Hi Chad, Chad Smith wrote: > First of all, I took the logo off the sitet - so you guys can stop whining > about that. (Even though I have writen permission from the Community > Manager > to use it.)
Great move. Hey, if you have the written permission from someone, why don't you quote it? I guess it came by email? Not that i don't believe you - in fact i don't care because i think it is totally irrelevant - but it might stop one of the ridiculous parts of this discussion. > Second of all, up until just recently, it wasn't just the homepage of > NeoOffice that called Neo a port of OOo - it was the "Official" download > page of OpenOffice.org for Mac that did the same thing. And when I say > recently, I mean a matter of weeks, if not days. And you are totally right here pointing out that they didn't get the whole "you bloody bustard promoted NeoOffice" crap. > It is *not* a different > program - it is OpenOffice.org aquafied using Java. They take the free, > open sourced, LGPLed source code for OpenOffice.org and tweak it to run on > Macs. How is that not a port? Well, it may be a port, technically (in my humble opinion), but it is a different project: - it is published under a different license - the development efforts are not shared - the NeoOffice guys state themselves that they are a separate project > If I want to call > AbiWord OpenOffice.org Lite - I can. I may or may not be inaccurate in > doing so - but you can't force me to change it. Right. All we can do is ask you to mind our concerns. Let's just step aside from the battlefield a bit, have an amusing view to the hoards chopping each others heads off and break it down to what's left then: The OpenOffice.org community has a problem with NeoOffice. If not for emmotional reasons, then because it is a separate project that doesn't contribute back to OpenOffice.org, so OOo people don't want to promote NeoOffice either. Especially, because a native OOo mac port is under development. (BTW: Yes, I'd call this politics.) Your site uses a name that designifies promotion of OpenOffice.org. About 5% of your sites content promotes but different things (like Abiword, Firefox etc.) and one of them is NeoOffice. To me it would seem that from where we are standing here, at the quiet edge of the battlefield, there is nothing offensive in the text on your site. To me - from here - it looks quite funny that the hoards are chopping their heads off over such a topic. However, so some people attacked you and you felt offended and injustly treated and inclined to defend yourself. Which you did by fighting back with the same weapons. But we wanted to forget about that, right. So what's left then is that the OOo community pointed out that you have a problem with mention of NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org together on a site that raises the impression that it is a site about OpenOffice.org rather than about a personal opinion. The notion on the top right of your page doesn't help much in leveraging that first impression because the url and the looks, together with the tightly integrated linking to the official site leave the impression that the site is about OpenOffice.org and not your personal opinion. The issue here is that a visitor thinks that OpenOffice.org is promoting NeoOffice as a port supported by the same community/project. OOo-community may have been fine with that in the past, but doesn't like that anymore. So the OOo marketing folks finally kindly wanted to ask you (though having a funny way of kindly asking) to fix that misleading issue. Now, you've done that partly by removing the logo. That helps a lot already. But i still think the confusion is still there. So, i want to ask you - here where it's quiet - what do you want to achieve with your site? If you want to have a peronal opinion site then it seems a bit dodgy to purposely make it look like it's not about personal opinion. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you don't have the right to do so. You surely do have every right, even if it promotes MS-Office. But why would you want to? Does it really help anyone? On the other hand, if you want it to be more about OpenOffice.org and less about your personal opinion (which it can be and surely is driven by nonetheless - and we are very happy about that), would it be a big pain in the ass for you if the OOo marketing people kindly asked you to change the content about the NeoOffice a bit? I really think you wouldn't have to wipe it from the page, i think just a few extra remarks should be fine for everyone. Well, perhaps not everyone, because from here it looks like Eric still would like to chop some heads off. ;-) (Hey, Eric, no offense, but please join us here on the edge for a second and ask yourself if some of us might be right in the notion that you are a bit overly emotional in your ambitions to make that seperation clear to everyone. No-one disrespects your work.) Back to topic...Chad, please consider the issue that's left after putting our battle gear aside. As i said in my personal mail to you, your site would benefit from a different look anyway, if you want to go the "personal opinion" way. If you want to go the "more official" way, I'm sure you'll earn some hugs here - at least i think you should. Of course, you have every right to leave things as they are, as well, if it's fine for you to reject the request of some of the OOo community - you might have good reasons for that (and even if you didn't - who are we to tell you what to do). I hope i managed to make clear what i wanted to. Now let's pick up our axes again and have some fun, shell we? ... UUUAAAHHHAAAHHH... > Seriously, my page has been up for months. It has been in my sig for > months. Eric sees it and goes bulistic, and now all of the sudden "the > community" wants me to overhaul my site. Well, it's really not only Erics opinion, though i don't like his ways of "this is not respecting our work", "this is not acceptable" or talking about "correct" and incorrect ways either. Sorry, Eric, but really, what a bullshit! I understand that you feel betrayed by the NeoOffice guys, but there was nothing in Chad's words that expressed disrespect for your work. In fact a few mails back you said yourself that the X11 interface is a relict and a problem. So please get over your over-defensiveness and if you don't like something, the words "i don't like it" might provoke better reactions (and are more truthful) than the words "this is not correct" or "you don't have the right". I personally think the way we approach our community members is far more important than if they mention NeoOffice on their sites or not. > Screw you. Screw you, too, damned! UUUAAHHHAAUUHAAAA....chop...chop...blood...splatter... ;-) > It is *MY SITE*. I support what works. I promote what works. See, you are supporting OOo but then at the same time those OOo guys consider your way of supporting non-supportive. It's an unfortunate situation and i personally surely find the whole NeoOffice totally off, but still, it's a bit twisty and considering the concerns of these OOo guys might be a good thing to do, anyways. (Because i also think they have a poin in their argumentation.) > Overall, > the > OpenOffice.org project is great - but I am not going to tell people to use > something that is inferior to something else that is just as free, just as > open, and just as powerful - but better looking, easiler to install, and > easier to use. Until OOo for Mac native is released, it is vaporware as > far > as I am concerned. I will not promote vaporware. I've been working with > OOo for about 3 years now, and the whole time, I've been told "X11 is the > way to go for Mac! It will get better, promise!" And it hasn't gotten any > more Mac-native. When I see it - I will change my site *that day*. Well, here indeed you might wanna take care of not sounding disrespecting in terms of some peoples work. It surely has gotten more Mac-native internally. Although you don't get anything to see of that because there's no release. > You know, if someone had said "Hey Chad, we're working on a Mac-native port > of OpenOffice.org - something far better than the X11 port, and even better > than NeoOffice! Would you like to tell people about the work we are > doing?" > - Then I might have done that - I probably would have been excited about > it. Here you go. Exactly how i wish it had happened. That's basically all I'm talking about here. > But no, what do I get? "Who authorized this site? What right do you > have to criticize my work? You are breaking the rules of the community! > Change it now!" to which I say - fuck off. Yeah, hey...lets' all just fuck each other!!! UUUAAHAHHAAAA....... This is all so much fun! ;-) André. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
