TDF Community Blog

Dear Community,

we hereby officially announce the upcoming elections for the next Board of Directors of The Document Foundation.

As per § 7 II of our statues, [1] the Board’s term lasts two years. The Document Foundation has been formally incorporated on February 17, 2012, at which day the current Board of Directors officially was set in place. Therefore, the old board remains in charge until the end of February 17, 2014, so the new board will be in charge the day after that, which is February 18, 2014.

As per § 6 III, only members of the Board of Trustees of The Document Foundation, as well as current members of any of its bodies, are eligible to be elected into the Board of Directors, and the election is overseen by the Membership Comittee (§ 7 II).

The active electoral right is reserved to those who have been members of the Board of Trustees before this announcement (§ 7 II).

§ 6 III also states that members of the Board of Directors or their deputies may not be members of the Membership Committee and vice versa. This means that current members of the Membership Committee are eligible to the elected, but would have to step down from the Membership Committee the minute before accepting to become a member of the Board of Directors.

There is one more notable limitation: Per § 8 IV of the statutes, a maximum of 1/3 members of the Board of Directors is allowed to work on an employment basis for the same company, organization, entities, affiliates or subdivisions.

Nomination of candidates fulfilling the above requirements, as well as self nomination is welcome. In total, at least seven Board of Directors members are required, and given there are enough candidates, up to three deputies can be elected (§ 7 II).

Re-election of current members of the Board of Directors is explicitly permitted (§ 7 II).

Please send nominations and self-nominations via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private) and also (!) to board-discuss@documentfoundation.org (which is a public mailing list). We kindly ask nominees who would like to stand for elections to provide a 75 words statement on their candidacy as continuous text (so no bullet lists or multiple paragraphs). In addition, please also provide your full name, e-mail address and your corporate affiliation, if any.

Discussions with the candidates and questions to them as well as questions about the elections should take place on the public board-discuss@documentfoundation.org mailing list. For details on how to use the mailing list, see http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/

Eligible voters will receive further details via e-mail prior to the start of elections, including a summary of the candidates, details on how to access the voting system, and instructions on how to independently verify the vote count. Please ensure the Membership Committee has your recent and correct e-mail address on file. For questions, you can reach the Membership Committee in private at elections@documentfoundation.org

Following the timeline set forth in § 7 II, requiring a 45 day advance notice, we hereby announce the following timeline for the elections:

1. 2013-10-23: announcement of the elections (this e-mail); and start of the nomination phase
2. 2013-12-02, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the nomination phase (one week before the election starts, as per § 7 II)
3. 2013-12-10, 00:00 CET/UTC+1: official start of the elections (at least 45 days after #1, as per § 7 II)
4. 2013-12-17, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the elections
5. 2013-12-18: announcement of the preliminary results
6. 2013-12-19, 00:00 CET/UTC+1: start of the challenging phase
7. 2013-12-23, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the challenging phase
8. afterwards: official announcement of the final results

Be advised that the newly elected Board of Directors will only be in charge beginning from February 18, 2014. The current Board of Directors will however include them in the decision making process, to easen up the transition.

Challenges to this announcement with respect to the deadlines outlined have to happen no later than seven (7) days after this announcement, via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private).

Challenges to the preliminary results of the election have to happen until the deadline set forth above, via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private).

On behalf of the Membership Committee,
Eike Rathke, Chairman of the Membership Committee

[1] http://www.documentfoundation.org/satzung.pdf (binding version) and http://www.documentfoundation.org/statutes.pdf (non-binding translation)

Several new developers enter the Engineering Steering Committee

Berlin, October 4, 2013 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 4.1.2, for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. This is the second minor release of the LibreOffice 4.1 family, which features a large number of improved interoperability features with proprietary and legacy file formats.

The new release is another step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and stability of LibreOffice 4.1. For enterprise adoptions, The Document Foundation suggests LibreOffice 4.0.5 (with 4.0.6 expected soon), supported by certified professionals.

LibreOffice 4.1.2 arrives one week after the LibreOffice Conference in Milan, where the community has gathered from all over the world to discuss software development and quality assurance, in addition to ODF, interoperability with proprietary document formats, community and marketing.

During the conference, several new developers have joined the Engineering Steering Committee, which has now 18 members: Stephan Bergmann – Red Hat, Rene Engelhard – Volunteer, Lionel Mamane – Volunteer, Adam Fyne – CloudOn, Christian Lohmair – TDF, Michael Meeks – Collabora, Bjoern Michaelsen – Canonical, Markus Mohrhard – Collabora (intern), Caolan McNamara – Red Hat, Eike Rathke – Red Hat, David Tardon – Red Hat, Norbert Thiebaud – Volunteer, Andras Timar – Collabora, Robinson Tryon – Volunteer, Eilidh McAdam – Lanedo, Mirek Mazel – Volunteer, Ahmad Hussein Al-Harthi – MOTAH, and Miklos Vajna – Collabora.

LibreOffice 4.1.2 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Change logs are available at the following links: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.2/RC1 (fixed in 4.1.2.1), https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.2/RC2 (fixed in 4.1.2.2) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.2/RC3 (fixed in 4.1.2.3).

Berlin, September 18, 2013 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that CloudOn is now a member of its Advisory Board. CloudOn is a productivity platform that allows users to create, edit and share documents in real time across devices.

“We fully support The Document Foundation’s core values and are honored to be part of this esteemed group,” says Jay Zaveri, VP, Products for CloudOn “This collaboration with the outstanding LibreOffice development team is fully aligned with the CloudOn vision and part of our constant drive to offer tools that enable people to work smarter.”

“It is fantastic to have CloudOn’s depth of mobile experience and development muscle to work with. I particularly like their emphasis on execution,” said Michael Meeks, VP Productivity at Collabora and TDF Board Member, “We are thrilled to be working alongside CloudOn, and are pleased to see the smooth way they have integrated into the community, with code already included, and their participation in Engineering Steering Committee meetings.”

With the addition of CloudOn, the Advisory Board of The Document Foundation now has 13 members: AMD, CloudOn, Collabora, FRODEV (Freies Office Deutschland e.V.), FSF (Free Software Foundation), Google, Intel, KACST (King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology), Lanedo, MIMO (French Ministries), RedHat, SPI (Software in the Public Interest) and SUSE.

About CloudOn

CloudOn is a leading mobile productivity platform that allows users to create, edit and share documents in real time across devices. With proven technology already trusted by over five million registered users globally, CloudOn is platform-agnostic and completely optimized for iOS, Android devices, as well as the web. It also offers seamless integration with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, meritocratic organization, which builds on ten years of dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org Community. TDF was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent foundation brings out the best in corporate and volunteer contributors, and will deliver the best free office suite ever. TDF is open to any individual who agrees with its core values and contributes to its activities, and welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community. As of June 30, 2013, TDF has 159 members and over 3.000 volunteers and contributors worldwide.

Media Contact CloudOn
Jenna Richard (based in San Francisco, California, UTC-7)
Phone: +1 (415) 277-4927 – Email: CloudOn@allisonpr.com