I released my improvements on the Plone addon that is used for the extensions part of the website https://extensions.libreoffice.org. I made it possible with this release to remove older versions of LibreOffice from the compatibility list. The extension releases will show their compatibility with older versions, if the contributor choose that compatibility ever. The site will get the compatibility information of an extension from the index inside the Plone portal_catalog. The new release is available at the ‚CheeseShop‘: https://pypi.org/project/tdf.extensionuploadcenter/
Kategorie: LibreOffice
Who Is A Founder?
It’s always interesting to read about persons which call themself founder of The Document Foundation (TDF). I also found a header ‚TDF founders‘ on the official webpage of TDF, where a list of natural persons were summarized under this title.
But are one natural person or some individuals the founder of TDF? Sorry, but the answer is no.
The founder of a foundation in the German law system is the natural person or legal entity that submitted the legal act ‚Stiftungsgeschäft‘, including the foundation statutes, the population of the foundation bodies and the capital stock. This legal act has to be submitted to the authorities. Once they accepted it, the foundation is legally in place and the founder has to transfer the capital stock.
Thus in the case of TDF only the German association ‚Freies Office Deutschland e.V.‘ was the founder. This association did the legal act and transfered the money.
I wonder about the reason for the use of the title founder from some members of the project. Maybe has to do with the need to impress others or the fear to look like the emperor without clothes 😉
If I ever would need such a title myself I Cold Calls myself ‚founding member of the founder of TDF‘ or ‚TDF’s founder founder‘ or just ‚007‘ (because of my assoziation members number) 😉
Cool Down Period?
I was a (deputy) member of the board of directors (BoD) for about six years and decided not to run again for this body at the end of last year. I followed a lot of discussions and decisions of the board during this period.
At the time I decided to not run again for the board I reflected on the topic, if I should run for the MC (Membership Commitee) this summer and came to the conclusion that this is not appropriate. The MC is not only responsible for the decision on new TDF members and renewing membership. This is the role that the most people inside TDF already know. But the MC has also another important role. it is in some kind in the position of a supervisory board. It receives complaints against the BoD the Board of Trustees and initiates a possible impeachment process against the board of directors. The MC also represents the foundation in court and out of court against the BoD (see Par. 12 I of the statutes). The latter one were the main reason for me to request a cool down period for myself [as an ex-(deputy-)member of the BoD] before I could run for another leading body of TDF. I thought that such a cooling down period should be at least one year. But maybe two years are more appropriate.
In addition I think its role as a kind of supervisory board should lead to a reflection, if it would be appropriate when members of the BoD and the MC would be personally or economical closely connected. It’s also a topic of rethinking, wether a member of the MC should be able to switch without a break into the BoD.
Another Break From The Project
I worked during the last weeks further on the LibreOffice extensions and templates website. I added some improvements to the site and reviewed a lot of projects and gave some users / contributors hints about necessary changes / additions to their extensions and templates (hit-and-miss).
I got some positive response from contributors about my work. But there are some voices (from important people inside the project) that have some issues with my views and that I speak publicly about them, but are always happy to receive my voluteer work during my spare time.
I had to deal with this situation and will take a break to rethink my role and my amount of contribution of spare time to the LibreOffice project and TDF. I already unsubscribed me from some mailinglists of the project.
Update Extensions Website With Upgraded Plug-ins
I made some backups of the current state of all projects on the LibreOffice extensions and templates website and also created a copy of the content of the site. This took some time because I had to fight with too little disk space on the virtual machine. Thus I had to limit the amount of backup.
Once I finished the backup I run a buildout for the LibreOffice extensions and templates website and updated the plug-ins that we use to run the site on the Content Management System Plone. The upgraded plug-ins change particularly the workflow for projects and thus led to a situation where I had to check and update the review state of every project. I finished this work, which took a longer time for the extensions projects yet. I’ll work on the state of the template projects later, because I need a break now.
The change of the workflow state (e.g. to published) will send an automatic generated message to the project owner.
Python Script To Get Project State
I worked on a new Python script to get the current review state of all extension projects from the LibreOffice extensions website and write this state together with the project title and its url to a csv file.
I’ll work on a similar implementation for template projects next days.
LibreOffice-Non-Code-Extensions erstellen
Im Zusammenhang mit der Betreuung der LibreOffice webseite für Extensions (Erweiterungen) und Templates (Vorlagen) habe ich vor einiger Zeit angefangen, eine kleine Dokumentation für den Bau von LibreOffice Extensions zu schreiben, die keine Zusatzprogramme enthalten, sondern weitere Inhalte für das Office-Programm ausliefern. Dies können beispielsweise weitere Grafiken, Autokorrekturen oder Farbpaletten sein. Die Dokumentation ist ein Projekt „im Fluss“. D.h., ich werde weiter an ihr arbeiten und sie ergänzen. Hier nun die aktuelle Fassung der Dokumentation. Sie enthält auch Links zu Beispielen für die Struktur entsprechender Extensions.
Worked Further Through Projects Review List And Fixed A String Issue
I worked to the through the review list of the LibreOffice extensions and templates website and managed to look at the remaining projects. I sent hints to the contributors and am looking for their project site changes and updates of their release files.
I fixed some string issues inside one of the Plone add-ons that we use to drive the website. I got to this issue by an error message inside the website log. The fixes are available in the TDF Github repository yet.
New Add-On Release For The LibreOffice Extensions Website
I worked during the last days on some issues within the Plone add-on which drives the LibreOffice extensions website. I made a new release of this add-on today and published it on the ‚Cheeseshop‘ (https://pypi.org). You can get the source code of this add-on from the TDF repository on Github (https://github.com/tdf/tdf.extensionuploadcenter). I’m working on an update of the Plone add-on that drives the template part of the website and I’m going to publish a new release during the next days too.
In addition to this work I reviewed some new LibreOffice extensions and templates projects that has been contributed during my vacation break and during the last days and published them, if they are ready for publication.
I added the current LibreOffice version 6.1 to the compatibility list for extensions and templates and sent out an information about this new version to all members of the website, thus they could update the compatibility of their extensions or templates.
Volunteers – Spare Time / Vacation?
I read a tweet during the last days that a community didn’t stop during the weekend and that make me thinking, if such a tweet would evoke the impression that a volunteer in an open source project works all day and around the clock (24/7). I got this impression because there are some people during the last days that are posting impatient messages on the work done by others.
I myself decided to limit my volunteer work to a proper amount. I’ll not extend a long working day in the office with some volunteer work in front of computer. I think an open source project should avoid to set the impression that volunteers never have to relax, sleep etc., because this helps to keep active people healthy and keep the barriers for new volunteers lower.