On 27/02/2014 Rob Weir wrote:
Time to wrap this up. I've gone through the 275 questions from 430 users and picked out the top ones.
I don't see very interesting questions in this top 10. Indeed, some are misplaced and some can only be answered in a generic way. I'm commenting on some of them below.
1) How can it be Microsoft is a platinum sponsor of Apache when OpenOffice is competing with MS Office? Rob: This is an odd question to ask us, but I suppose we can explain how the ASF is a foundation that supports many (100+) open source projects and that a sponsor of AOO does not necessarily participate or endorse every project at Apache. But again, this is an odd question for us. Maybe we can pass it off to Ross Gardler for a better answer?
It would also be important to point out the Apache policy of not paying for developers, just to put in context that donations do not necessarily result in possibilities to influence the product development. Of course, we should also add that it is possible to sponsor individual developers to get a particular feature developed for OpenOffice, and possibly integrated in the official sources.
2) A series of questions on proposed features and how we decide on new features, including: ... Rob: I thought we'd lump these all together and give an in-depth response about how features and bug fixes are prioritized in a volunteer-led open source project at Apache.
I agree, even though some features, for examples the upcoming .docx export, might be worth some specific coverage.
4) What are some of the most interesting features in OpenOffice that most users don't know even exist? But maybe we can nominate 4 or 5 "hidden features" or "underused features" that users might not know about?
File - Versions is a good candidate.
6) Are there backdoors or spyware in Apache OpenOffice? Rob: Like we'd tell you if there were? ;-) But seriously, this could be a topic of a standalone blog post, and maybe we should do that. We could discuss open source security, how we handle vulnerability reports and the advantage of open source transparency for preventing back doors.
And we should also point out that, even though it is difficult, we try to protect users by enforcing our trademarks with search engines.
9) What is being done to have openoffice return to be the default suite in linux distributions? Rob: Anyone have an answer for this one?
It's good that this gets interest. I must say that efforts are mostly stalled, but that an easier alternative is much more feasible, i.e., maintaining repositories that make it easy for Linux users to install OpenOffice on their system, without the need to use the terminal. There are some uncoordinated efforts at the moment and it is much easier to consolidate them and start with this approach rather than comply with the different distribution policies. Basically, we can address users first and distributions later.
Regards, Andrea. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
