Brazilian domains (was: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] PR translations)

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

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