This mailing list is not dead, but we are all volunteers and we all have a family and a work to pay our bills. Sometimes, to reply to messages it takes some time.
On 4/22/13 10:06 AM, Pedro wrote: > Regarding your subject, I think that LibreOffice could target those users > but there are two obstacles: the file conversion is not perfect AND (most > important) those users are already too used to MS Office. It is easier to > convince new users to work with a different product than to teach new tricks > to "old dogs". This does not reflect the reality, where most LibreOffice (and OpenOffice) users are coming from the Microsoft field, because they are fed up with license costs or simply looking for an alternative (this is the most frequent approach). The end of life for MS Office 2003 is a significant problem for companies, but not for individuals. Targeting companies is definitely more difficult than targeting individuals, but as far as I know most of them are already trying to manage the problem - at least in Europe - and many of them are looking at migrating to free software. TDF has published a white paper about migrating from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, which is being translated in several languages. We can use such a document to educate companies and we can even make a version targeted to MS Office 2003 users. The fact that the file conversion is not perfect is not going to change. It will never be perfect, because Microsoft is deliberatedly creating formats which are impossible to emulate in order to reduce the interoperability (interoperability is the death of lock in, and lock in is the cornerstone of Microsoft business model). On the other hand, placing a counter on our website would not reach the potential target of MS Office 2003 users, unless they already know free software and LibreOffice (which would put them in a different group). We should make some hard noise in the Windows environment, using social media and traditional media. Let's brainstorm about a specific message for this target group. -- Italo Vignoli - italo.vign...@gmail.com mob +39.348.5653829 - VoIP 5316...@messagenet.it skype italovignoli - gtalk italo.vign...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
