Our membership committee has just published an updated list of Document Foundation members.
Author: Florian Effenberger
Statement about Oracle’s move to donate OpenOffice.org assets to the Apache Foundation
The Internet, June 1st, 2011 – The Document Foundation constitutes a global team of hundreds of developers working together to improve the LibreOffice product for the benefit of all users. We are governed by an open, and meritocratic community headed by a diverse interim Steering Committee, and a vendor neutral Engineering Steering Committee overseeing development.
Today we welcome Oracle’s donation of code that has previously been proprietary to the Apache Software Foundation, it is great to see key user features released in a form that can be included into LibreOffice.
The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects into a single community of equals in the wake of the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and norms – licensing, membership and more – to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all active community members to devise the best possible future for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.
On the bright side, one benefit of this arrangement is the potential for future-proof licensing. The Apache License is compatible with both the LGPLv3+ and MPL licenses, allowing TDF future flexibility to move the entire codebase, to MPLv2 or future LGPL license versions. The Document Foundation believes that commercially-friendly, copy-left licensing provides the best path to constructive participation in, and growth of the project.
Thus, the event is neutral for The Document Foundation, which – as always – remains open to every company, individual or foundation that wishes to participate in co-development. There has never been a better time to get involved and advance the state of the art in free software office suites.
TDF is therefore willing to start talking with Apache Software Foundation, following the email from ASF President Jim Jagielski, who is anticipating frequent contacts between the Apache Software Foundation and The Document Foundation over the next few months. We all want to offer corporate and individual users worldwide the best free office suite for enterprise and personal productivity.
Finally, TDF continue executing on our time-based release plan for LibreOffice 3.4.0, due out this week, while continuing work on our bug fix release train, with 3.4.1 due in a months time, as well as ongoing feature development for our 3.5 release.
About The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation has the mission of facilitating the evolution of the OOo Community into an open, meritocratic and democratic organization. An independent Foundation is a better reflection of the values of our contributors, users and supporters, and will enable a more inclusive, effective, efficient and transparent community. TDF will protect past investments by building on the achievements of the first decade, will encourage wide participation within the community, and will co-ordinate activity across the community.
Media Contacts for TDF
Florian Effenberger (Germany)
Mobile: +49 151 14424108 – E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org
Olivier Hallot (Brazil)
Mobile: +55 21 88228812 – E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Charles H. Schulz (France)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 – E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli (Italy)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 – E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
Lanedo supports LibreOffice
In our recent announcement of the Engineering Steering Committee, we wrote that Michael Natterer from Lanedo is having a seat in this body, contributing further to the development of LibreOffice. Here’s their statement of support: “Lanedo is proud to support LibreOffice, and participate in development and inside the Engineering Steering Committee (ESC)” said Martyn Russell, Managing Director, “our contribution underlines the quality and effectiveness of our software development and support services around LibreOffice.”
LibreOffice Hackfest in Munich
Together with their Linux migration team (LiMux), we’re planning a LibreOffice Hackfest in the City of Munich, Germany. To determine the best date for it, let us know all your possible dates! Like last time, the Hackfest is open for newbies as well as for routined hackers. More details will follow soon, but first, we need the date. So, let’s vote!
The poll is at http://doodle.com/i7pw9wubvdhdyzm4
NOTE: The Hackfest will run from Friday evening to Sunday lunchtime. For the ease of voting, we have just mentioned the respective Saturday.
Why TDF should be the place for one united Community
I have not been subscribed to the OpenOffice.org marketing list for months, but due to Louis’ recent Cc, I was made aware of the discussion going on — so, as a representative of TDF, but also as someone for whom personally the community means a lot, let me say a few words.
I indeed see the current situation as an ideal basis for uniting things. The diversity the Community is in now doesn’t help anyone. If you now think we, TDF, are happy and get satisfaction out of the current situation, you are terribly wrong. Even if we expected something like that to happen, our intention was to safeguard the project from this eventuality, not to profit from it.
We all have similar goals: a free office suite, available to everyone. So let’s not discuss about the past, about what has happened and about the reasons that led to this, but rather focus on the future.
I want to openly repeat our invitation to everyone to join The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice Community. Why do I think that we are the right place to continue the work?
In yesterday’s blog post, we summed up where we stand, and reading it will help to understand the current situation:
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/05/24/updates-on-the-foundation/
- We are vendor neutral. I am sorry that I have to object to Louis’ statement of us being a proxy for Microsoft — nothing can be further from the truth. I must confess, that by statements like these, I feel even personally insulted. I spend many hours per day on a pure volunteer basis, and if anyone can point on those of my doings that are proxying for Microsoft, I would be interested to hear them. Otherwise, I’ll ask to stop spreading those wrong assumptions — as they are simply that: wrong.
- We have a strong legal backing, not only by the German nonprofit “Freies Office Deutschland e.V.”, but also by the Software in the Public Interest (SPI), and we are on track with establishing the Foundation as a legal entity. Even right now, we have all options needed for dealing with legal aspects, accepting and spending money. We already can and do maintain trademarks, brands and other assets.
-
We have an independent infrastructure that works and is not controlled by nor depends on a single entity. In addition, as we are not using a fixed web framework, we are very flexible in what we do.
-
We have not only gained a lot of momentum, but also a strong developer base of more than 200 volunteers, amongst them 40 who contribute on a very regular basis. Yes, of course, any contribution corporations with paid developers do are highly welcome and help a lot — but already right now, we are in a status where we could drive the project without them, if the worst case would occur. This is something we never managed to achieve in ten years’ of OpenOffice.org.
When I first read the Oracle announcement from April, talking about an independent, noncommercial entity, my first thoughts were — and still are — “this is exactly what TDF is doing”. I have seen proposals of setting up another foundation, or moving to an existing foundation that is not TDF. Honestly, this does not make very much sense to me. It would again lead to a diversity, would require many efforts, and would continue to irritate the market at large.
Why reinvent the wheel? OpenOffice.org is already very special in many of its processes. Having it under the umbrella of another, existing entity, would require lots of changes to fit in there. TDF has, from the very beginning, been shaped as a new entity with processes that fit to what we have accomplished the last years. We changed things that didn’t work, and improved things that do work — isn’t this the best basis to build on? Let’s not waste energy in once again trying to fit under an umbrella, but rather work jointly together on our future.
I am not saying that TDF does everything right and 100% perfect. We are giving our best, and I think we do a fairly good job. I’ve seen comments that TDF is missing big corporate support, and that the whole ecosystem is at risk. Again, I consider this terribly wrong. Of course, we would love to have much more support from corporations already, but building this up needs time, requires trust and confidence, and after all, support is growing rapidly. If anyone thinks by setting up a new foundation or by doing a few phone calls you can get big corporate support, I must say that almost sounds illusionary. And does it really make sense that in the future, two entities will try that out? Wouldn’t it be much better to speak united, with one voice?
In my letter of resignation last October (http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@marketing.openoffice.org/msg11691.html), I’ve said that I am looking forward to talking again about options to cooperate. I feel that time has come now.
So, I would be really interested of what actually prevents from cooperating with TDF, and uniting once again. Are there any valid reasons? Let’s leave out what happened in the past — a lot of bad words have been said, but digging into that does not help.
What compelling reasons are there to not work together again, in one Community?
TDF is there, TDF is open, and to me, it would be the ideal home of a united Community. The decision about that requires no leader, but you, anyone of you, can make it on your own.
Our future can be bright. Let’s make it together.
Updates on the Foundation
Some time has passed since we announced that we reached the goal of our 50.000 € fundraising challenge. In the meantime, we’ve updated you on our legal process via this blog, and so I’d like to post another update on where we stand and what our roadmap is.
Numbers and Figures
Let’s have a look at the Community first. In one word: I’m overwhelmed. What’s going on, what progress we make, the amount of creativity, contributions and and support we receive is just beyond imagination. Although I’m not a friend of numbers and statistics, they indeed do greatly help to understand what impact the Community has, how large it is. So, let me allow to share the most recent numbers with you: We have nearly 70 mirrors worldwide, offering LibreOffice for download. Plus, we have now about 200 new code contributors, providing patches, features and bugfixes for LibreOffice, plus 200 localisers and QA volunteers. Roughly 6,000 people contribute to our mailing lists, and about 7,500 opted in to receive announcements on new versions and releases. Plus, we’re very much in line with our release plan.
Committees and Events
We’re also breathing life to the committees set forth in our Bylaws. Not only has the Membership Committee been set-up and approved the first members already, but we have also officially appointed the Engineering Steering Committee, consisting of representatives of various corporations and individual developers. These bodies reflect our vendor-independent, neutral approach and clearly show we are eager to not being dependent on one single corporation like it was in the past, but to have a truly open process where we work together with corporations as well as individuals in a healthy, friendly, environment open to everyone. Talking about corporations, we soon expect to have news on the set-up of our Advisory Board.
With regards to events, the Community has not only begun to be part of various trade shows and congresses, but is also starting to organize own events. From virtual meetings, like our QA sessions in IRC, and local events like the German Community’s QA weekend and project weekend to global events like our LibreOffice Conference, taking place in Paris in the middle of October. What we currently plan is a LibreOffice Hackfest, most probably in Munich, within the next weeks – details on that will follow soon.
And what about the Foundation?
I’d like to give you some details on probably the most interesting question: What’s the status of the Foundation? The Steering Committee has – as you all know – voted for a Foundation to be set-up in Germany. Before that was clear, we have already been working on our Community Bylaws, independent from local legal requirements, as other countries have been in the race for the location as well. Needless to say, the Bylaws have been worked on openly and transparent in our mailing lists. After it was clear that the Foundation will be located in Germany, we have been working on translating the Bylaws into German. Of course, this has been coordinated on our mailing lists as well, and not only did we receive feedback on the wording, but also on certain legal issues, that have all been incorporated.
What we now are working on are the so-called Statutes of the Foundation. Let me explain this a bit: In German law (and probably also in other countries), there are rather strict formal and legal requirements on the Statutes. The Statutes are being thoroughly checked by the government, and after they have been approved, despite minor changes, nothing can be changed anymore – this is to guarantee stability and safety. So, anything that we hand in as Statutes needs to be very well checked. In addition, there are some legal requirements on what needs to be in the Statutes (and is missing from the Bylaws), on what can not be in the Statutes (and is mentioned in the Bylaws), and what can, but should not be in the Statutes, as you cannot easily change it. One example for the latter would be adding various additional bodies and entitites apart from the BoD into the Statutes, as then it could get problematic later on to change them or add new ones.
So, what we will essentially do is taking the currenty Bylaws as a basis, and work out the basically unchangeable Statutes that will be approved by the government. In addition, we will work out some policy that will in addition serve as the basis of our doings, but can be changed easier. So, in a nutshell: The current Bylaws will be divided into two documents – one very formal and unchangeable, the other one basically changeable, but still serving as basis of our daily work. This will retain the spirit of the Bylaws, while giving us flexibility where we need it, and guaranteeing us safety where is is crucial.
Our lawyer is working already on the Statutes, and we expect a timeframe of maybe two to three weeks from now on until a first draft is ready. Some of you may ask now why things take so long, but this is – despite the fact that we do most things ourselves to save donations for a Community budget – explained rather easy: The idea of the membership that we have set forth in our Bylaws is legally rather uncommon in the way we handle it, so it requires a lot of time to be incoporated the way it serves the Community best.
Strong legal backing
Right now, TDF is backed by the German nonprofit association Freies Office Deutschland e.V. (“Free Office Germany”), previously known as OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V., as well as by Software in the Public Interest (SPI), where we are an associated project. This means that TDF has strong legal backing, not only for accepting donations and spending money, but also for receiving and maintaining any kind of legal assets, like trademarks.
Where do we want to be?
In parallel, the process of finding the ideal German federal state has been started. Although the Foundation law is very similar in many German states, the way it is handled on a daily basis in the various states can differ. After you have legally set-up the Foundation, you cannot move between states, so our decision has to be very well prepared. What, as far as we have found out in the meantime, is possible is to incorporate in one state, and have our office in a different state. However, this will complicate things, so we try to avoid that solution.
What is important for us when deciding on a German federal state? First of all, although decisions based on individuals are not desirable, having someone active on the spot, who is already involved with The Document Foundation and has experience in managing things, is very much welcome. Second, setting up in a place where open source is adopted and supported is a good sign and will contribute to a good local ecosystem. Third, in line with that, having support by the region where we incorporate is not absolutely necessary, but of course very much welcome and will ease things a lot.
At the moment, we are investigating three possible locations inside Germany. From north to south:
- The City of Berlin
Berlin is not only Germany’s capital, but also an important center of culture and technology, and many other Foundations are incorporated there.
The issue is that we have only very few active contributors there, which might make running the Foundation a lot harder. - the Federal State of Hesse with the City of Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt, is the location of the German association Freies Office Deutschland e.V. Hesse is known for being very liberal and uncomplicated in setting up Foundations. - the Federal State of Bavaria with the City of Munich
Munich is not only another important center of technology and culture in Germany, but also a symbol for free software due to their “LiMux” Linux migration project and their use of the OpenDocument Format.
About timing
I must confess that the whole process has taken longer already than I have thought, but as we are doing something important and with deep impact, and are keen of keeping the spirit of the Bylaws, using that time is justified. Our lawyer expects to have the Statutes ready within two to three weeks. Depending on how many changes we have to incorporate then, I am optimistic that we can hand in these Statutes for governmental verification in the next weeks. If all works out well, we could have our “Stiftung” (Foundation) during this summer.
Thank you so much for your invealueable contributions, your appreciation and your support – it’s your help that will finally make the set-up of the Foundation possible.