On Friday 28 September 2007 06:02, Sean W. O'Quin wrote: > All, Greetings Sean,
> This is a great thread for me to jump in and introduce myself. I am going > to be supporting the adoption of OpenOffice in Ecuador and Latin America. I > have over 10 years of software product marketing, technical marketing and > program management experience and have recently shifted my focus from > commercial to open source solutions. But, If you'll forgive me for being blunt, you've had little experience in the OpenOffice.org or indeed any opensource community by the looks of it. > > In my opinion, OpenWrite and OpenImpress can hold their weight against > their MSFT counterparts. The names of the applications in OpenOffice.org are Writer, Impress, Math and Base > I have not used OpenCalc to the Expert level and the spreadsheet is called Calc > (sadly I do use Excel in this capacity) Halfbaked may as well be not baked at all. Calc is capable of 95% of Excel's functionality, just like Excel is only capable of 95% of Calc's functionality. How can you expect clients or for that matter, us, to take you seriously when you don't support the software yourself. >and know that many companies > integrate Excel into their financial applications for consolidation and > reporting as well as other back end and "mission critical" applications. > This dependence can negate a CTO's interest in OpenOffice right off the > bat. That doesn't really worry us because our product is called OpenOffice.org > A way to break the barrier is to also have companies adopt OpenOffice > as their default or an option for integration to their back end and > financial applications. > > I think we need to form a working group to identify the integration as well > as feature/function gaps that OpenCalc has to Excel and prioritize these > requirements into future development. You see, you're coming at it from the wrong direction. What you want is an Excel clone and we're not in that game. If all you want us to be is an MSO clone then we're always going to be playing catchup. Forget that, focus on what Calc does better. Have you recently been in touch with MSFT to tell them that they should get Excel exporting to PDF? Or perhaps asking them to get Access to administer Oracle or MySQL or whatever databases in the same way as Base does? Or to have the ability to interact with ISO26300 Documents?? Have you identified the gaps in Excel functionality where OOo beats MSO? >Taking this initiative a step further > will be to approach vendors that use Excel as their client interface to > also support OpenOffice. The Product is called OpenOffice.org, OOo is an acceptable abbreviation. OpenOffice is a different thing entirely, but yes this has been identified as a target > If either of these initiatives are already in > progress, I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right > direction. And there you have it, not a lot of research. OK so lets go over this again You don't know the correct name of the software You don't appear to have had any involvement in open source projects You appear to have done little or no research on this organisation before coming here You only use parts of OpenOffice.org You appear to want nothing more than a cheap clone of MSO OK so if this were a job interview and we were the HR department of this big company called OpenOffice.org..... D'you think you'd get a job Or from another POV... This is the procurement department of a large corporate, d'you think we should purchase off you given the above > > I am exciting to join the team and hope that I can contribute a great deal > to supporting this worthy initiative. OK now let's take a breath. Sorry if I appear harsh Sean, but your mail nicely highlighted some of the things we deal with when we get people telling us they are going to set up as an "Open Source" business. Misguided ideals, little research, even less knowledge and no long term commitment to the community. Often we get requests for listing on the Community Distributors page for instance, from businesses/organisations that don't even mention OOo on their websites. This sort of thing only damages OOo's reputation as an enterprise level solution. However your mail also highlights some areas that we need to work on IMNSHO, the BizDev project for one, to make it easier to do the research and communicate what the project needs from businesses working at the coalface and conversely what the project can do for those businesses. > > Regards, > > Sean W. O'Quin > Quito, Ecuador And having said all that, welcome to the community Sean! :) The es community within OOo is very strong and supportive as evidenced by Alexandro's myriad of initiatives. I am sure you will get much value out of the community Cheers GL -- "GET LEGAL - GET OPENOFFICE.ORG" http://why.openoffice.org ISO 26300 compliant Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Assessor Trainer Moderator New Zealand (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org.nz GET DRESSED GET OOOGEAR http://ooogear.co.nz --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
