The founders’ different backgrounds and opinions were at the same time the reason for some bold decisions – many of which right – as well as a few mistakes, which are the root cause of some of the current problems:
- granting free use of the LibreOffice brand only to companies in the ecosystem, to allow them to sell the software in Microsoft and Apple’s online stores;
- awarding contracts for the development of LibreOffice – new features, fixing “legacy” bugs, etc. – to companies whose representatives were on The Document Foundation’s Board of Directors, and who were active throughout the procurement process.
Both of these decisions were found to be incorrect for reasons relating to the non-profit law, to which The Document Foundation must adhere.
German background article on the recent ousting of Collabora devs from the TDF https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47599305
It tells the story of the tensions since 2020 and names the German non-profit tax law as a puzzle piece.
Author is https://rueegger.me/contact.php?lang=en which is a nice contact page!
The non-profit funds issues probably refer to TDF's blog post 'Let’s put an end to the speculation' behind https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652324
The founders’ different backgrounds and opinions were at the same time the reason for some bold decisions – many of which right – as well as a few mistakes, which are the root cause of some of the current problems:
- granting free use of the LibreOffice brand only to companies in the ecosystem, to allow them to sell the software in Microsoft and Apple’s online stores;
- awarding contracts for the development of LibreOffice – new features, fixing “legacy” bugs, etc. – to companies whose representatives were on The Document Foundation’s Board of Directors, and who were active throughout the procurement process.
Both of these decisions were found to be incorrect for reasons relating to the non-profit law, to which The Document Foundation must adhere.