Kategorie: LibreOffice

New projects often started as a volunteer project with enthusiastic people. The project growed over the time and it got some or a lot of donation (or sponsor) money. That was the time, when the leading people of the project got the impression that it is not possible to drive the project with volunteers only. They decided to spend money for one or more employees. This employees in connection with the leading people of the project built a group. Both sides had an interest in keeping the project running as it is and take full control. The leading member most often had a personal or business interest in the outcome of the project. The employees had a personal interest too, because they need to pay their bills and thus need the income.

The whole group of employees and leading members had in common that they had a lot of time to work on the project. Thus they marginalized the pure volunteer contributors, because they could only work on the project in their spare time. At some point the pure volunteers realized that dominance of the other group and once they felt excluded or got no positive feedback and support for their volunteer work, they quit their contributions and left the project.

That was the time when the remaining (volunteer) member / contributors of the project complained about the insufficient number of volunteers in the project. But instead of reorganizing the project and revise its whole structure and processes, the leading group went into the same direction and replaced the missing volunteers with employees or paid work. But that didn’t solve the problems, because more pure volunteers felt not respected and considered, why they should do the work without paying.

This process will not stop until the group of leading members and employees remember that they are an important part of the issue and that the organization of the project will need a radical disruption (a new start). That includes not only the technical or organizational construction but the employed or contracted people too.

It would be necessary for a healthy new start of a volunteer project that the driving people would be able to take a look from ‚10,000 feet‘ onto the project and wouldn’t be captured in the current organization and structure of the project. Thus the current leading members and employees / contractor wouldn’t be most likely the best choice to rethink and start the process of disruption. It would need a new group of active members / volunteers to drive things forward without interference of the current group of leading members and employees / contractor. The latter one had to step aside. But it most likely would need a conflict to reach such a situation.

The statutes of a foundation states that at a maximum one third of the members of each body are ‚employed‘ by the same firm, organization, entity or one of its affiliate organizations. The candidates for the board elections had to declare their affiliation therefore in front of the elections.

Because this statements are very important for the composition of the board it’s necessary that every member of the board inform the foundation members and the public in the same way, once this affiliation changes later. The first statement usually was made in an email to a foundation mailing list. Thus the change needs also an email to the same list (and maybe to other foundation communication channels of the fundation).

And the information had to be send out by the person concerned very timely, which means in this case immediately.  Are about four weeks for a short email notice immediately? In my opinion this is not the case.

A member of the leading body of a foundation, which has the goal of transparency and openness, should be able to write an email with such a short information latest the next day after the change in the affiliation. If she or he failed to do this should think about his workload and take responsibility for her or his behavior.

It’s always no good idea to thank someone without the exact knowledge about the real work he or she had done and the exact period he or she were on duty. Such a commendation – especially in a published report or in a public speech looks to the one who get it the opposite, because it reflects that it is not worth the time to collect and check the correct data.

I read such commendation about my work on the LibreOffice extensions and templates website in the annual report of The Document Foundation today. I invested a lot of my spare time to work as a pure volunteer for the foundation and on the website for about eight years (I worked for about sixteen years inside the community of the free office software project).

<satire mode>
It’s always interesting to see the communication strategy (?) of a board. Don’t publish an agenda of a public meeting to early (only the evening before the event) to certainly avoid to get people from the public into your (public) board call.

The next communication step should be to complain about the lack of participation from the public.
</satire mode>

If the communication of a board follows this road it has not to wonder about a lack of participation from the public. The public wouldn’t feel invited.