Arthur Rosendahl (né Reutenauer)From Barbara Beeton for the TUG elections committee:
Nominations for TUG President and the Board of Directors in 2025 have been received and validated. Because there is a single nomination for the office of President and because there are not more nominations for the Board of Directors than there are open positions, there is no requirement for a ballot this election.
For President, Arthur Rosendahl was nominated. As there were no other nominees, he is duly elected and will serve for a two-year term.
For the Board of Directors, the following individuals were nominated: Doris Behrendt, Karl Berry, Johannes Braams, Kaja Christiansen, Klaus Höppner, Frank Mittelbach, Erik Nijenhuis. As there were not more nominations than open positions, all the nominees are duly elected to a four-year term. Thanks to all for their willingness to serve.
New terms for President and members of the Board of Directors will begin with the Annual Meeting. Congratulations to all.
Board member Ross Moore has decided to step down. Ross was first elected to the Board in 1997. His dedication and service to the community for these many years are gratefully acknowledged.
The notice for this election, informal guidelines for TUG board members, roster of current and past board members, and announcements and information about previous elections are available: 2023, 2021, 2019, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2009, 2007, 2005, 2003, 2001, 1999, 1997.
Election statements by all candidates are given below. They will also be printed in the next regular issue of TUGboat.
Arthur Rosendahl (né Reutenauer)Biography: I seek a second term as TUG president, having served on the board since 2013. I started using TeX as a mathematics student over 25 years ago and have been involved in the development and maintenance of several packages, including polyglossia and hyph-utf8; but although I co-created and am still actively working on the latter, my involvement in TeX affairs today is mostly on the organisational side. I have been part of the organisation committee of the three online TUG conferences from 2020 to 2022 and am also active in other user groups of the TeX world, as a founding member of the ConTeXt Group, and a board member of GUTenberg, the French-language TeX users group. Last year, I represented the TeX world in a unusual setting, acting as an expert witness on LaTeX in a court of law. For full disclosure, I received a fee for my services.
Statement: If I am reelected as TUG president, I will advocate for TUG to continue doing what it does best, publish TUGboat and organise conferences, and support individuals and organisations active in the TeX world, in particular the TeX Live team. When most new users come to TeX through Overleaf, it may seem like a non-profit organisation with a dwindling membership is out of date, but if we don't keep doing the above, who will? We should keep acting as the group of all TeX users.
Doris Behrendt(Candidate for TUG board of directors.)
TeX biography:
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doris-behrendt-67730b260
Some years ago I gave a talk at the tug conference: https://youtu.be/aEGY0oBbh0I
Statement of intent: How to do it in 2025. I am committed to open-source software out of personal conviction, not just within the TeX community. For the past nine years, I have been treasurer of DANTE e.V., now I'd like to try out something new. Stepping down from DANTE frees up time that I now want to invest in the community in a different way—through TUG. I believe change is essential, as is change management. Many open source projects struggle with change. The decline in membership across TeX user groups worldwide is an unfortunate reality—one that must be acknowledged. I am not afraid of conflict. However, forcing things through with brute force, as can be seen in certain places around the world, is not my approach—I stand for fairness and respect. I am (unfortunately) not always great with people, but I'm good at analyzing, managing, and implementing solutions. I am not a developer, but I am an experienced TeX user. During my time on the DANTE board, I have had to endure—and withstand —my fair share of opposition. Due to the nature of my professional work, I have some flexibility to travel and build networks. I tend to like black humor. I have visions and ideas (examples? I build up the LaTeX village concept on hacker camps from scratch; as treasurer, I supported the financial contribution to the TUG conference in Bonn; I see accessibility as something extremely important).
Karl Berry(Candidate for TUG board of directors.)
TeX biography: I served as TUG president from 2003-2011 and was a board member both before and after being president. I am running again for a position on the board.
I'm one of the primary system administrators and webmasters for the TUG servers, and the production manager for our journal TUGboat. I co-sponsored the creation of the TeX Development Fund in 2002.
On the development side, I'm currently the editor of TeX Live, the largest free software TeX distribution, and thus coordinate with many other TeX projects around the world, such as CTAN, LaTeX, and pdfTeX. I developed and still (co-)maintain Web2c (Unix TeX) and its basic library Kpathsea, Eplain (a macro package extending plain TeX), and other projects. I am also a co-author of TeX for the Impatient, an early comprehensive book on plain TeX, now freely available. I first encountered and installed TeX in 1982, as a college undergraduate.
Statement of intent: I believe TUG can best serve its members and the general TeX community by working in partnership with the other TeX user groups worldwide, and sponsoring projects and conferences that will increase interest in and use of TeX. I've been fortunate to be able to work pro bono on TUG and TeX activities the past several years, and plan to continue doing so if re-elected.
Johannes Braams(Candidate for TUG board of directors.)
Biography: I encountered TeX and friends sometime around 1985 when it was installed on our research VAX. It didn't take long for me to get hooked on LaTeX and I started to think about and work on multilingual support, later to be known as babel. Besides that I have been active on quite a number of activities:
Statement: In the last years I have been around again in the TeX-community. I would very much like to keep serving this wonderful community by continuing my role in the board of directors of TUG. I think TeX should and will be alive and well for many years to come, as the quality of typesetting that can be achieved by using TeX is still unsurpassed.
Kaja Christiansen(Candidate for TUG board of directors.)
I live in the city of Aarhus, Denmark. I heard about TeX for the first time in the fall of 1979. In Palo Alto at the time, I wanted to audit courses at Stanford and my top priority was lectures by Prof. Donald Knuth. That, I was told, was not possible as Prof. Knuth was on leave due to work on a text processing project… This project was TeX! Back home, it didn't take long till we had a runnable TeX system in Denmark.
Statement: I have served as a Board member since 1997, as the chair of TUG's Technical Council since 1999, co-sponsored the creation of the TeX Development Fund and served as TUG vice-president from 2003-2011. I share system administrator's responsibilities for the TUG server (which access to the Internet used to be facilitated by University of Aarhus). In my rôle as a member of the board, my special interests have been projects of immediate value to the TeX community, like system administration, TeX Live or TUG's web site. I have served as the board member of Danish TeX Users Group (DK-TUG) and during the years 2002-2011 served as the president of DK-TUG.
Klaus Höppner(Candidate for TUG board of directors.)
Biography: I got a PhD in Physics in 1997. My first contact to LaTeX was in 1991, using it frequently since then. I have been preparing the CTAN snapshot on CD, distributed to the members of many user groups, from 1999 until 2002. I was the local organizer of TUG2015 and was heavily involved in the organization of several DANTE conferences and EuroTeX 2005. I've been a member of the TUG board since 2005, serving some time as treasurer and as secretary, and I am member of the DANTE board, including terms acting as president, vice president, and treasurer.
Statement: As in the past, I want to be the voice of European users, in particular those who need characters with funny accents.
Frank Mittelbach(Candidate for TUG board of directors.)
I came in contact with TeX in the mid-eighties and over the years TeX, LaTeX and typography in general became a very important part of my life. In 1990 I took over the maintenance and further development of LaTeX from Leslie Lamport and together with a small number of people (most notably David Carlisle, Chris Rowley and Rainer Schöpf at that time) we designed and implemented what became LaTeX2e in 1994—the LaTeX you still essentially use today (even though it has undergone smaller modifications and improvements through by now 25 further releases).
Despite all predictions made during the last decades, TeX and LaTeX are alive and kicking as proven by their (still?) strong use in various ways around the world.
Nevertheless the world has changed and is changing further and in that changing world user groups like TUG need to find their place and possibly reinvent themselves by redefining and reshaping their role. With my work on the TUG board I would like to help in that process and ensure a future for high quality typography as provided by TeX.
Erik Nijenhuis(Candidate for TUG board of directors.)
TeX biography: My LaTeX journey began in 2016 during my studies in Software Engineering (major) and Embedded Systems and Automation (minor) at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. During this time, I used LaTeX to write technical reports and datasheets and conducted research into the applicability of Git and LaTeX for technical learning resources. In 2021, I started my own company with a strong commitment to Free Software principles, selecting LaTeX as the core documentation tool. I began combining application programming with LaTeX code for invoice generation, and by 2022, I was designing contract templates for my legal documents. After two years of working with LaTeX, I decided to package and share the concepts I had developed, leading to the creation of the gitinfo-lua, lua-placeholders, and regulatory packages. This also marked my first encounter with CTAN and TUG. My interaction with these communities was deeply moving, and I realized I had underestimated the social impact of collaborating with them compared to solely practicing the principles of Free Software on my own.
Statement: TeX offers immense potential for producing documents within systems and applications. Apparently, society needed AI to finally acknowledge that—after more than 40 years… On a personal level, I am committed to getting to know other TUG members and understanding their motivations and requirements for using TeX. I aim to use this insight to help shape a strategic direction that is fair and beneficial to all members. Beyond the community aspect, I am dedicated to advancing TUG's current goals, such as tagged-PDF development, and advocating for improved integration solutions that address both software needs and free entrepreneurial requirements. I hope to contribute both to the technical and human sides of TUG, ensuring the group continues to thrive and innovate in the years ahead.