| ▲ | chadash 3 hours ago |
| For those of us with zero context, what's the story here? |
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| ▲ | eisa01 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Not sure myself, it seems like some of the founders were kicked out in 2025 for "misuse of funds" according to the auditor of TDF / or the Foundation authorities? https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/well-known-high-c... Also found this in the annual report, sounds quite serious: > In 2023, following a request by the Foundation Authorities in Berlin, given the size our foundation has grown into over the last decade, TDF was audited, and a report was sent back to Berlin. The Board of Directors is working with the authorities to implement the improvements suggested by the audit https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/fsqeJZrAtXeR7JD?d... Would be helpful if the blog post was more clear about this |
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| ▲ | mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yikes. They set up the foundation in Berlin, Germany? A country well known for its braindead tax laws and bureaucracy, particularly when it comes to NGOs? | | |
| ▲ | janice1999 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There are plenty of non-profit software projects headquartered in Berlin, e.g. KDE since 1997, and they seem to do just fine. | |
| ▲ | mhitza an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's stated as conflict of interest, not some bureaucracy. Things are still vague, due to some legal liability, probably. Sounds to me like for some grants/tenders received by the non-profit were contracted out to Collabora. Which in turn, profits from the base project. |
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| ▲ | WhyNotHugo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Based on the article: Some founders/directors kept using money from the foundation to pay their own private companies to get work done. This is highly irregular: you can’t manage funds that aren’t yours and use those funds to buy from a company which gives you profit. Legal council warned the of this irregularity, and nothing was made to change the status quo during years. |
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| ▲ | shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Isn't this theft, if true? | | |
| ▲ | blm126 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I wouldn't call it theft, exactly. Presumably work did get done. If I'm reading it right, its just a terrible conflict of interest. The board uses donations to pay companies to work on LibreOffice. That seems totally fine. Some of the board were running/part of companies that rely and work on LibreOffice. That also seems mostly fine? You want your board to represent your community. Then, those same board members directed work towards their companies. That's definitely a conflict of interest, but I wouldn't call it theft unless you prove the foundation was getting a bad deal. Could the foundation have gotten the work done better or cheaper hiring non-represented companies? That's the question you have to answer to call this theft. It doesn't seem that is really what the foundation is arguing though, so I'm guessing it wasn't that bad. It seems more their argument is that this violates the non-profit laws they operate under. | |
| ▲ | bigfatkitten 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | At the very least it looks very much like corrupt conduct, even if it isn’t. | |
| ▲ | worik an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | No. They did the work. It is a corrupt practice, not theft |
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| ▲ | replooda 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'd go for the discussion on Meeks' post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47599305 |
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| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
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| ▲ | fallinditch 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It's poorly written, perhaps aimed at people already in the loop - would benefit from an AI edit. |
