Hi Erwin, I've looked back at this post, and it is really too long. But I couldn't figure out where to cut it, sorry, so I'm just going to post the whole thing.
On Wednesday 23 March 2005 04:59, Erwin Tenhumberg wrote: > Hi Christian, > > Simon is a very busy guy and has to cover more than just one > open source project, +1 IMHO, Sun should make him unbusy. He's a really good evangelist, and if I were a senior Sun exec, I would give him (and you!) the time to hang out on this list. > but I'm sure that he (like me) is open > to act as an interface or proxy in case Sun needs to get > involved. True, and I get your point. I guess the operative words of that last sentence are "in case Sun needs to get involved." Obviously, Sun has made a judgment call about the amount of time its staff will spend on these lists. It is that judgment call that I am taking issue with here. On Sunday, March 20, I interviewed Danese after her last day at Sun and before her first day at Intel. Overall, Danese's public relationship with Sun after leaving Sun has been mostly positive, and my interview here is consistent with that general tone: http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=3719 I came away from my interview with Danese thinking that she believes that while Sun's overall relationship with the open source community is, on the whole, quite exemplary (especially compared with other IP companies of Sun's size), there have been times that Sun has not engaged quite as well as it could have with the open source community. I raise this for two reasons: first, because it appears that we have lost the participation of OOo community member Diane Mackay, due to her dissatisfaction with the Sun-MS deal which I linked to earlier in this thread, http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=47878 and because Community Council member Daniel Carrera has been complaining quite vocally and consistently about need for greater community participation in various aspects of this project. I personally disagree with Diane and Daniel on some of the substantive areas of their issues, but IMHO, their dissaffection with Sun at the moment is a case study in Sun needing to be more engaged in the OOo community here on the list at the moment. Erwin, you have been an effective Sun link for the community, but without disparaging you at all, I can say that Simon Phipps is really uniquely skilled as a communicator, and really only one in 5 thousand or so execs has his ability to undertand nuance and speak diplomatically and yet with striking candor. My basic point is limited to this: despite Sun's stellar commitment to OOo, there are a number of community members who are honked off at Sun for one thing or another, and IMHO Sun should say, "hey, this is a problem, this is a trend, and let's lighten Simon Phipps load right now so that he can engage more intimately with the OOo community." Sun has been cranking very hard on doing really great work with 2.0, and yet at the same time that Sun is about to release the final version of this really good code base, there are a number of really really committed members of the community who are honked off at Sun. That is anamolous, and worth of attention. Diane and Daniel would not make their comments lightly, as they have both given tons of time to OOo. So I think that Sun should let the second shoe drop, and commit the time of someone like Simon Phipps to making sure that the release of 2.0 will converge with greater community UNDERSTANDING of Sun's role with OOo. That might sound odd; after all, Sun open-sourced OOo; Sun does most of the development of the code; Sun provides the material support for this very list; Sun sponsors OOo conferences lots of other community functions and promotional work. It would seem to be reasonable to conclude that Sun has done "enough" to earn the goodwill of the OOo community. And yet, I know from having spoken with them that reasonable people like Daniel and Diane and Jean Hollis-Weber have a bone to pick with Sun, and feel as if they are not being heard. And it's not just them. It is entirely possible that Daniel, Diane, and Jean are off-base in some portion of their issues with OOo and Sun. And some of the issues that they are raising might be quite complex, and not readily solved in a short time frame. I frankly don't know. What I do know is that Danese Cooper has said publicly words to the effect that Sun has missed past opportunities to engage with the community, and I wonder if perhaps some of those past problems are now oddly recurring at the same time that Sun is about to give the world more really cool code in the form of 2.0, and I wonder if that is part of the message that Danese Cooper was trying to communicate to Sun with her departure. I don't know, by my knowledge is limited to what is already in the public domain, and I really know no more than what Danese told me in her interview with me. So please take my words here at face value. > > BTW, you may have notice that I reinvigorated my blog at > blogs.sun.com in order to do some additional guerilla > marketing for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. In some of > my blog entries I explain new OpenOffice.org 2.0/ > StarOffice 8 features in order to get people interested > and in order to provide some "value" in my blog. Yeah, and I think that the fact that Sun allows its employees to blog liberally is a good thing. I have just read your 3/23/05 blog, so thanks for reminding me about your blog. At the risk of appearing rude, your blog seems to be mostly focused on praising Sun and StarOffice, which would seem logical, since it IS an employee's blog on a company blog space. But IMHO, you could improve your blog by speaking more naturally. Lots of people get good information from screen shots, so putting up screen shots on your blog is understandable, but the overall theme of your blog seems a bit more like an infomercial than a conversation with the community. I have been criticized on this list for being to bland and pro-Sun, and I think some of that criticism is justified. Even though I don't work for Sun and certainly never will (people would beat me up in the lunch room for emails like this one), I am quite pumped by Sun's open sourcing of OOo, and so it is natural to me to want to be positive on this list about Sun. I have also tended to be positive because I was seeing what I felt was too much negative stuff on this list about Sun, and I wanted to balance it out. But being too positive can run the risk that people will think that you are not candid or authentic or genuine, or at least that you are boring. I do believe that this is the impression that many folks have had of me on this list lately. So I personally really sympathize with your, Erwin, and with Sun in general. We are positive about Sun's code gifts to the world; you are dependent on Sun for your paycheck and answer to Sun supervisors; and so maybe you feel, as do I, that Sun is not perfect, but why do people criticize Sun and the OOo leads, rather than do stuff to make both things better? And yet improvement can't come without candor, and candor means that sometimes the message contains pills that are a bit hard to swallow. I guess if I had one message for Sun Execs, it would be this: look at Danese's picture on the MadPenguin.org interview linked above. It's goofy. The thing that I like about Danese is that she has a really rare mix of goofy candor and business sobriety. I doubt that I would be able to pull it off as well as she does. I like the fact that Jonathan Schwartz has kept his pony tail. I like the fact that Scott McNealy plays hockey. These guys have real lives. Perhaps my basic point here is that we need to continue to insist that corporations take Doc Searls ClueTrain Manifesto a bit more to heart. People can spot a genuine conversation or a corporate message, and Sun probably could loosen its collective tie a bit. I know that's not terribly concrete, but I don't have any better way to say it. > > Yesterday, my blog was surprisingly popular. According to > the referers list many Mozilla folks liked my posting > about the Mozilla plugin. Yeah, it's a decent blog, it really is. And it's by no means just about Sun. And it's by no means an infomercial. And yet, it seems a bit more like a corporate blog than a conversation. But on a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it a very strong 7.5, which is actually decent. > > Please let me know if there are any features that you > want me to explain in my blog! See, I'm not sure that your blog needs explaining, it's pretty clear. And I'm not slamming your blog. I guess that one problem that I have with your blog is that it's not here. The good thing about a blog is that it stays in one place, and can be read like a diary. But my issue with your raising your blog at this point is not the blog itself, but I would like to see you on this list more frequently, and I would like to see you and / or another Sun exec, say like Simon, address some of the gripes that Daniel, Diane, and Jean have had with OOo and Sun being to inflexible. Confrontation is never pleasant, but Daniel, Diane, and Jean and others have had gripes, and they feel as if their gripes have been ignored. I guess what's missing is someone from Sun calling them on the carpet, and telling where they're wrong and admitting where they are correct. 2.0 is about to be released, and so maybe we should take this time to have a few candid discussions in which maybe Daniel admits that some of his gripes have been off-base, and the OOo community leads and the Sun leads admit that he and others have a point. I personally am somewhat aggravated that Daniel and others are aggravated, and I'd like us to deal with it and move on to new innovations. > > > Cheers, > Erwin > > Christian Einfeldt wrote: > > On Saturday 19 March 2005 04:15, Simon Phipps wrote: > > > > Hi Simon, nice to see you on this list. Sun sometimes gets > > beaten up on this list, and sometimes deserves it, but often > > not ALL of the bruises it receives. Heh. IMHO, if someone of > > your caliber from Sun cruised this list more frequently, it > > would be helpful both to OOo and to Sun. > > > > There are lots of good Sun people on the list, but because they > > don't have the official evangelist status that you have, I > > sometimes get the feeling that they would like to speak more > > freely, but don't, because they are not sure if they will get > > into trouble from engaging in a debate on this list. > > > > If I understand it correctly, OOo recently lost a very very > > valuable community member, Diane Mackay, because of Sun recent > > biz dealings with Microsoft. Diane seems to have been bothered > > enough by the deal to have stopped participating in OOo. > > > > http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=4 > >7878 > > > > Without addressing that Microsoft deal in detail, it would be > > nice to have more frequent visits from execs like you to > > articulate Sun's position here on this list. I understand that > > Sun wants to coordinate its message, etc., but I or other folks > > outside Sun sometimes end up defending Sun's position, which is > > bad for a couple of reasons 1) It's nice to have personal input > > from Sun on this list; 2) I don't really know what the hell I'm > > talking about when it comes to Sun; 3) everyone knows I don't > > really the hell I'm talking about when it comes to Sun; 4) > > other folks on the list are more knowledgeable about Sun, but > > without a Sun exec, you still have the murkiness factor; 5) you > > are pretty good at getting points across, so why have me or > > someone else outside Sun try to be Simon Phipps; 6) Daniel > > Carrera and others are getting understandably grumpy about Sun > > looking like a brick wall. > > > > So thanks for being here, and it would be nice to have you here > > more often. > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > >------ To unsubscribe, e-mail: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional > > commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- >---- To unsubscribe, e-mail: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, > e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
