In 2023 we had elections for the foundation’s Board of Directors, along with regular Advisory Board calls, and support for other projects and activities
(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2023 – we’ll post the full version here soon. And note that this section is only about TDF’s activities – we’ll post about all the changes and improvements to LibreOffice soon too!)
Election of new Board of Directors
The “BoD” is the Foundation’s Board of Directors, the main administration of the Foundation’s projects and teams. Directors are directly elected by community members every two years, and serve for a two-year term. The Board of Directors consists of seven (7) members and three (3) deputies. The Board of Directors may launch any other teams or committees ad hoc if necessary.
TDF’s Membership Committee announced the election in October, opening the nomination phase for candidates. The final list of candidates was published on December 11, and this was immediately followed by three live “town-hall” Q+A meetings with the candidates, so that community members could ask questions and discuss the responses. We made video recordings of these meetings, and posted them on our video channel, for those who couldn’t take part live.
On December 29, the Membership Committee announced the preliminary results, along with a challenging phase for members to check their votes. On January 11, 2024, we announced the final results, with the following confirmed as full Board Members: Sophie Gautier, László Németh, Simon Phipps, Italo Vignoli, Bjoern Michaelsen, Eliane Domingos and Eike Rathke. Deputy members: Osvaldo Gervasi, Paolo Vecchi and Mike Saunders.
TDF would like to say thank you to all past and current members of the Board 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, Collabora, GNOME, CAGE Technologies Inc, City of Munich (Landeshaupstadt München), Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA), Software in the Public Interest (SPI), KDE e.V., 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, LibreOffice 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.
New team members
In January, we welcomed Juan José González, TDF’s new Web Technology Engineer to the team. “JJ” (as he’s informally known) dedicates his time to support, fix and improve the experience of TDF’s websites and services. He started with the extensions site, the place where users can get templates and extensions for LibreOffice. He began by replying to reported issues from users and improving the overall experience.
Then, in July, our team was expanded by Michael Weghorn who joined as a LibreOffice Developer, focusing initially on accessibility – ie improving the experience for users with limited vision or motor impairments. His initial focus was fixing problems encountered in the user interface when using LibreOffice with a screen reader.
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 March we celebrated International Women’s Day, looking forward to a world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive. One of our goals in TDF is to encourage more women to join our community (such as “LibreLadies”).
In April, we reported about TDF’s policy-related activities in the European Union. TDF has been involved in several discussions about policies which can affect or are affecting the adoption of free and open source software (FOSS), or the freedom of users’ choice for hardware, operating systems and software. A freedom of choice which should be protected by laws, especially when involving public administrations (with a strong focus on schools and universities, where future citizens grow up).
In May, we announced projects selected for LibreOffice in the Google Summer of Code 2023, while in June we collaborated with Thunderbird, an open source email client (which is very often used alongside LibreOffice) to see how we can make our applications work better together.
Then, in July, our Membership Committee announced a new membership management system called Proteus. In August we posted about Weblate (translation tool) improvements funded by TDF, and in November we supported freedom and the sustainable use of electronic products in the European Union.
Finally, throughout the year we celebrated our community of translators, who 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 members who make all of this possible.