Date: prev next · Thread: first prev next last
2011 Archives by date, by thread · List index


Hi :)

Ok, we have a lot of different topics covered under a single thread.  Lets try 
to get the subjects lines tidy and more specific.

It seems that the Brazilian Community and individuals are doing a lot of good 
work for almost no reward, satisfaction or even thanks.  A lot has been achieved 
though.  I think this discussion is helping us realise what it is that other 
people are doing and what types of problems they have probably had to overcome 
to achieve the great results so far.  


I think that David's work has been invaluable and needs to continue.  Perhaps 
there is some small part of what he does that needed to be clarified and 
hopefully that has been achieved now.  I guess that there are other people's 
roles/jobs/tasks that also need clarification.  


Regards from
Tom :)




________________________________
From: David Emmerich Jourdain <jourdain@documentfoundation.org>
To: marketing@libreoffice.org
Sent: Thu, 12 May, 2011 13:45:09
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Brazilian domains

Grüss Dich Bernhard, Hi all.

2011/5/11 Bernhard Dippold <bernhard@familie-dippold.at>

Hi Charles, Paulo, all,

I don't know you, Paulo, very well, but reading your postings shows me that
you care for both, the Brazilian and the international LibreOffice
community.

I know Charles much better - he works hard to support the LibreOffice
community, he has experienced quite negative effects of words and actions in
the past, first for OpenOffice.org, now for LibreOffice, and he wants to
avoid such effects wherever he finds signs that might lead in this
direction.

And - he tries to be quite clear in his wording, leading to the impression
that he doesn't care about the perception and feelings of the people he
talks to.

But what I wanted to add here in the thread is something different:

Charles-H. Schulz schrieb:

 Paulo,

Le Wed, 11 May 2011 11:42:02 -0300,
Paulo de Souza Lima<paulo.s.lima@gmail.com>  a écrit :

 2011/5/11 Charles-H. Schulz<charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org>

 Hello Paulo,

 Hello.

 TDF will be satisfied when the whole community will be healthy and
able to contribute to LibreOffice.


 I'm not sure what you mean with "healthy and able to contribute to
LibreOffice". I am telling you, since the begining of this mess, we
ARE healthy, contributing and doing our job. I really still don't
understand why you refuse to agree with that. The proof is in TDF
wiki and websites, but I won't insist in this matter anymore, also.
If you have a web browser and Google Translate, you can easily see it
by yourself. Do it!


Paulo: calm down. :-) don't take each of my sentences as an attack.
What I mean by a healthy community is a community that does not have
open quarrels and arguments such as... the brazilian community. You
tell me the community is healthy, but it's not so clear to me. (and
there again I have to stop commenting because it quickly stops
being TDF's business).


That's not true in my eyes.

TDF as the international LibreOffice community *is* interested in every
regional team working to further LibreOffice as product and as community.

If there are issues, where the international community can help, we want to
be involved. We've been telling this several times privately and on the
mailing lists (e.g. after the announcement of dropping the BrOffice.org name
and switching to LibreOffice).

But our help is limited.

Interpersonal issues should be able to be solved among the people involved.

Decisions inside a local team or community about the tools they use and the
way they work together should not involve the international community,
unless they lead to problems in the relationship to the international
community or restrictions to work with the international tools.

This has been my concern with the "wrong" mailing list (Gubros) and the
"wrong" domain (.org.br).

It was not clear to me (and others looking from the outside) that both are
interim solutions on your way from an mostly independent BrOffice community
to the Brazilian part of the international LibreOffice community.

Reading that there are people in Brazil trying to keep up their independent
community without seeing the positive aspects of being part of the
international community leads to sad feelings:

LibreOffice *is* international, and even if everybody is free to decide how
to work and discuss, we experienced something similar in the past:

Single persons or groups tried to draw interested newcomers or community
members away from this international team, towards a working area with
different focus. They used our infrastructure, pointed to their mailing
lists instead of the official ones and so on.

Everybody should have the chance to contribute to LibreOffice directly -
neither filtered by an NGO (as BrOffice times are over, I don't need any
prove or denial in this area), nor redirected to different websites or
mailing lists.

That's the reason why I want to see a clear statement on the website and in
the wiki describing the .org.br website as interim solution until the
content has been moved to the pt-br website.

If the website would contain a heading like "we're moving the content of
this site to our new home http://pt-br.libreoffice.org"; and the
broffice.org site would lead to this page too, I'm sure the Steering
Committee would allow to use the external page for the time needed.

Of course you can link to resources on the interim site from each pt-br
webpage (like "For more content ....., please have a look at our old
website, until the migration has been finished"). I think a prominent link
from the main page to libreoffice.org.br might help your users not to feel
lost in the transition, and this should not be a problem if the goal would
be mentioned here too.

For the mailing list (Luiz told us, that you are already moving) I hope
transistion is easier. I don't mind at all, if the well known list is still
active.

But everybody should know that the people interested in LibreOffice and
being part of the international community use the other list - like you
already did for any other list, if I read the wiki right.

I want to thank you for this move showing your good will - I hope you can
understand, why it is important to us, that the community resources don't
point to external areas at the first place.

One word about "Colibre" as name for your local LibreOffice community:
I might be wrong, but in my impression Charles sees this as a group inside
the Brazilian LibreOffice community (or even external) - with the people
behind ALTA as another group, fighting each other.

If there is such a fight, we can't help much (except in supporting
integrative activities). But if you want to use a different name from
"Brazilian LibreOffice Community" (I can understand this as member of the
even longer "Germanophone Project of OpenOffice.org"), it should be clear to
you that you
1) must avoid different goals from TDF (bylaws, mission statement).
2) must stay as open and inclusive as the international community
in order to avoid the impression of being an external entity.
3) reduce LibreOffice's visibility and brand recognition by introducing a
different label.

Perhaps you could avoid to promote this name until the brand LibreOffice
has been established to a certain degree?

(By the way: I like the name, but this is not the topic here)




If some people who have "titles" in TDF like Olivier, Eliane e David,
don't agree with that, that's their problem, not ours. Sadly, they
think if they have those "titles", that makes them a kind of
"special" community members. They aren't, in our point of view, and
never will be.


As in one of your previous postings you refer to the TDF team page, where
David is called "... the LibreOffice community representative in Brazil."

Neither Oliver nor Claudio mention such a position.

Did someone from the Brazilian community ask David to explain this sentence
or to have it removed?


This information was added later trought the mkt-tdf-team (that I don't make
part), just and only for tasks divisions, for supporting the new members
access of the Portuguese language in the TDF-list. Every time I received any
contact on my direct email, and it happens almost every day, I redirected to
the pt_br-libreoffice list. However, I always said that everyone could read
and write English, I also recommend the en-libreoffice-lists.

In this tasks divisions, Olivier is the news TDF-contact in portuguese, I
(as a speaker of some languages) was to help with the contact for the lists
as above, and to link with other communities, when the Portuguese and
English were still obstacles.
Just that. Nothing more, nothing less.

But if I should not do that anymore, Ok! No problem.

MfG.,

David


Well, there is no title (yet) inside TDF. There are roles and
functions. With respect to our Brazilian friends, Olivier is a member
of the SC and Claudio is his deputy.



And this recalls another concern of ours: there are 4 brazilians as
TDF members/founders.


I count 3: Claudio, David and Olivier.

  Some of them can have a whole history of
contributions to TDF, but also did a lot of disgusting things agaist
the Brazilian Community. When you consider your meritocracy, you
don't take this into consideration.


I think we do, look at our bylaws.


Perhaps a bit too short in this case:

The founders stated to work to establish the foundation several months
before going public. In late 2009 nobody here knew about the problems in
Brazil (if they have been already there). But it was important to include
the Brazilian community in this step - as you are a large community nearly
totally neglected in OpenOffice.org times.

So having three Brazilian members among the founders is not really
surprising. By the way: Did you count the Germans? ;-)

Unfortunately the problems in the Brazilian community led to the current
situation, where some of the SC members are not trusted any more.

But even if you think this is not fair, please take into account:
- It's just one vote among 9
- Neither Olivier nor Claudio hide their opinion if the other wants to get
any decision that influences the Brazilian community.
- Every community member can discuss topics he/she feels important or wrong
with the entire SC on the dedicated mailing list and in the SC calls.
- The SC has been established to be replaced by a Board of Directors
elected by all TDF members latest one year after the launch of
LibreOffice/TDF (End of September).

This is meritocracy in my eyes.

You state that they still contribute and that they are (at least partially)
respected inside the Brazilian Community.

For me this sounds that they are community members - and even if they might
not be trusted fully, this would only mean that the people not trusting them
would have an eye on their contributions, actions and words - and pointing
out, if there were something wrong.

What I can say is: None of all the SC decisions I know of have been
influenced by any of the Brazilian members in a way that might affect the
Brazilian community in a negative way.


 [...] We have a perception that you hear too

many people who are not alingned to the community's desires, and too
less people who can give you a clearer vision of us.


I didn't notice that the SC didn't hear to any voice describing the needs
of parts of our community.

Your perception is biased - understandable looking at the problems in
Brazil. But the SC and the international community consist of people who are
open to real and serious descriptions of situations where something went
wrong and should be done better.

But the people who think that such a situation hurts LibreOffice should
tell this - it is not the task of the SC or any other international
community member to find such problems in the different teams and try to
solve them: fortunately most of them can be solved directly inside the
respective team.


[...] I suggest you consider to accept more

brazilian members, from the *real* community.


 I hope you don't think, that membership applications have been rejected
because they have been from people of the "wrong" part of the community!


 We accept members based on their contributions only.


And as Sophie already told: most of the rejections have been done only
because the applicants didn't name a community member (best: already TDF
member) who could give more insight about their contributions.



 We can vote and
indicate some names, if you wish, in order to make things balanced
and fairer.


No - these and all the other people should apply for membership, show their
contributions and be involved in creating the new Board of Directors. They
can apply for a seat too.


[...]


 This should be taken in consideration when you decide to
"talk to brazilian community as a whole" as you're saying.


What I/we honestly try is to get feedback from everyone inside your
community.


And here your mails are very important.

Thank you!



I will not be a candidate. I have submited my request a few weeks
ago. It was deferred. Something about "we couldn't confirm your
informations" or so. Maybe the person who decided it doesn't have a
web browser neither knows how to use Google translate. It doesn't
matter, I wish to give up.


Sorry, if the Membership Committee has not been clear enough how the
application works.

They can't search and grab for the contribution of every applicant.

They had to deal with more than 50 requests in about two weeks - and they
are volunteers like you and me, still working in other areas of LibreOffice.

They need to be pointed to the contributions - and to someone being able to
support the request.

Of course it is easier, if they know the supporter, therefore someone
already known as TDF member would be best.

For the last week I would be glad to be your supporter - your postings here
have been non-trivial and important for the integration of the Brazilian
community.

Unfortunately I can't tell about your contributions during the last three
months as requested for the application (except the video in February)

But perhaps the SC member you trust is able to tell the MC about your
contributions...

Best regards

Bernhard


--
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



-- 
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
-- 
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

Context


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.