I'm one of the Forum-invited Apache Observers.  I worked with the OOo Forum 
Administrators and other Apache Observers to arrive at an acceptable 
accommodation of the Forum governance with requirements that Apache has for web 
properties in its custody.

I am not aware of *any* statements from AOOo or Forum operators that suggested 
TDF antipathy for forums or anything like that.  If there were any such 
remarks, I believe they were simply ignored as irrelevant to the problem at 
hand.

I am also not aware of any discussion that was antagonistic to TDF whatsoever 
among those involved with finding a resolution for the migration of the OOo 
Forums to a reliable hosting. The key objection was to preserve and continue 
that valuable activity with as little disruption as possible for the coummunity 
of users and for the operators themselves.  

There are the usual highly-speculative misgivings from the usual parties about 
the direction of one group or the other (even both), but that seems to be 
invariable and unrelated to the problems of user forums operation.  My 
experience is that whatever those cynical pontifications are, it works best to 
ignore them and keep moving forward.

Italo's two posts on ooo-users@ incubator.apache.org each have statements to 
the effect that "as you know at TDF w+e are ready to host the forums."  I 
believe these were in response to expressions of angst by some that Apache 
custody raised unacceptable obstacles for the current Forum operators and that 
the possible demise of the Oracle-hosted service would happen before that was 
all worked out.  There was also concern for the incivility experienced in 
various settings.  The dates of Italo's posts are 30 September and 11 October. 

Fortunately, the forum migration has been successful and the forums are now 
operating pretty much the same as before.  I don't know what the outlook of the 
forum administrators now is.  It is unreasonable to expect that they are all of 
one mind any more than are the TDF and ASF communities.

The key objective has been achieved: 

 * the forums continue to be available where they have already been, 
 * all of the operations, content, and integration into other portions of the 
OpenOffice.org site are preserved, 
 * logins were preserved, etc.  

I.e., the least destabilizing migration possible has been accomplished.  

Now use and support of the OOo User Forums can proceed in a more deliberate and 
straightforward way.  This was probably the most important factor in the course 
chosen, and other options would have been important had this effort failed.  

Having the offer from TDF was certainly valuable in knowing that a contingency 
course was available.  Some found reassurance in the TDF offer as providing an 
important safety net.  It wasn't needed.  

All of this is without prejudice to other forums that exist and might come into 
existence, wherever hosted, in the future.  The communities and products will 
evolve and the forums that support the communities will as well.

For now, and the forseeable near-term future, there is significant value in the 
OpenOffice.org Forums to users of OO.o releases and LO releases.  I am 
confident that any divergence of products will be accommodated in ways that 
serve the mutual community of interest.  There is now the opportunity to deal 
with that in non-disruptive ways whenever the time comes.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: charles.h.sch...@gmail.com [mailto:charles.h.sch...@gmail.com] On Behalf 
Of Charles-H. Schulz
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 02:54
To: discuss@documentfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

Le 29/10/2011 11:37, Olivier R. a écrit :
> Hello Charles,
> 
>> providing mailing lists seems to mean that we don't
>> respect forums
> 
> No. You are twisting what I said.


Perhaps, but  I actually heard a similar argument about "the lack of
respect" to the forums (but apparently you make a different point) from
several people over the last months, hence my reaction.

> 
> Apache offered to host forums. There have been a lot of discussions, and it
> was not easy to find a common ground.
> Did TDF offer to host forums ?

Yes. To be perfectly fair we have not offered it in public as some of us
thought it was not right to let " the mustard go up" as you and I say in
French, and so we were very (too?) cautious, approaching one or two
persons off list. Clearly if the story that goes out now is that TDF did
not offer that, then it will seem and look accurate, but the forum
admins certainly know we have been very polite, very understanding and
we did propose them to host the forums, so in any case, it's really
unfortunate.

Best,

Charles.




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