In 2022 we had with elections for the foundation’s Membership Committee, along with regular Advisory Board calls, and support for other projects and activities
(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)
Election of new Membership Committee
The mission of the Membership Committee (MC) is to administer membership applications and renewals following the criteria defined in The Document Foundation’s Foundation’s Statutes. It initiates and supervises the election of the Board of Directors, and The Board of Trustees elects from among its members the Membership Committee for a period of two years.
In August, we had live town-hall meetings with the Membership Committee candidates, in multiple timezones, to ensure that as many people as possible (both candidates and TDF members) could take part and ask their questions. We made video recordings of these meetings, and posted them on our video channels and blog, for those who couldn’t take part live:
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Voting tokens were sent out to TDF members at the end of August, and then the voting process began, running until September 7. Then, on September 9, TDF’s Board announced the preliminary results, along with a confirmation period.
On September 17, we announced the final results, with the following confirmed as Full MC Members: Miklos Vajna, Marina Latini (tied for first), Gustavo Buzzatti Pacheco, Gabriele Ponzo, Uwe Altmann. Deputies: Shinji Enoki, Balázs Varga, Ahmad Haris.
TDF would like to say thank you to all past and new members of the MC for their service to the community, and to all candidates for running.
Advisory Board members and meetings
The Document Foundation relies on its Advisory Board Members in order to receive advice and support. The Advisory Board’s primary function is to represent The Document Foundation’s supporters and to provide the Board of Directors with advice, guidance and proposals. Current members are Adfinis SyGroup, allotropia software GmbH, Red Hat, Hypra, Collabora, GNOME, Google, Kopano b.v., City of Munich (Landeshaupstadt München), CIB Software, IHC Invest Inc., Software in the Public Interest (SPI), KDE e.V., UK Government Digital Services, and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
Throughout the year, TDF had regular calls with representatives of the Advisory Board. Staff and Board members at TDF provided updates on the foundation, software and community, and described plans and activities for the future. Advisory Board members were invited to provide valuable feedback on TDF’s work, and various ideas and proposals were discussed during the calls. TDF would like to express its thanks to all of the members for their help and support.
Highlights of activities
Throughout the year, TDF supported – and provided information about – various campaigns and events, via this blog and our social media channels. For instance, in January, we supported a “bug bounty programme” for finding and fixing security holes with European Commission funds. With help and coordination from their recently formed Open Source Programme Office (OSPO), the European Commission started a series of hackathon and “bug bounty” programmes to help selected projects find (and potentially fix) security issues.
The Commission’s OSPO set aside €200,000 to reward developers and researchers who find critical security vulnerabilities in free software projects (such as LibreOffice and Mastodon). TDF got involved, and as Paolo Vecchi from the foundation’s Board of Directors said:
We at TDF and our community are grateful for the opportunity that has been provided with to make LibreOffice even more secure and ready to potentially become the preferred open source office suite also within European institutions.
In April and November 2022, we supported an open letter about the universal right to install any software on any device. Earlier in the year, together with more than 100 European organisations and companies, The Document Foundation signed this letter, and encouraged others to do the same. The signees of this open letter recognised that free access to hardware and software determines how long or how often a device can be used or reused, and declared that the increased longevity and reusability of their devices are inevitable for a more sustainable digital society.
In September and October, TDF announced that it was directly providing LibreOffice on the Mac App Store (Apple) and Microsoft Store. The announcement reflected the project’s new marketing strategy: The Document Foundation is focused on the release of the Community version, while ecosystem companies are focused on value-added long-term supported versions targeted at enterprises. The distinction has the objective of educating organizations to support the FOSS project by choosing the LibreOffice version best suited for their needs, instead of the Community version generously supported by volunteers. Of course, TDF will continue to provide LibreOffice free of charge from the LibreOffice website for all users.
Finally, throughout the year we celebrated our community of translators, which provide LibreOffice in over 110 different languages (with more hopefully becoming available in the future), more than any other software. This helps us to fulfil one of the most important objectives of The Document Foundation: “to support the preservation of mother tongues by encouraging all people to translate, document, support, and promote our office productivity tools in their native language”. Today, there are over four billion people in the world who can use LibreOffice in their native languages. We are very thankful to our hard-working community, which makes all of this possible.
