The Document Foundation’s official reply came from Italo Vignoli, a founder Collabora lists as having already exited TDF membership.
He has kept it short, confirming that the removals happened, pointing to TDF’s recently adopted Community Bylaws as the basis. Those bylaws include a clause requiring anyone affiliated with a company in an active legal dispute with TDF to step down from membership.
Link to those bylaws from Jan 15
https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/vote-adopt-version-1-of-community-bylaws/13472
Quote from that link [bylaws] above
Members involved in legal claims for endangering the Foundation, eg. by means of putting the charitable status at risk, or misusing TDF’s funds, or by damaging any of TDF’s assets, or by attempting to do any of these must relinquish their membership by means of notification to the MC. If the legal claim, in relation to the mentioned matters, involves a company/organisation then also their affiliated members must relinquish their membership.
Back to the original linked article:
The stated rationale is that past situations saw people put their employer’s interests ahead of the foundation’s, and the clause exists to stop that happening again. The specifics of the legal dispute between TDF and Collabora are not mentioned by either party.
TDF also makes clear that a membership revocation is not a ban from contributing, with the project remaining open to anyone, and expects Collabora to keep contributing “when the time comes.”
So without details, all the article really details is that this happened. The why is murky. It seems the TDF is trying to protect itself, but there’s no description of Collabra or TDFs legal dispute.
For clarity the platform is called Snowflake.
The headline is not calling the customers snowflakes.