uh uh reimbursing expenses for trouble yeah that is something that we got to to to look at but the the other big thing is to you know opening up even more the channels so that we all exchange ideas on how to do things but that is for me the most important thing and then all the rest probably is going to become a lot easier thank you paulo uh more comments uh from the candidates from the community anything else okay maybe come on from uh from gabrielle candy let's let's finish the round yeah i only want thank you for listening to us and it was great to have you here gabrielle please uh yes so uh what i can say um i i um i heard that this uh this this format was uh applied for the first time right with the sessions with candidates and so on so it was really interesting from my side so i encourage you to keep it at the next uh next sessions next elections um yeah for me it was a way to know you better because probably from all the candidates i'm the most new one in uh yeah and the questions were interesting the discussions were interesting so um yeah so thank you for all for your question and for listening thanks thanks gabrielle thanks candy gabor please your turn okay so uh i was mostly silent today and this is basically because i'm very new to this leadership role and the board uh it was very very useful to just listen to all of you and the community's questions um it's it's uh i think it's very important for us to to just uh basically uh get a little touch of whatever you want as is uh thinking about our priorities and such and uh today i i liked uh this idea that we should somehow have uh hold more often such town hall like meetings with with community and talk about what the board is doing in case i will be a part of it but it's very likely uh so uh just one little tiny bit from from from my country so our our beloved government love holds our government info like town hall with with the press every single week and they are just talking about what have they done or what will they they do during uh since the last thing uh event so i think something like that we should do in the in the future so thanks for all of you to comment and for this opportunity thank you gabor well uh in the name of the latin american the ibero-american community i would like to say thank you to you and uh see you in the next steps of the election and marina could you give us some last words uh yeah i can say that uh it's a past midnight in europe so means that the election it's open so thank you really thanks everyone for for joining also the candidates for finding the time uh the team for the recordings uh everyone for joining i mean it was really a nice exchange something new and uh something that we can improve absolutely but was uh was nice to see discussion and participation from uh several uh several people and uh last but not least happy birthday emiliano happy birthday emiliano well now i am officially two minutes older than so that's it that's not my birthday anymore but and again anyways thank you very much for your wishes guys it's a pleasure hey maybe for tonight thank you all thank you bye bye everyone bye bye