Hi Michael, Thanks for this great summary of the broad activity up to this point. You and I have had our differences over the last 22 years in the project, but you have been an inspiration for your rational but fierce advocacy of software freedom, your willingness to have your mind changed (like you did about contributor agreements!) and most of all for your willingness to take significant personal risks in pursuit of your beliefs.
I'm looking forward to the Board's detailed plan to take on the important role of navigating the bureaucracy of the various app stores and the challenges of maintaining packages for them. I know you and Thorsten have both worked hard at this - hopefully their plan will build on your experiences. Cheers Simon On Fri, 10 Jun 2022, 10:52 Michael Meeks, <michael.me...@collabora.com> wrote: > Hi there, > > Paolo Vecchi wrote on 31.05.22 at 21:03: > > TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores, especially Apple and > > Microsoft. TDF will work to prepare LibreOffice for the app stores > > as soon as possible > > As this era ends, I'd like to say how pleased we are at > Collabora to have been able to lead here - to have fronted the > significant initial investment needed to get LibreOffice into the Mac > sandbox, and app-store and to have got it done. > > We made it easier for a large number of users to get > LibreOffice. Later on we charged for the convenience and re-invested > that into improving the Mac version up-stream, and also are pleased to > have donated a significant sum to TDF. We've also explored the > market-demand-curve for convenience, updated the board from time to > time & will of course complete that (as time permits) when the > situation settles. > > I'd like to thank many for their great work here: Tor > Lillqvist in particular, but also Tomaz Vajngerl, Lubos Lunak, Andras > Timar & Miklos Vajna. > > It is also important to give credit and thanks to CIB & > Allotropia for their work on getting a high quality LibreOffice into > the Windows app-store to make it more accessible to people too. I'm > not sure that I have the exact list right here but I'd like to call > out Marina Latini, Vasily Melenchuk, Samuel Mehrbrodt and Thorsten > Behrens for making the goodness happen. > > Looking back at this app-store journey, we have a debt of > gratitude particularly to Simon Phipps, Nicholas Christener, Uwe > Altmann and Marina Latini for their hard work around building better > ways to structure the app-store provision. There are many views on > that - but it is unarguable that they put in a lot of hard work and > love to try to improve LibreOffice which is much appreciated. > > I'd like also to give credit to the PortableApps team for > making LibreOffice available in their app-store. They have done great > work promoting us from early in the LibreOffice project: > https://www.libreoffice.org/download/portable-versions/ > > Paolo Vecchi wrote on 31.05.22 at 21:03: > > TDF to publish LibreOffice in the app stores ... > > Which leads us to other app-stores. Traditionally packaging > has been a great provider of diversity and excellence around > contribution to LibreOffice - starting IIRC with Frederic Crozat's > amazing work to make OpenOffice.org into the first Mandrake Linux > packages waaay back in the day - which much of our Linux packaging is > ultimately built on. > > Anyhow - it was wonderful to have lots of work from Stephan > Bergman and Caolan McNamara at RedHat with help from Robert McQueen at > Endless to get LibreOffice into: https://flathub.org/ "Flathub - An > app store and build service for Linux". As always getting LibreOffice > into a different kind of sand-box sounds trivial, and yet often takes > quite some work. > > Then of course we have the team started by Bjoern Michaelsen > who massaged LibreOffice into the nattily named "Snap Store" - > https://snapcraft.io "the app store for Linux with an audience of > millions." thanks for making that happen Bjoern! And thanks too to > Olivier Tilloy, Heather Ellsworth, Rico Tzschichholz, Marcus Tomlinson > for their patient tending and improvement of the snap app! > > I should mention William Gathoye for his great work making > LibreOffice available in Chocolatey - though at some stage I start to > get fuzzy as to what is, and is not an app-store. Going wider we've > been blessed by many sympathizers mutually promoting LibreOffice and > their brands in software catalogs left and right. > > Anyhow. Lots of good work, much of it already working and > build-able on without immediate bit-rot I hope. > > If the TDF board want to have a bigger packaging team, so be > it. Hopefully it will not negatively impact those who previously did > the work. > > I am somewhat curious as to the budget impact here, and the > real scope of "app-store". In particularly how much time is this > expected to take away from areas such as CTL/RTL, CJK as well as other > things that we are hoping to address with targeted developers ? > > I'm also curious if the plan is for TDF to sell LibreOffice > (in app-stores or elsewhere) and to become a for-pay vendor. Presumably > there is no need to decide immediately on that but I look forward to > the conclusions and rationale over the next month. > > Apologies to those that my memory inevitably missed out, and > go LibreOffice! > > All the best, > > Michael. > > -- > michael.me...@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity > Hangout: mejme...@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks > (M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe > > >
