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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hey Wayne,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">thanks for sending this report. It is
much more detailed than the previous ones. That is appreciated!</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">However, I have 2 concerns:<br>
1. The minutes seem to be polished with the goal redact and remove
any actual facts. They are not concrete enough information to make
any sense of them. The goal of transparency is for the community
to have insight into the decisions, their rationale, and also to
see how the Council is doing. If all potentially critical
information is polished away, no useful participation by the
community is possible.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">2. The minutes seem to come fairly
constantly about 1 month after the meeting. I would expect notes
to appear after 1-2 days. I suspect the reason is that you have a
process in place for other council members to approve the minutes
and they can redact and remove things they don't want public. This
is *not* desirable. That removes the community any information
basis about the candidates.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">In short: Can we please have uncensored
reports? It's perfectly fine to remove HR details about specific
persons, but there is no staff info in the notes anyway (see last
point of minutes), so the redactions go far beyond the necessary
redactions, and it makes the notes way too generic to be useful.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">All that said, these minutes were a lot
better than previous ones (e.g. they mentioned who asked what,
that's helpful and important!), so thanks for that.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">----</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">A concrete question, which triggered my
writing this email and the above comments: I am genuinely
concerned about the income situation of Thunderbird, for
donations.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">How much, in percent, have the
donations dropped? How does that relate to the costs? Are savings
doing to drown, and how fast? I am eagerly waiting for some
numbers.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">This is important information that
affects the entire project, staffing, and other decisions, even
the possibility for projects like the renewal of the code base, so
that's important for the community to know.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It seems that the minutes are dancing
around concrete numbers without saying anything specific, and I'm
sure you have discussed them, which suggests that the minutes were
too redacted, and which prompts this posts.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I'm just looking for things like:</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">"Donations dropped 23% in April
compared to February 2020. But our income is still 10% above
costs, and the income would be 8% below expenses after the 3 new
hires."<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">If we get less than this information,
it's too superficial to be helpful.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Ben<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 29.05.20 23:24, Wayne Mery wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:226e8116-56e2-5973-af58-c22689749e61@lehigh.edu">
<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-western">
<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode">
<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode">
<p>Thunderbird Project Council Meeting <br>
</p>
<p>When: April 20, 2020 at 9:05 PM CEST <br>
Minuter: Wayne<br>
In the call: Magnus, Berna, Patrick, Jörg, Ryan, Wayne<br>
Regrets: Philipp</p>
<p>Motions/votes since last meeting</p>
<ul>
<li>Change the Thunderbird Council weekly meeting time
from Thursday 8am EDT to 3pm EDT on Mondays. Approved.
As a result, there was no meeting on Thursday April 16.
</li>
</ul>
Financial<br>
<ul>
<li>Ryan reported donations team can generate a weekly
report that will provide for donation numbers that
aren’t captured in analytics, and which can be broken
down by country. <br>
</li>
<li>Berna asked if our donations take a nosedive, do we
have an action plan to cut out or cut down any service.
Ryan reports there are priorities, but have not been
presented to council.<br>
</li>
<li>Berna asked if we can investigate whether we qualify
for any bailout money/funds from the government(s) or
short time work in any country. In Europe, it is free
money. General consensus is it is unlikely money will
be available, in part because we have not had to lay off
any employees, and have no demonstrated financial
losses.<br>
</li>
<li>Motion by Patrick: The Thunderbird project shall
maintain a reserve of money to cover 12 months of
recurring costs (including for personnel and other
services). Discussion followed. No vote taken.<br>
</li>
<li>Berna asked if we are prepared to issue quarterly
financial reports in the interest of transparency and
communication. Ryan indicated he is preparing an annual
report, but still waiting on some numbers to come in.</li>
</ul>
<p>Hiring/personnel<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>Status of three currently open (advertised) positions
was covered. They are all proceeding to the next step -
setting up contract, sent to MoFo HR, investigating
employment services. </li>
<li>Berna asked if the council NDA group were able to
customize the benefits package as discussed last week?
The response is, not yet.</li>
<li>Berna reminded that the Performance Review Process
needs to start. The trial date will be determined by
Magnus in order not to place additional stress on the
employees during these extraordinary times. But there is
concern that a three month trial will be too short to
evaluate, given that reviews are quarterly. To be
discussed further next week after Magnus goes through
the documents/templates. <br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Product / Strategy</p>
<ul>
<li>Berna asked, in follow up from prior meeting, whether
there will be a financial impact if many add-on authors
cannot make the jump to version 78? For example
“LookOut (fixed)” for TNEF attachments, “MailMerge”, and
“Signature Switch”, and whether a message to the donors
could help give us useful information. Ryan and Wayne
believe this would be difficult or impossible to
measure. It was also noted that hopefully our incoming
add-on coordinator can help in this area.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Governance</p>
<ul>
<li>Still waiting for information from Mozilla Foundation
about NDA.</li>
<li>Wayne asked if whether council members should have
directors and officers insurance? Are we covered through
MZLA Technologies or MoFo? What do other boards do? <br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Legal</p>
<ul>
<li>Berna asked about progress on the privacy policy
applies to third party providers. It was noted that
add-ons should have their own privacy policy.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Miscellaneous</p>
<ul>
<li>Some questions were asked and clarifications given
about the last staff report<br>
</li>
</ul>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
</blockquote>
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