Hello,
I'd like to add a few thoughts of mine to this thread.
I am very sorry to hear what happened and still is happening in Brazil. To
me, as for the whole Steering Committee, it has always been very important
to be not on one side. It is sad for me to see that there seem to be two
groups and lots of changes, and I have worked with trust, respect and joy
with members of both groups, and I would like to do so in the future as
well. As Brazil is far away, and I don't know the situation very well, I
always tried to stay out of the line of fire, which I hope is
understandable.
Sorry if this now sounds rather harsh, but my take is:
Domain names with LibreOffice or The Document Foundation should be under
control of The Document Foundation, and the official mailing lists for each
project have to be the ones we offer.
Let me explain why: It is not about controlling things or not allowing
others to be active. In contrast, we would like to have people active on
their own, without asking us for permission. Our approach is open,
meritocratic and transparent. However, we all have learned from the past
that it can happen too quick that projects and groups go their own way, and
confusion is created on who is talking on behalf of whom. Diversity can be a
gift, but it can also be a high risk if we are too diverse.
Hosting a website under the LibreOffice or TDF domain name with own content
soon will create the idea that this content is official. Even more, it will
spread knowledge and tools, which in the end can have bad consequences for
us.
Don't get the impression that we do want to dictate what you have to use. I
know that the situation and requirements are different from country to
country, and that some users are more comfortable with this tool, others
with other tools. We try hard to provide something everyone can benefit
from, and I invite you to raise concerns, questions and wishes to our public
mailing lists.
We are all TDF, so there is no one dictating things. Sure, sometimes
there's one in charge who has to "wear a hat" and have the final say, and
there is also the Steering Committee if in doubt, but that's no different to
any well-developed open source community.
For the current situation, to me it is rather clear:
Please connect the TDF and LibO domain names in Brazil to our nameservers,
so we can point them to our infrastructure. If there are legal concerns of
being the domain holder, but having services connected to our servers,
please let me know -- there is a legally working way to transfer the domain
names to the German association and later on to the Foundation when it
exists. I've already discussed that with our provider, who provides a
trustee service in Brazil if needed.
What I neither can understand nor accept is that a website is built in
parallel, e-mail addresses are being handed out, and separate mailing lists
are created. I guess I repeat myself by saying that I want all of us to work
on one thing, united, speaking with one voice. Too much diversity and
"parallel universes" do not help, they do harm. They harm a lot.
Of course I respect the work that the Brazilian community has done the past
years, but it can be no argument that you now need the LibreOffice domain
name for connecting your servers, otherwise data from five years would be
lost. How long has the LibreOffice name been existing? Roughly seven months,
so this is no argument. I am happy to provide you a DNS alias so you have a
domain name to connect your machine to, in case you don't have any other
domain name available -- but the main website really needs to point to the
TDF infrastructure.
pt-br.libreoffice.org is our Brazilian website, and contributors are
welcome. I am also more than happy to provide a link to previous content
from there if this is suitable. But, please, do not build up your parallel
universe with own sites, tools, addresses and mailing lists.
Especially in these times, working united, collaborating as a team,
exchanging thoughts as friends, is more important than ever.
I beg your trust, and ask you to cooperate with us in this matter. We are
flexible in tools and sites, and we can improve things when improvements are
needed, but TDF has been created to have all assets in one hand,
independent, safe, stable and secure.
Joining us in this mission is, I hope, also to upmost interest for you.
Florian
--
Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org>
Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation
Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108
Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff
--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+help@libreoffice.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/marketing/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
deleted
Privacy Policy |
Impressum (Legal Info) |
Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified, all text and images
on this website are licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is
licensed under the Mozilla Public License (
MPLv2).
"LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are
registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are
in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective
logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use
thereof is explained in our
trademark policy.