 Let's just start. It's five past. Let's see then if someone else will join later. So, as usual, okay, we lost Coral. That is not a good start. Yeah, the studio is really toxic to browsers, as I had to experience yesterday. But once the browser is refreshed, it lasts for two hours. Okay. So, for what concerns this session, as for the first that we had on Monday, the idea is to have a place where community and members can interact directly live with the board candidates. So, of course, thanks also to the candidates that found the time for training. If you have any feedback on the previous session or in general, this one and the next one that we will have a feel free to share, because this one is a new format that we are experiencing. And we can definitely improve and do better next time. And for what concerns the elections, I want to use this opportunity also for a quick information. So, yesterday we generated the token for the elections. So, every one of you should of you of the members that are in this group should already have the email with the token for voting. Of course, the system, it's still not accepting votes, because we still have this phase between the nomination and the start of the election. But the token are there. So, if you are a member and the email is missing, let us know. Check your spam folder or any other way of filtering the method that you are using. So, apart from the general information, we have some questions that we could use for the discussion. But as the previous session could be nice to have an introduction from the candidates, in particular from the one that were not attending on Monday. So, let's start with the order. I'm just following the order that I can see in the room. So, the first candidate is also starting with C. So, it's easy. It's correct. Let's say five minutes for introducing yourself and telling the attendees why you are running for the board and what you would like to achieve. Sage is here. Yeah. So, my name is Cullo Macdemara. I've been working on Libre Office for, well, since the beginning, really, and I worked on Open Office before that. And I worked on Star Office for a brief period before that. I worked with Red Hat for a long time as well, and I work on Red Hat's desktop team. And Libre Office is my specialty within that. So, I maintain that. I work specifically on integrating Libre Office into that desktop. So, GTK ports specifically, lots of things around that, really. That's what I've been working on there. I did serve on the initial board, I think, back at the very start for a period. And yeah, that's my introduction, really. In the meantime, any question for him directly now, or shall we just move on to the next candidate? Feel free to raise your hand or to speak. Okay. So, next is Emiliano. So, hi, Emiliano. Sorry, I'm coming from Italy. My daily job is help desk support and system administration and networking, mostly. I came in contact with the community not so much long ago, but I was immediately fulgarated and I was proud to be on the project and try to push it on the marketing and on the event sites most often. I am actually a director in the actual board, which is going to end in February, and I'm a candidate for the next one. So, I'm here. Any question for Emiliano? Okay. So, let's move on. Gabor, stage is yours. Yes, hi. My name is Gabor Karaman. I came to contact with LibreOffice in around 2012 as translator. And in recent years, I have worked for the company called NIS, which is a Hungarian state-owned internal IT services company. And we had tried to introduce LibreOffice and develop further and further to tailor it into the Hungarian public administration's needs. And this is my first time running for board membership because I think I had some very valuable experiences during my time at NIS, which I have recently left and joined Anatropia as a quality assurance position. So, this is all in short. Any question for Gabor? Next is Gabriel. Oh, yes. So, hello. My name is Gabriel Massey. I'm a senior C-C++ developer at One and One Company. My main task here is to integrate LibreOffice online and collaborate online into our online office products. I'm pretty new in LibreOffice, comparing to probably most of you are definitely with the other candidates. I have an experience in LibreOffice for about three years and in general, in open source. I was very pleasantly surprised while getting into contact with the open source community. And I want to learn more about it and I want to get more involved into open source community. That's why I accepted this challenge to be a candidate to the board. Also, I'm a developer for more than 70 years. Of course, most of my experience is related to projects, to Windows projects. But since three years ago, I'm working in Linux and open source projects related to LibreOffice. I think that's it from my side. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Any questions for Gabriel for the moment? So, next is Paolo. Hi all. I'm Paolo Becchi, currently living in Luxembourg. I'm Italian, but then I lived so 15 years in the UK, more or less, going back and forth between England and Italy. I've been working with open source for the past 20 years, had about 35 years' career in IT. And then I started promoting LibreOffice about eight, nine years ago. And I managed to get some of my city council to migrate to LibreOffice and they're still using LibreOffice about eight years ago. I've been so serving for this period in the board as Deputy Director. And at the moment, I'm so promoting the open source-based cloud services and platform just to demonstrate that we can actually achieve digital sovereignty by using open source software in general. More or less, that's it. Okay, thanks. Any questions for Paolo? So, Tostan, stage is yours. Yes. Good. Let me try to remember what I said yesterday. That's kind of consistent. My name is Tostan Berlens. I've been working, so I've been contributing to open source. That's where I started yesterday since many years. I think the first patch was to some projects were in 1996. I'm a computer scientist by education. I started with the old Sun team in 2001 in the open office, codebase. I was doing mostly impressing graphics subsystem there. I moved on to SUSE in 2008. I'm still working in open office and then I was among the group of people who started the LibreOffice project. And I was serving on the first, the Stephen Committee and then the first board and have been on the board since then. I've been doing many things, started with development, but was also doing a bit of sales and migration training bits. I moved from SUSE to a smaller company in Munich in 2015, also helping the city of Munich there, which was one of our customers. And I started a completely new company. We spun out the open source part of the CIB, which I was working for last year. And since January this year, running my own company called Allotropia with all the great people that I was building, the team that I was building now. Since then, we're happily serving customers old and new and doing LibreOffice mostly consultancy, backfixing, future development, but also again training and migrations. I'm very glad that Gabor recently joined us and is also running for the board. Right, and that's about me. Very much looking forward to your questions. Thanks a lot. So any questions for the moment now? So next is Cora. Yeah. Hello. Good evening again. My name is Cora Naus, the Netherlands, involved in open source basically since 2004. First, I worked for a company doing sort of Microsoft and Lotus Notes stuff. And then I didn't like it. And somehow open source attracted me. I started with openoffice.org and well, of course, landed in the community back then. I'm also active a bit in open source in the Netherlands, have some contacts obviously with Linux groups. I work at sometimes I talk with people in the government or with members of parliament or local people in administration, but it's all quite tough in the Netherlands, but still interesting to encourage people. I was at the TDF document foundation LibreOffice at the start back in 2010, got involved in the membership committee and always in the community, active in a bit of marketing, local activities, especially just meeting people at random and chatting how things go and what we can do together is something I like, maybe more chatting than working, but some other people may think I'm lying there. But anyway, it's always good to have contact. So it's obvious that the last two years are a set time for me and many others. Oh yes, we meet in the Netherlands and we have marketing communication and we do some QA. I did quite some QA a long time ago and worked in the membership committee for the document foundation and I joined the board some two years ago, four years ago. I have my small company doing a lot of work in the Netherlands for small, very small companies, companies and sometimes for local administration or sometimes some huge, let's say government institutes in the Netherlands, so smaller and larger customers mixed. The last two years I'm my biggest customer, as I say, is a collaborative productivity. I know many of the people from the start of TDF and even longer and I help them with doing marketing stuff. So happy to be here again and hope to be on the board. That's it, I think, but maybe there are questions or later on in the evening. Maybe later, it seems. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so next is Candy. Usual introduction also for the recording or something about you and something about your idea for the board. Okay, yes, thank you so much to all of you that you have managed to join this meeting and that you are willing to listen to us here. So I'm Jan Holiszewski, many people know me as Candy, mostly on IRC and Chats and everywhere like in normal communication. I live in Prague in the Czech Republic and like I've been an open source contributor for decades now. I've joined SUSE in 1999, like in November it was just 22 years, yes. I've started contributing to OpenOffice.org at the time in 2003 doing some KD integration and stuff in filters and many other things. And yeah, with LibreOffice, like I'm from the very beginning, I was like among the founding members in there. So yeah, with Thorst and Thor and others. And yeah, primarily I'm a developer, but these days like that is not that much that I would be touching that much of the code. It is more that I'm helping others in my team in collaborative productivity to like get started in LibreOffice, like when they are new developers or help the less experienced developers become more experienced developers in general. So mentoring and welcoming newcomers is something that I very much like doing and focus on at all. And this is also why I would like to join the board of directors actually, so making it easy for contributors to make things done. So that's why I would like to join the board. So I think that's it for me. Thanks a lot. Any questions for Candy for the moment? Don't be shy. I don't know if Alexander has a question, for example. And anyway, he was asking if the provided questions written once will be followed or not. I mean, I think that they already answered yesterday, but obviously maybe that are almost surely Alexander wasn't there. So the question is, I don't know if it's the case or not to repeat those lies or maybe just forward to the recording, for example. So for the questions from Alexander, we didn't use his set. So we can directly have the questions today and let him clarify more if something is needed on the answers. So let me start directly with Dosa. And as we were doing also Monday, I will also copy the questions directly in the chat. So it's easier to read and it's also better for the recordings. So the question from Alexander, this one was the first one. And let me also read it. The question was, how do you envision a LibreOffice in the SO and Enterprise as a tool to do actual work or a functional clone of Microsoft Office? And for SO, I suppose it's a small office or office. Anyone from the candidates that want to answer? Can answer if you wish. Okay, raise your hand. Dosa was first. Okay, then raise my hand, but I raise my voice. So I'm not sure I really get the distinction, but maybe you could clarify a little bit. As a true tool to do actual work versus a functional clone of MS Office, which tends to imply that you can't do real work with MS Office. Is that what you're asking or? We can't hear you, Alex. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah, okay. I activated the wrong microphone. It is this. From my little perspective, I work in a relatively not so big organization of about 100 people. I do ET there. And obviously, it's a Windows environment with MS Office. And here and there, and there are some uses of next cloud as an example, but mainly is very standard. But fortunately, they chose not to use 365. So it's only the standalone applications. And I tried to speak with the manager endorsing LibreOffice, but it's very, very difficult to even start talking about it, because we experience a number of problems with MS Office. But those are always dismissed as little things, but they are not always so. And trying to introduce thinking about a change, because I know that it's not big, but it's not a small office. And so it's quite complicated, because there are always many tunnels here and there. And I say that the real problem is the file format, not the program itself. But the fact that it is very difficult to track the changes in the XOML format, that's very, very difficult. And it shouldn't be so, because what's wrong is a proprietary format and not the user and not the application itself. So if any program was able to read and write correctly the standard format, the playing field would be level. And all the efforts should be directed towards the development of the functionality of the software and not, as it's the case, using a lot of development resources that are precious towards seeking of interpretation of the proprietary format that's hindering, in my point of view, the development of the office, because it's forced to go round and round and not focus on the primary applications. What do you think? Yeah, so that's quite an all-encompassing question. And so the thing is that as a director of TDF or on the board of TDF, the actual influence on what the community does and therefore how the, let's say, products, it's not a product, it's more like a project. And the side effect of that is downloadable products that you can run. But the influence and the impact of the board is actually not that large in my experience. So the project does what the collection of all the people are doing. And therefore, and of course, the board can suggest things, the board can perhaps direct a certain amount of resources. But at the end of the day, that's questions we need to discuss inside the community, where people would like to see the project go and what's actually needed. And in my personal experience, as someone who did quite a bit of migration work and also worked with customers who've already migrated, the realities out there is quite a mess and quite difficult. There are organizations where the only way to get liberal office in is by being able to interoperate with Microsoft documents. So cutting that off cuts off those opportunities because it's a step change. If you tell somebody who wants to migrate, throw away all your old documents or laboriously redo them or kind of retype them or convert them into OEF, they will say, well, this is just too much work. Can't we just do it step by step, little by little? On the other hand, of course, you're right. It is a nuisance and you're fighting a massive uphill battle down as a project because there's an entrenched monopolist, convicted monopolist with billions of dollars that they can stick into development. And we're kind of always been trying to follow that. But I don't think that's a question that the board would ever have a solution for. We can perhaps provide a vision there where we would like to go. My personal vision clearly is to be this Swiss Army knife to try and understand, read and write every possible office document form and out there and be as compatible as humanly possible because that's actually what's really super useful. That's why liberal office is the premier choice. If you want any document conversion, all those services that gets to PDFs out of your email attachments are actually running liberal office in the back end most of the time. Even Google Docs is running liberal office to convert all the formats that could be bothered to write a converter for and produce only F. So if it's not really an answer, but it's a reflection on the question. Now, I understand that it's massively complicated and it's an act of balancing priorities and everything. But as a standard, while the Microsoft format, it's not. It's so frustrating. I'm personally deeply, deeply, deeply connected with ODF. I've been on the TC since 2008. I just left it and had one of my engineers join because I just didn't have the couldn't afford the time that takes anymore. And it's just so much cleaner as a format. But the reality is out there is like, as you say, trying to find balance. Thank you. Thanks. Hi. Yeah, I mean, you touched a few kind of opportunities and issues that I think is going to have to deal with. Well, I've been personally involved naturally campaigning for ODF when I was in the UK. So I was one of the guys that being such a pain in the arse to the UK government that they accepted actually to adopt ODF at the standard file format. I mean, I saw real pain with the European Commission. So now they are working naturally on various, let's say, opportunities. They are not saying yet that they will adopt ODF, but I think there is there is a good chance that it's going to happen soon. And I saw because I've been in such a pain with them that finally they updated the Libre Office that they have in their up, up store, the internal up store, the European Commission. And this is something that is happening all over various European institutions. I do agree that it would be good to have Libre Office being compatible as much as we can every other week, if possible, with Microsoft format. Okay, but that naturally is a uphill battle, because every software they just decided to change something and, you know, something breaks. So they, their format, as you said, is not a real format. They still use the traditional format of their own standard. So they are not even applying the standard that they wanted to put together. From that point of view, there's an interesting incident that happened at the Libre Office conference in Rome, where I believe the Microsoft representative was going to talk about the big effort that Microsoft was making to adopt ODF, only way to become compatible with the F had issues. So I think she couldn't connect the laptop to the audio video system that we had in Rome. So at the end she did the presentation with my laptop with Ubuntu and Libre Office. And her presentation just loaded up very nicely. So she's been able to do the Microsoft presentation using what in a way they are fighting against. So in a way, interoperability still happened. But still, I believe that as TDF as well, we should get involved even more in the process of, let's say, setting standards for the, for the, even for the public sector. So promoting standards. At the moment I'm so involved with the coalition for competitive digital markets. We try to, in a way, change some of the rules of the digital market acts so that at this point we can actually implement proper interoperability also within document format. So you see that there are so many things that we go to fight against to try to get the result that they're not going to bring us to, you know, a level of, let's say, interoperability or market presentation where, you know, defined format, if the right one is chosen like ODF, then that won't matter in there. So you will be able to exchange your document with whoever, you know, prefer to use Microsoft Office and still use them in Libre Office. In terms of usage or Libre Office, well, I haven't been using a Microsoft product, I think, for the past 10, 12 years. So, you know, I don't have a Windows PC, even a home. We are all using between Linux, Maintain Ubuntu on the server's Debian and things like that. So even when I'm working, I have to exchange documents with various European institutions with which I'm working, for example. Well, they send me a DocX and I send them back on ODF. Okay. And after the first complaint, Microsoft Office will say, well, the file may be corrupted. They just learn to say, okay. And the document just opens without issues. Okay. So in a way, you have to, in a way, go through the first little issues and especially habits from users that they are used to use the icon to see those icons in the platform. And then after a while, things will get much better. Keep in mind, I think we recently announced in the blog that another German province is migrating to 5,000 users to Libre Office and Linux. They're probably going to do it in a more planned way than what the same Unik did, hopefully with a less kind of strict kind of use of only pure open source and so on, because a good mix is, especially at the beginning, is important. But I think that is going to be a great success that then going to help you as well, convincing your boss that he's most migrating. Yes. Yes. I hope it's a success. Yeah. It's getting easier and easier. Okay. Thank you. Next is Candy. Okay. So this question, if I understand that correctly, like you are mostly interested in the file format things. And so from my point of view, from my point of view, this is not exactly a question for the board. It is more a question for the engineering steering committee, because like board as the body and the people there should be mostly interested in the freedom and the community having the freedom to develop in the direction. And then of course, if there are decisions like what to do, actually, like if to focus more on like one thing or the other, there's this engineering steering committee to actually make decisions like if things are competing in some way. And concretely in this way of like what should we do more focus on the ODF or like support for the Microsoft Office format. So one thing that is essential in the engineering steering committee and when people are developing and the engineering steering committee is encouraging this is this like whenever there is a feature implemented that supports something in this that is in Microsoft Office formats, there have to be unit tests for that. And there has to be an ODF implementation. So there has to be like first of all, like some kind of like extension of the ODF that is only read by the office, but also like there has to be proposal for standardizing that so that like it properly gets into the ODF. So I think like it is it is not necessary to fight against extending the office in the in the area of the of the Microsoft Office formats, just because like people have the freedom to do that, like if somebody wants to develop that, they should, they have the freedom. But there are these rules, like that cannot be Microsoft Office only, like it has to improve the ODF as well. So it's this fact that it's it annoys me so much. And you just said it that as soon as there's a new characteristics in coming from office, whatever it is, we have to implement it. And it seems like a game of cat and mouse and and and big M is playing with introducing those differences, maybe just to make difficulties. So that's the thing compelled to accept every change and make it ours. That's the same thing. Like we do not have to like nobody forces us. But like when a volunteer comes or you know, a company that develops for a liberal office comes and decides, okay, like, we just need to do that. Like we have a customer who wants wants this or a volunteer decides, okay, well, I've got a presentation and I just cannot read it. And I want to implement this. And we say, okay, you have the freedom to do that. But like if you decide to do that, like you have to extend the ODF as well, so that it is interoperable, and it's good for ODF. So we are not forced to do that. It is that people just come and and have various motivations to do that. So that's what I wanted to say, like, it is not that like somebody, somebody from board would would come and say, like, you have to you have to implement this and that like, not like that. Nothing is in those terms, but in the in reality, it seems that there's an excessive amount of pressure on following every change. And maybe it's easier. So to lose focus on what other community we are doing. But it's only the off the only that went on a far from it's not to see it's a to zero some game. So it's not like you have this volunteer who does either this or that or that. It's the volunteer that comes and wants to do this one thing. So so it's not that you lose something by this person doing that because this person wouldn't be doing anything. So so it's a bit it's a bit more difficult. Of course, you're not wrong that that broadly, we could do other things there, but it's also not like tell them off like no more Microsoft support. And then suddenly we would be having lots of people that would be doing great feature workouts. I understand, but I briefly got through the release notes of the latest release. And there are many, many, many improvements on the interoperability with the kicks. And it's okay. But at the same time, it's so it's also how to say not enough focus on on the core applications. Because development resources are limited. And if we if we do refinement work on on on the on the Microsoft format, it's all energies that we cannot use to implement new functions on our own. Or, or am I wrong? I'm not a developer. So it's I know it's complicated, but from outside. But but I agree with Austin here that that like it is not that like these developers like who are like fixing something in interoperability would like suddenly like if they didn't like include in the property would would like improve something. So it's like something like related to ODF or you know, I don't know, recreate the UI like from scratch or anything like that. So like they have various motivations. And like for companies, it is usually that they have a client that that just is interested in this or that thing being fixed in their documents. So so like if the customer wants wants this, like it's it's hard to to tell them, okay, well, you know, I know that like this presentation doesn't work for you. But like, we can offer you that people recreate the menu a better way. So yeah, I understand. But just to like from that point of view, the ideal would be, of course, to improve the graph is so much that like people love to use that. And like, you know, the adoption comes like from the bottom up. So like people are used to using the office at home just because like they love it. And they like create pressure in their companies, okay, like you want to use the office here as well, because it is much better than Microsoft Office. And of course, like we as developers can only find that like by using Microsoft Office from time to time as well, so that like we have to compare it. Also, we have to use the Google Docs from time to time. We have to use like other office, office students to see like how they are doing to be able to see like where we are lacking as liberalism. Yeah, and they're on some workstation. I installed the liberal office to do things that weren't possible with Microsoft Office. Yes. And there are many, of course. This is very rewarding. But at the same time, I see that maybe 95% of all the documents that I see, which are not particularly complex, don't cause any issue in being read by the liberal office. There's always the funds problem, but it's an entire level. So let's try to follow a bit the order. Next was Carl. Yeah, thank you, Marina. Yeah, it's a bit a mixture of things, Alexander. It's issues, you say, and can you say, there are the qualities of liberal office on its own. And yes, of course, open documents is the best way to go. On the other hand, many people are just forced to use Microsoft Office files because they get them from left and right, etc. So having the possibility to improve one thing and the other thing all can be important. And sometimes, indeed, there are customers, larger organizations or whatever that pay for improving working with Microsoft file formats, which is useful. And another thing is that the document foundation does have tenders once in a while for various stuff, making things in the community possible with tooling, or sometimes improving things, very specific things in liberal office code that are really needed and somehow are not worked on. So it could be that for some parts the route that the document foundation does some special tender, some special projects to encourage developers to work on better handling of Microsoft formats. That's possible too. So there's not one single solution. It would be ideal if authorities, if government, move to open documents fast. But reality is that it goes slow and when they say they will, then it takes another three, four, five years in which Microsoft lobbyists or sorry, people informing about Microsoft Office will make it go even slower. So that's offering good stuff to people and encouraging them to enjoy liberal office. That's the basis. And then when we improve step by step, I'm sure it will only get better. Okay, thank you. That's my hope. Next is Karla. Yeah, just to say that I initially worked on the Microsoft Word import and export filters, the binary format, not the contemporary XML one, some kind of familiar enough with the complexities of that. And one of the issue courses that novel out of what's in the specifications doesn't really help you in your implementation. So for example, if you've got a text box that's five centimeters wide and it has a one centimeter wide border, where does that one centimeter wide border go? Do you center it over that nominal five centimeter wide border area? Or do you put that centimeter outside the box or inside the box? All that information isn't captured in specifications. So, you know, as a more processing file format, what you need for layout to actually make it the same as Microsoft Word isn't captured in the docs, which you know, you're always going to have problems there. So, you know, you could lobby to say, you know, Microsoft, you're going to have to document far more of how your layout mechanism works, so that we can actually interoperate properly with you and just state that what's in the specifications isn't really, you know, enough information to, you know, for somebody to compete against you properly, you know, you can make that argument. But the other thing that you said, which I think is very the second part of your question is something that I think is important is that, you know, the original intent of those import-to-export filters wasn't for constantly importing and exporting and importing and exporting. The hope was that you'd import your documents and then you'd live inside a Libre Office and that was your environment. And occasionally, you'd export some poor misfortunate who hasn't decided to migrate it. So, the fact that they can even be used at all for constantly round-tripping is a testament to how good they are. But that wasn't, you know, that's not their core strength. There's always going to be problems there. So, yeah, so if you made a bit better Libre Office so that people use it, other people want to use it too, then your interoperability problem goes away. That'd be, you know, the ideal scenario. So, yeah, I can see your frustration that what you would prefer is people just to make Libre Office better and all those resources that are in interoperability, if they were redirected towards, you know, making a better product, then maybe that would be a nicer thing. I can, you see, we see that happens to other other applications. I mean, people like Keynoto from Apple, they don't care about import-export. You know, you're part of the Apple infrastructure. You've drank the Kool-Aid. You love Apple so much, you don't care about any of the other products. I don't see people complaining that much about Google Docs. I mean, once you ring Google Docs, they're trapped in there. They seem delighted by that. So, yeah, we obsess about interoperability. Another thing other applications don't, and it seems to be okay for them. So, yeah, I see that. The other thing that I would say is that with interoperability, while all these things are probably not really fully relevant for the board, what might be working on, you know, for the board to think about is what happens when Microsoft changes their default font in Office 365. We don't have font-building expertise in our community. So, we probably need to think about that, what we're going to do about that in the next couple of months really. I yield the floor. Yeah, I'm sorry. Especially when fonts are not free. And so, they can't be appropriated, right? So, it makes it still more complicated. Yes, okay. So, this question really comes into my alley because in the last five or so years, this is what I have been doing. Understanding thousands of documents. Why do they work? Why do they not work? What can we do inside LibreOffice to make them work? And how to improve LibreOffice? So, I'm pretty, pretty convinced that we should definitely improve interoperability. And the team I have built in this proves that this is entirely possible, because we had only one experienced developer. Last name was Orans Vorbord. He's just not here right now. And he built basically completely new developers from total beginners. And we had achieved so much, so much improvements in terms of interoperability that we started to hit the walls of LibreOffice's capabilities. So, we could not implement something interoperability-wise because LibreOffice did not have the feature itself. So, in some areas like charts, we hit that. And also change tacking was another offender. I would like to tell everyone here that improving the interoperability is absolutely a must if we want to remain relevant. And I would like to try in the future years convince everyone that this is the way forward. When our project started five years ago, I was told that my approach to convert everyone to ODF is just simply not going to work. People who told me this were not developers from LibreOffice or experts by any means from programming side. They were public administration people. And they said, Gabor, either we improve this software or there is not going to happen anything. And I think there is so many, so many other small and big enterprises who are not with us exactly because of this. The way they see the world is that they have a working solution which is Microsoft Office. And they may like it or not, but that's what they have. They have invested very, very many work hours into creating existing documents. Those documents are valuable assets. Their value is the wage of the person who made them multiplied by the hours they made them. If we, the LibreOffice software, makes any mistakes either by opening it or by saving it, then we are destroying value. And this does not really scale when you have 10,000 users in a single organization. So this is why we need to improve interoperability. And I am fully convinced that this is possible. Another thing or worry of yours is that Microsoft is changing up the format all the time. No, this is not happening. This is not simply this is not happening. Since 2010, they are investing very, very little into changing up things. I have seen it because most of our users used 2010 and we had newer versions in the company. And it was not changed out. Things that were features of Microsoft Office 2010 are mostly the same in new versions that they still don't work in LibreOffice. Despite that, we have this reference since 10 years. So it's not a real huge change since 2010 or so. But our difficulty is that we are not capable of offering the features of 2010 Office head in the first place. So if we reach that level, we are fine mostly. So I think that's my idea on this question. Before giving the scene to Gabriel, please have a look at the chat because there are two questions around documentation. So when answering, in any case, try to always answer with your potential director head and not just as a developer. Because in any case, that will be the role in the board that you will try to cover. So don't think only on the technical side of the question. I would ask something like since there are many questions raising up, I would suggest to be a little bit shorter on answers just because otherwise there won't be enough time for everyone to answer. So I think that if you can, please try to be shorter and allow all the others to reply to all the questions that are rising up. Thank you. Yes, so I think that almost all that has to be said about this subject was already said. But I just want to underline that the interoperability is very important as someone who migrated from Microsoft Office to Liberal Office. I encountered some issues and I know people who wanted to migrate to Liberal Office. Let's give a try, something like that, encounter all kinds of issues. And they decided to go back to Microsoft, which is a pity, but this is the reality. So I think that interoperability is very important to encourage people to give them a smooth path to open a document format to Liberal Office. This is what I wanted to say first and second. I don't think that interoperability to control of the entire development. I think that sometimes in some versions, probably interoperability is more important or developers manage to finish more stuff on that topic. But I think that the development of open document format and or the work on the document format and interoperability are going in parallel, but sometimes it happens that one of the sides, let's say it takes control, but I think that this is just an impression. Okay, thank you. Okay, sorry. So very quickly, I don't want to touch the first question because mostly of what I would like to say as already being said, that's it. I think interoperability at the moment is a must, unfortunately. I would love to see all the people using ODF, but that's probably not happening at least in a short time. And key to this would be to have it as a standard format from the public and politics mostly. So that's it. We have to deal with interoperability if we want to get more contributors first and then have a bigger community. So that's only where I would like to leave that. So for the other questions, I was overseeing the documentation team. So I have to say that the documentation team does a pretty heavy job and pretty fine job, to be honest. The point is there's, as always, a balance to be done in what the people that is using the documentation wants. So for once, I completely understand that probably people are much more pointing out to the web resources, much more than the printed one, or let's say, more a book for something like that to print out and something about that. So yes, there's this issue where there are people that needs something much more lighter and much more readable, much more accessible than a book, a digital book, to be honest. There are people that instead prefer to print out these books and just read the documentation from there, having the documentation like maybe you can see up here, I have some books and I try to check it out sometimes. So that's something that we have to balance out anyways. Printed books and something very, very formatted will not die in sometimes in a short time. Either we have to improve much on the web part. There's the online help, which helps, but it's not documentation, to be honest. Well, it's not formal documentation, let's say. The other question was about what would you do to increase the number of companies of the ecosystem? Oh, and the strategy to increase the ecosystem from Europe? Well, there was another question before, sorry guys. There was also a question, what would you like to improve support for languages other than latent script in LibreOffice? Well, I have to admit, I am not technical enough and I don't understand the issue too much, to be honest. I know there are issues because also Shinji prepared a lot of slides about issues with the Japanese and the more oriental languages, to be honest. I started trying to analyze them and probably there's some efforts to be put there in terms of mining, in terms of socialization of some development or something like that, which we should have to check about that. So the other issue which was underlined by Olivier, sorry, I'll try to get shorter and then I leave the question for the others, but I would like to touch all the questions. So Olivier said there's a concentration in ecosystem, which is similarly true in the last 10 years. There was some somehow a shrink in the number of the companies of the ecosystem. We try to brainstorm also on this board on how to increase that presence. We come to some conclusion, we had some right ideas, to be honest. That unfortunately didn't came to life mostly because of time and other efforts, to be honest. But anyways, there was the idea of having a book to introduce people in developing and guide them through the first steps of developing. So that was one of the ideas. My point on that is that the developer buyer is probably I in the project and that's why we have checked about that. I'll leave that to there because I know that our other people want to reply also. Thank you. Thanks. Next is Thorsten. Okay, thanks a lot for all the questions. So I think I would start from the bottom, so I will work myself up so I can maybe cover the last questions a bit more, which was Olivier's question about how to grow the ecosystem and what to do, how to prevent concentration. I think it's a difficult question in a way that I don't think it's even, I wouldn't probably even agree that there is excessive ecosystem concentration. If you compare that with the early days, there were mostly Linux companies having developers on payroll and then there was a relatively small volunteer developer base and of course, there was the existing open office volunteer, QA, translation, documentation, etc. group of people. But if you look at the ecosystem, I wouldn't say it's smaller. I mean, we have large and small companies there. We have some shining bright examples of government actually paying developers directly by hiring them. From the bottom, so if you ask for how to grow an ecosystem, the easy answer is just make it very attractive to be part of the ecosystem. If it pays off, if it makes business sense to be there, then people will find companies. There's a very large roster of certified liberal office developers. There's migration and training professionals, all of that form the business ecosystem. They earn money most of the time with their work. And I wouldn't say that has shrunk over the years. I would probably venture the gas with if you count open office Sun Oracle IBM to the larger ecosystem, I would agree. If you're not, then I don't think we're much smaller than if at all smaller. On the other hand, never rest on your laurel. So on the question of how to grow that, just make it attractive. If it makes business sense, then there will be new. I mean, it made business sense to me to continue with liberal office consultancy. So I took my life savings and invested it and found the company and hired out all the people there. And I'm sure this can be replicated. So you need a certain climate there. You need to make sure that there's space for ecosystem companies to earn some money. I mean, somehow the money needs to come from somewhere. And that's what TDF also did in the past years. Kind of tell people who are using liberal office in their business, like depend on that in an enterprise or in the government, then it's kind of that they should be encouraged to actually contribute back. And it can be by hiring developers that can be by paying companies. But just the free riding on the work of volunteers and the donation of many, many, many thousand people worldwide. If you are an enterprise is kind of not cool. In terms of how to increase the ecosystem out from Europe, I don't think that is perceived. So I see that I know there's, for example, professional development happening in Asia with paid developers. It's essentially the same recipe, like make it worthwhile, make it, if it makes business sense. And the good thing with something like liberal office is that you can perfectly work on that project remotely. So if it makes business sense to found a company in Taiwan or in China or in, I don't know, Australia to serve local customers, to serve local clients or the government with liberal office technology. People will probably found a company and then hire developers and another staff to fulfill their needs. Replying to this before moving to Candy, as a member of the board, I mean, it's clear that you would like to see also as a company ecosystem member, you would like to see TDF like a place that is attractive, but with your board hat, what you could do, what you want to do for making it is happening. Yeah, so I think continue on the path that we started, which is clearly differentiate between the many use cases for liberal office and leave space for companies and also make companies discoverable, make businesses discoverable. So essentially, what we're doing already have this professional help page, have this liberal office technology brand, kind of make companies who work on liberal office do something great, make them visible and leave some space for them to earn money. And that can happen in very many ways. There can be like purely consultancy that can be training migrations that can also be product like being able to build a product and not being squeezed out of that market, not being competed away out of existence by TDF because TDF or the liberal office, it's kind of the duality, but liberal office is that's my conviction is not a product. It's a project that happens to have side effects in terms of downloadable, installable products and trying, so the moment TDF tries to be a product company, that will start to be very unattractive for companies then because it will be very hard to compete with that brand and that reach of TDF. So I think one of the recipes to try and to leave a bit of space for everyone is if TDF really focuses on the project and to foster it and fostering means fostering like all the people that happily work on the project that is volunteers and that is companies. Where are you positioning the volunteers? I find it sometimes hard to make this distinction between a volunteer and a non-volunteer, so I'm clearly volunteering my time, my money to the good cause of open source and liberal office in particular, so I think it's not necessarily helpful to have this two cams with a fence in the middle. Many of my engineers are actually spending most of their free time, most of their spare time doing liberal office stuff, so there are volunteers in the way and so am I, I mean the board work and all of that is not paid time. So hand over to Kendi. Okay, so I wanted to focus mostly on this documentation question because it's a great one, so like many years ago I was involved in trying to improve the documentation from the like infrastructure point of view, so first of all like what I was involved is was tried to actually convert the help system into some kind of a wiki that would be like much easier to extend like from the for the outside people. Unfortunately like the wiki way didn't work out as a good way, but instead like we were working with Olivier, hello, hello Olivier, so on on like extending the XHP file format for the help with the vision that over time like we would be able to merge the books and the the help into some like common base that would be possible to like so that like the information would be like in one large large thing and then like there would be some additional markup in there that would that would allow you to say okay so I want to generate from this this knowledge I want to generate the help for LibreOffice or I want to generate a book from that or or this so so it was the vision like back back when I was was was in the board and would be just awesome to be able to continue this so being able to to move into into the world like where we have the information we have it like in some some file format from which like we are able to generate not only the books but also the the web pages or or the help in LibreOffice itself so that was this question I don't know if you want to reply to the other questions or I'll hand over to Paolo okay I so I think I think like I have not that much to add to to the question from from from Olivier because like Thorsten himself explained it well and Thorsten himself is is like a great example of of somebody who just went into into this this uncertainty of like creating an ecosystem company around LibreOffice and it is just just awesome what he has done here so and I have nothing to add there about the RTL that's an interesting question and goes again like in the direction of like how to how to actually motivate volunteers from areas like that that are actually using the RTL so like how to make it attractive for people to actually like contribute and it is hard to decide like from me as a European like what actually motivates motivates like Arabic people to to to actually like contribute into into into the open source project like I know like what worked for me like why I started contributing to LibreOffice or open office at the time but like contributing myself because because like I I come from some some like like cultural cultural environment but like most probably the motivations for for people like in the RTL countries are slightly different and so it would be great to hear from you Hossein like what what are your thoughts like how how it came to you that you like become interested in LibreOffice in the first place so that like you were able to to become the the community architect here so and like how to find like like-minded people as you so that like from from there there could be potential volunteers who would who would who would love to to contribute their time to LibreOffice and potentially also like create an ecosystem company who would be able to to do stuff for the for for RTL. Randy I think that probably this is the question about you know giving more representative and more space to the Asian and other communities and so probably you're right meaning that we should try asking them why and how they got involved in the ecosystem or at least thousand volunteers and so on and because they probably better know how to let them be attractive to their communities and to their how to say culture okay if you find with that I would hand over to Paolo correct. Yep thank you well it's excellent I see that Candy with the kind of answer part of the my question well the the question I wanted to answer so it's excellent Candy is already busy with the documentation documentation side and I don't know if for example Hossain was wanted to already intervene on on the language side seeing that I think he's an expert in some of these languages. I saw he was raising his hand I don't know if so Hossain you want to intervene straight away? Yep thank you just wanted to say a few words one aspect is gathering users and developers from Asian countries and RTL and CTL and all the complex scripts that are not latin script and the other part that is important for me to ask from the board is the emphasize and only latin script languages and what from what I see the support for RTL, CTL is somehow less emphasized and as far as I see in tenders and other parts that is very important to create important features there's a lack of emphasize and these languages and there are many people out there that are potential users of LibreOffice that I think we should take more care and what I want to know is what you can do from the position of a board member to improve this situation so it's just like improving the company ecosystem we should have an ecosystem of people and developers and companies who work on this area because I think maybe more than one billion users are out there people out there that can be can be potential users of LibreOffice and with the board support icon I think this can improve yeah I mean I totally agree with you the number of potential LibreOffice users out there is huge especially in countries that don't use the standard latin language so that is for certain being able to actually do something with it to you know TDF can invest in it but we need us so probably partners that are able and you know have the expertise actually to developed for various languages that is absolutely certain so probably Hossain and others can probably participate to help out in finding additional partners or starting development or evaluating what type of tenders we can we can create to developing this in other languages regarding the other question so Olivier yeah I mean it's been difficult up to now to find new members so anyway commercial members of the ecosystem as also Miliano commented the barrier to start developing for LibreOffice is quite high naturally had a look at it so with other friends that check the code and there's a lot to do before you can actually start doing any development so it will be interesting to to see there is any other way to simplify you know they develop it in certain certain at least a certain area of LibreOffice it is just so true at least for what I've seen during this term the I mean the number of commercial ecosystem seems to be quite small so a big effort needs to be made to to increase the number because you know we lack in in a sense of diversity how to find them well well it's still it's a difficult difficult question because then at the end it's true that maybe there are other organizations that can grow and in a way develop their skills in terms of migration in terms of trading for LibreOffice in a way let's say that that is the easy part the development part is a bit more complicated that's why you know to help in a way the transition in a way to support us so the development I wanted to actually ask the board to invest in internal developers so while we are finding additional ecosystem members then at least we can speed up certain type of developments then in terms of the you know the relationship with the members of the ecosystem this is something else I wanted to let's say clarify because at the end there has been naturally developments of let's say extensions of LibreOffice for which there have been no clear rules when they happen okay when this development happened so then naturally that could bring to certain type of conflicts as it happened in the past and I would like to avoid that I would like to also to invest in certain projects but not sure to be able to for TDF to invest on the on those projects we have to create these rules so we can welcome this project and we know that at the end there will be a benefit for the commercial organization but so for the community of users many the many the users you know they are free users they want to be free to use the the platform without let's say commercial commercial connection so we got to be able to allow that so at the end these are so up to existing and future uh commercial about member of the the commercial ecosystem to find their business model because TDF has got some statutory goals we have to follow the statutory goals and we should not in a way hinder or in a way stop following those goals because that may let's say damage or may influence a business model that's being created a while back okay by a commercial entity so the commercial entities needs to evolve around us so the needs of TDF and the liberal office community okay paolo if you have finished i would hand over to uh kaolan and i'm praying again everyone to be shorter just to not to shrink your opinions but just to give more space to everyone thank you yeah i'll be very brief i'll just pick up one or two things about ecosystems and the like um i think one of the things that that strikes me is that we often see these announcements and they're often endorsed by the document foundation itself about large migrations and how great that is that for instance an entire state is moving over to lever offers and things like that i'm always very very worried when i see those kind of things i think it might be a good policy to at least only mention these things if we know their partner to wait for one of the you know professional support people and not say you know it's great and wonderful that the entire department of Quebec has moved over to Libre Office when it's been done you know completely on a shoestring by people who don't know what they're doing or what not to make sure that you know we say this is uh this is great news because we're a partner to one of the people in our list so we're confident that it's going to be a success so it'll be a kind of at least that we encourage people um to be part of of that support network um i think the other thing just uh on these or till and all the rest yeah those are specialized topics and i think maybe the sc and and the budget is probably where we need to go there and it is probably worthwhile you know considering what are their pain points there were shortage of developers in that or till with the shortage of developers in the database field and whatnot make a list of of those areas and prioritize them and we're thinking about budget tenders right you've been really really brief thank you so the next is uh Thorsten and then go okay so i won't comment anymore on on the sea because i think i'm at my point there i'm just to echo quailen um indeed the way to i think if you ask me as a board um or board candidate that i'm most happy to to um to put money there tdf money to to enable that sort of um that sort of community so so diversity inclusion clearly is one of my um um one of my my goals for for the next board term but only on this at the same time that that isn't something that we can as a board kind of wish into existence that's something that is probably a a technical process like qa product management dish like what is missing what is needed what needs to be done in technical terms and then like have it take its have the process some do its course which means take this to the ec first file some bugs maybe some meter bugs take this to the ec have a proposal have it costed estimated and then i'm i'm pretty sure that the board will be very very sympathetic um to fund that to enable that as as the board of um earlier boards did in other areas um but it's again that that should be something really that that that comes out of the community out of the existing people who work in qa who work in and ux who work in development um otherwise there's a fair chance of of us um doing something silly um because we don't really know about um all those intricate details and and was in us as a member of that community can play a great role there because you know exactly very likely what what what is missing what is needed and then we need to turn that into code or into a proposal for for code um the last question um which is the survey results about native language communities if you're often disconnected and not heard yes i think so i'm i'm instinctively instinctively i'm i'm aware of the problem since since very many years so i'm myself part of of the german community of the german speaking community and and there's always been this kind of disconnect language barriers it's a problem um that tends to be like like subculture subgroups and then you have like very few people who are then active on the international uh less and in the international community and over all those years i think the only solution that that i i came up with is like just just keep talking just invest lots of time into into talking and in particular into listening so so everyone on the board should really spend time to listen uh and and have a food or two in their local communities and if we don't have anyone on the board representing a particular community then those bridges need to be built perhaps by the mc board and mc probably could work much closer um in that regard and if all else fails then of course trying to find people who are um who can build those bridges and then include them some more in the conversation like regular invitations encourage them to to participate perhaps in board calls or or in other venues all those what what also what helps is having more communication and writing but it only goes so far so at least on the board most of the the the more effective meetings that we had were actually calls like video calls or in person meetings um this um there are platforms that that perhaps facilitate that so more or better than this plain old mailing list or irc or matrix chat so um but mostly i i'm i'm slightly skeptical of having technical solutions to uh uh social problems and it also includes like like machine translations which which i i mostly find hilarious um the results and that that tends to to actually um get people further apart because then then somebody talks and you get this translated thing and and you're like is this person mad but it's this person it's not it's just a translation tennis so yeah i think long story short i really don't have the the silver bullet for that except for just just just being being humans and and try to overcome and build the bridges and listen a lot um and and be aware of it like really every single time um be aware of the fact that um that that you need to work on including people i just can confirm that the mc is trying and striving to uh uh help in this obviously and uh also i would say that the session we are holding um probably they are going in that direction especially uh yesterday one you were there and you could uh you know see how effective was you know the um having a live translation by naruhiko was so kind to to uh volunteer for that and probably it could be a way much better than uh machine translating obviously and so count on us uh us obviously as far as we can and uh i would hand over to kore are you there kore yes kore is there talking talking to closed microphone never get feedback yeah talking about uh i think the document foundation is one of the uh the important things in my experiences that it's a unique combination of a lot of uh people with different interests things they like things that are important for them and i think that that that all comes with with different roles for example if if we look at the uh uh the effect of of interoperability uh developers are the people who have to be in charge in charge of development they have the knowledge of code they have the knowledge of product and and getting things fixed and improved there on the other hand business people are people who are able to to find business to organize it in a way and and to make money of that that allows them to be developers on the other hand in the community we have users who are important because they have ideas they can can help with documentation they can help other users and we have marketing people that are extremely uh people who love to talk to to bring across the message and and i think if if and and i think paolo also already also said it if marketing people go towards governments uh public administration who have the responsibility to to to to to take good care of of their public administration which is of which is of us all so if if we encourage public administrations as marketing people then they can come business from that and you see that in the ecosystem now and then that indeed from big uh uh big initiatives there that gives new uh development and and hopefully that that will grow continue to grow the ecosystem um so i i think it's really a natural way and and giving all the the the opportunity to do the role and to make sure that the document foundation is a place for sustainable development and where uh where ecosystem partners find a sustainable ground too that's one thing the other completely different thing is documentation what i see in in the documentation team uh active uh people but with their own likes uh they like to do this work and that work and it is like development people uh who do the work decide mostly in which direction it goes so might be uh indeed because of uh polls or a general move in in how public public works or development or that that within more discussions with other people etc we get the strong impression uh that that may be a different direction from what the people are doing already it could be good then maybe with an extra fund or project or whatever something we we could uh encourage them but in the end more than doing some encouragement it's it's not what we are able to do i think it's it's really the people who work that uh that make the direction that that it's the musicians who make the music is that something people say is something in that direction okay that's it i like this you know our figure of musicians thank you i tried even yeah great and i would hand over to my homonymous gabriel thanks gabriel so i'd like to answer to olivia's question about the ecosystem by talking a little bit about my experience so beside integrating the online application in our in our products i'm also trying to lobby inside my company to get more involved into uh into community at different levels from development side on promotion side on donation side and so on and in order to to get some success on this lobbying part well i need to to reach some levels of users of revenues and so on it's not it's not something it's not something simple so by uh trying to reach those those required levels i um i'm trying to diversify as much as possible the the way in which the liberal office application the online project is used in our applications and from this experience the uh rises the idea that we should try to get more involved in with with ecosystem partners and potential ecosystem partners by meeting them in the middle asking them discussing with them asking them and finding out what are their needs in in which ways the application can be can be used what are the strongest part of of liberal office what are the weakest parts what are missing and so on and and i think that we can do that by by organizing some kind of i don't know seminaries meetings in in in this in this direction about the excessive ecosystem concentration i think i think that our community has has an important volunteer part which can counterbalance this this ecosystem let's say influence what is the strategy to increase the ecosystem out of out from europe well i don't know very well beside my home and my city i don't know very well other parts of of the world especially regarding the the liberal office project and and the community but i think that we should discuss this with the with our local communities in different parts of the of the world and trying to get them involved maybe in the same way as i as i already explained a little bit earlier yeah thank you you welcome uh since there are no questions at the moment i have one no there is one okay from oliver hello what is the strategy to reach government which is exactly what i was thinking which is the the strategy to reach governments commissions uh international organization to leverage liberal office for the people and leverage business for the ecosystem it looks like he read in my mind because my questions were more or less these i mean probably uh my question that would have been uh if the board the new board has the intention to lobby somehow uh here and there are the various um you know governments and whatever because from my point of view um this would indeed leverage and and create the ecosystem because you know creating the demand obviously there will be an offer so Emiliano is the first one who raised his hand please go on which raised the end just one second before the question will come out but that's okay that's fine uh so uh anyways um that's a good question i think somehow the board says to um think of a way to interact with politics and with the public administration large uh large organization not for profit organization and so on and try to how can i say to to uh foster and try to get liberal office in a better position probably the efforts are there but they are not particularly um large enough let's say that more or less um that that's mostly it probably we have just to as someone else put it that have some priorities and try to understand where put our efforts on that's that's it uh i i see a lot of opportunities for tdf to to shine and i would love to hear the the opinion of everyone also on the local communities um my my original asking me originally asking for for the voice was about the diversity and inclusion point that marina brought up and torson explained about quite quite well to be honest i think that leaving out the local communities would be an error would be something that would would want wouldn't do much better to the to the community to the the foundation so yes we definitely have to check into how to better understand local communities and how to provide them for tools to be able to do their efforts i like the proposal from gabriel to be honest um let's work on that okay um the next in line is paulo just uh just a let's say a suggestion from my side probably most of the things we are seeing and listening probably they have been already said in the past but anyway we are here to to talk about that anyway so my proposal is whenever it will be possible again to travel probably could be a good idea to reach that communities in person you know sending someone from the board and uh getting in contact with them in their place iphone wants you to travel everywhere me too but i'm not in the board but as a member of the committee yeah yeah we we will invite someone from the mc great great thank you okay let's send over to paulo thanks yeah i mean uh being able to uh uh meet again i think is quite is quite important because uh it's it's like this uh for example i uh when i moved for the first time here in luxembourg uh you know i was able to meet with people network with people start to create in relations with with people uh and then when covid happened so just a year after i arrived then it made things a bit more complicated naturally uh because yes we can do these nice meeting but it's not the same thing so uh and and and i saw i'm trying maybe to create a community that then naturally will be linked so to the uh library office community because i'm trying to create a general open source community which is related naturally to the various projects uh that i'm bringing forward for example with gaya x and and uh interoperability and naturally replacement so the various vendors with open source plato so there's a lot going on now doing it online is is a bit more complicated but then everything hopefully within new year is going to open up and everything is going to happen all together so that's why at least i hope for the new year in terms of the strategy the question also from from oliver well the strategy is already kind of slowly happening so at least from from my side i've been uh in contact and working with european institutions local government to actually put in place you know various programs related to open source with then will benefit us so to liberal office in and in this community one of the uh the uh the effort that finally paid off is the uh upcoming uh back bounty on on liberal office which has been actually proposed by the european commission so the european commission reached out to me uh because we have already a relationship in relation to open source and the open source program offices which i attended to developers here in luxembourg uh uh you know asking if you will we wanted to do it so that is already a first result paying off from the the effort uh we should officially ask to the f invest more in this type of relationship management so invest more in being visible to this institution because then at the end when they see us where they see the large community that is behind the liberal office then actually it's going to be easier for them to trust us and start implementing liberal office as i said having been a painter so the liberal office is already in their upstairs so in the european commission upstairs so it's a good start we just to go to uh keep keep pushing then while we are pushing while we creating opportunity while we uh start converting while upgrading as i generally say uh more institution more government more organization to uh linux and the liberal office uh or liberal office on windows while they are so prepared to migrate to uh to to to linux then naturally that will create bigger opportunity and so for the uh the business ecosystem uh as i said i think the business ecosystem needs to actually find their path uh and actually together then being able to to to create opportunities instead of limiting tdf you know area for operation so that we don't overlap too much and uh you know in the in their in in their interest so that is something that anyway we're gonna have to work on so that the rules are gonna be clear uh for okay thank you paulo uh and now i think it's yes the the turn of tharston maybe okay thanks a lot um so first of all paulo i have to agree um the um the crucial part obviously um if you ask for strategy then um you need to be present you need to network uh and you need to be there invisible um to the governments and the organizations um and i also agree that perhaps that is a little bit underdeveloped um um on the tdf side because it's real work um and covered clearly didn't help there um on the other hand we are we are present and in some ways we are for example um a member tdf is a member of the open source business alliance but well there's certainly much much more that that we could do uh and and the the um the amount like the air's the air cover the the the the visibility that that we're having even in europe where um where the the the foundation has very strong um um backing um the board could do more there um when you look at the international landscape then um that that will be my second answer for that then tdf must rely on their local communities and i think that's also probably the answer in general that tdf and liver office has been strongest um when when we were like relying and and and enabling um the the very many like hundreds hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of people worldwide that is our community that far far exceeds anything the the the ten people on on the board could ever do even if you add to that tdf staff so so the the reach and and the the power that the community has um really far exceeds what we could do that so actually i think that the best strategy um tdf or the board could pursue would be to enable um the the community like provide them with the needs like marketing materials um playbooks um reference stories like that it's also like that also works internationally like like that there's a great success story in france or in in the uk or in germany and then like bring that in a form that the people can can use that and approach their their own or or like let's say successful strategies in the past that worked for for some countries for some uh for some governments um and and that will be the meter strategy so asking the board to like have some minute strategy and then do this and this and that and then succeed um that's nice we should do more of that but i think that the the winning strategy is like leverage the community um and and that that might be different in in in taiwan than in in the us for example um but but listen to those people and then ask what they need and then provide them with that okay at the moment uh i second to that tulio and uh okay uh sophie is writing that um it's okay it's free but uh obviously then the board should uh support those uh local community communities too uh i would say yeah that's the given so the board so the my my prime so the primary role the board has is to enable community to work like if there's if there's if there's something that blocks community work the board needs to solve that enabling people to to get that their their their projects going that there will be my my if i would have just one sentence to describe board work there will be that okay uh can you raise this hand before letting me speak uh i had a small question about you know we are talking about lobbying and talking and presenting the foundation and being present with the foundation in the governments and whatever what do you candidates think about for example is just a proposal or maybe a provocation if you wish having a staff member appointed to that someone who is who was you know the really the task to uh attend such you know governments and meetings and uh so on and regularly and to to lobby and to let's say prepare the market and prepare you know the the ecosystem as well candy okay so before you add in this additional question i wanted to add that that the one like additional thing like how to how to enable and help the local communities is actually like make as many things in the board as possible in the open so so that like people do not feel like the board is some you know close detached group that does something inside and like why we need the board in the end like because like in the board minutes like there is oh well this was private this was private this was private and that was private so so i think that if we if we were in the open that would help that would help understanding that the board is there to listen to the communities yeah i obviously do agree this is sure and probably this is the reason for which some communities are you know slightly and slowly becoming far you know going far from the from the project and from the tgf then it's the turn of Thorsten who raised his hand yeah i so for once i i probably disagree with you in the young that's that's not happening very often um the problem is that it would be if you have one person doing that this person would be so so i i know effective lobbying lobbying persons but they are very very close to to one country usually or or to to one city let's say Brussels like EU lobbying and actually what we probably need is 15 20 30 kind of like this people like all over the world so and it would i would then have the feeling that would be unfair so that if we would have somebody in Berlin then the rest of Europe and the rest of the world would look at it and be envious or if we would have someone in Brussels then the the the Asian community or the the American community would look at that and wonder whether whether then again if it helps why not let's try it but but i think broadly as tdf but we should try more to to to balance out rather than to focus more even more on one single place my my instinct yes but probably as Emiliano has just written you know having just one probably wouldn't be enough but it's surely more than having known so and it's a starting point from my point of view and what also i could say to a kurad is that where i say having one appointed to that as a staff member would be a way to be sure of having a presence then we already have volunteers just like paulo for example but also franklin and many others who are already doing that so i mean what i mean is that we have people volunteering for that but i would like to know that if we don't and anyway we have an official person in charge for that so he could or she could help the volunteers of for example whenever they need some help and go there and whatever by the way time is really running out so i would say that the next paolo isn't it uh yep no car sorry carry was okay yeah yeah i i i think lobbying is great stuff i as i said i talked with the members of parliament now and then but also i've seen when i was a member of the regional panel met myself a long time ago i i see how real professional lobbyists spend time and build relations and and that's close to what has been said that you need basically someone in every town or whatever and it's hard to do and that's one thing the other thing is is i think it's primarily a question that belongs to our marketing team uh where they where they say see great news uh needs uh and and really by as open source communities uh bring the efforts together because then we can be most effective having said that that that may be putting some extra let's see if we can bring some extra value to lobbying in the next board uh but it's it's a good thing to look at i i'm not sure if it will be really easy but but but maybe there are opportunities and because hiring someone and saying we do something that's quite easy but in the end we want to have a reasonable idea that when money is spent by tdf that that we can see oh yes therefore and therefore it really makes makes sense but thanks for the idea yeah it's probably you know again it's a starting point and it's an experiment we could do and uh and probably he or she could also travel hopefully according to the new rules and the the pandemic and whatever you're still volunteering i hear no let's say that i love to travel but i don't like so much politicians and so uh i could you know bring the the bags to that by the way paolo yes uh okay just to uh uh in a way bring us all my experience so why i'm talking you know with people at a certain level in various european institution because i'm a private citizen okay so if you write an email to the director of that institution or in the european commission your email is not going to go only to that person it's going to go to a team that's going to have to evaluate the email and that email is going to have you know it's going to create ripples around the institution if it's interesting okay so i as a private citizen sometimes have more influence than a lobbyist but i don't have to spend five million a year for a lobbying team the point is uh you know we should all be citizen lobbyists that's where we're gonna get the real results because if we we employ a lobbyist we're gonna have to spend millions to try to kind of open slightly a door to some people in brasil it's not gonna work the noise that we got to make is from the base so each one of us should actually say okay you know here are my MEPs in the in the parliament here are the people that matter the european commission uh or in in other institution you personally have to write to them okay so each one of us can be a lobbyist there's a lot more efficient than paying a professional so i would just be totally against wasting money for professional lobbyists uh then the other thing that we're going to be going to do naturally i'm personally following us so various other organization very other coalition that are trying to in a way affect amendments in the uh digital market act or similar uh laws that are coming along so we are actually working through the MEP to implement uh changes to these proposed laws so that our rights are being protected so TDF should be more present on that side so on the side where we can be visible we can see that actually we are we can show that we are actually protecting european citizen and i say european just because i'm looking at the perspective of the european uh uh market but for example as for yesterday we talked about japan as in japan they had you know they have some things about on which they can also act so actually take the example see what works here see what can be transferred there and vice versa same thing actually can be done in of the country in uh latin america you know we just got to discover what works in a specific country some of the countries may be a bit more difficult because the politicians don't have certain rules that go to they go to respect here in europe so naturally let's say the law beings should take uh other forms but still trying once again to go from the base so that is in a way the same effect that we go to create for the liberal office community to be part of the change so to be part of this just send an email a fax a letter to your representative to make them see that there are people that care about the real office that is how change seems to be happening or at least this is how i've been able to make it happen okay but also um we are going we are to be honest we are already out of time meaning that we are over time so uh i understand if someone have to leave and uh by the way i would like to quickly give the the microphone to uh who asked to to speak and then finally 2000 okay thank you so just if it comes to lobbying my experience i wouldn't say the poll was wrong but i don't think this is this is enough to get it working because uh you you need and what what you what you told us is quite right you know lobbying needs a professional support you have to have to be there as you can see perhaps in the efforts of e there is there is a professional who doesn't from from the morning until the evening nothing else than lobbying free software so this is probably not that what the pdf or the leader office project needs um the first thing which comes from ahead is if lobbying is successful it opens a lot of business chances so perhaps this could be more thing of the professional ecosystem at least to to think about what is the sensible lobby strategy to open these business chances and the second thing which comes to me is that it's quite useless to talk about lobbying uh without having a clear idea of what to lobby and in in my perception and listening to this discussion it could be perhaps a good idea not to think about lobbying about hey or f is the best thing you ever can do but more working on lobbying to foster the visibility of the professional support system uh the ecosystem partners from liberal office can offer because i think one one of the most uh breaking thing is that uh is the perception that this software is okay it's nice it's free but who helps me if i work with it who helps me to integrate it in my processes this is also a kind of a blind blind uh point in in uh in working on liberal office i've in my experience um the decision of of liberal office versus let's say microsoft office isn't isn't made by the product itself but by its integration in other solutions and this is this is also a thing we we have we have a real real big hole in our history because we have a great office suite but we have really it's really hard to integrate it in some professional business solution so i i don't know i don't know the answers on this but i think this this can be this can be things where the tdf may may have an influence on the development so lobbying would be more than propagating our professional solution our professional developers program our professional migrating programs and also to foster uh some maybe strategic enterprises to offer also an integration not only of microsoft office but also an integration of liberal office in their programs this could be i think this could be this could be a direction lobbying has to work thank you um this is kind of uh from my point of view are the chicken and egg problem because as i said before indeed lobbying probably would uh create the demand more demand and hopefully the offer but indeed it could become a problem because when there is the demand but there is no offer it could come indeed a big problem a huge problem it's all it's i think it's all great advice and when a new board is is is in place uh we will think about it and and when we have maybe we can when we meet we can have a a brainstorm session around him yeah i think we already talked about it that's why we actually started with the marketing and communication program uh which actually has been built and actually still progressive because in the uh uh it needs so the input from uh from other organizations so maybe i saw those that develop let's say they're commercial product based on liberal office but also by those that actually simply do training simply in a way training migrations and and and things like that so we go to get all this organization uh on board so that we can actually show that the uh the the offer you know follows the demand and this is let's say marketing in which on which we probably haven't excelled uh in in the in the past few years but probably we are already working on so that is not lobbying so lobbying is something which is different which i you know i let's say hate being called a lobbyist i'm not uh in a in a way because for me it's a dirty word being a lobbyist uh but anyway being able to promote uh you know uh uh our ideas and and and our plan that is important not as a lobbyist uh but or maybe in conjunction with other organizations that are really promote open source promotes digital rights and and this kind of things so we can work all together even without being in brasil so that's the important thing and then actually let's see how we can extend the marketing side to be let's say more seen uh one of my proposal was actually doing best in in in marketing that is very important for us okay paolo thank you um i don't know if tharsten wants to speak or otherwise we have also gabriel who raised his hand so probably make it short so i i'm just answering in the chat on this travel question i think that that's an absolute slam dunk home run so again that that's something that tdf is there to help with if there's if people can't travel because of random problems we should be there to help them and that's it's mostly an administrative problem and i think i'm pretty sure that we can somehow solve that by being creative and if we try what i suggested and let's try something else um but that should be clearly a priority if we can travel again to get people in one place and on the lobbying um question um it's kind of interesting to see that i my my proposal will be let's not fight over what we should do but let's try to do it all and let's try to leverage the community and all the great energies that we have and everybody's trying to do their thing and helping what they can do best and have tdf and the board um enable um the community work and yeah and good really good lobbying costs a lot of money and um so i think we probably from from the from the leverage that we could get uh trying to enable community i think is really the best we could do for the moment uh then we have gabriel who raised his hand i would just say something about the integration uh i guess was core mentioning about the integration no about i can't remember who was i'm sorry someone was talking about who was talking about the integration with uh with other products uh this is a point that we should also probably probably not now but care about because from my point of view also is something that uh let's say i also see this problem in my in my daily job and uh but we'll see you hopefully by the way gabriel your turn and probably the last because it was really really late thanks gabriel so about the strategy to reach government uh what kind of institution and so on one of the uh one of one of the advantages that librafis has uh is is that it is free zero cost and when we're discussing about the government's uh commissions we can go away even lower local local communities local institutions and so on i i think i i think we can one of the directions is is to to trying to reach those institutions which which for rich this is a major a major gain we can we can create uh we can we can enter into that niche and of course the application is not this is not the only advantage of the application that is free it is a very good application but by reaching to those to those uh let's say elements uh we can we can create a base of of of supporters we which can then by experiencing our application can can can promote by themselves uh to to another institution and so on so i think that we should we should not speculate this this advantage that the application has and this is uh just one of the directions thanks okay thank you really much gabriel and thanks to everyone who was attending as speakers as listeners as you know uh members interested and also community members interested in this talk we are over 20 minutes uh over the time which was uh scheduled so i would say again thank you all and uh see you tomorrow for the ones who will be able to attend and for the uh latin america session let's say at least us you know times not on thursday oh no sorry uh yes it's on uh thursday sorry yes okay i'm burned sorry it was an interesting a busy meeting thanks all indeed thanks indeed thanks so much thank you very much for everyone that participated it was fine bye bye thank you everyone bye bye thank you oh thank you thank you see you in the next meeting bye bye bye okay let's leave we have all the recording machine connected i don't know if we want to to uh capture the um the comments on the chat or i i took some uh i took some notes don't worry i also took all the the questions that would made okay great great recording in any case so there was the last one from from uh gustavo maybe that was uh well but it was discussed in the in the in the chat anyways but anyways yeah that's why i was asking if someone copied the the whole chat just because you know that were question and also answers and a debate on on chat yep um also thank you very much cloth for acknowledging that the recordings were fine oh great this time i have the full chat so now let's disconnect the last class this session so thank you thank you very much again for organizing just one point if i can yeah let's just try to coordinate more with that with the questions if we have a question and leave maybe one or two