Hi Cor, all
I changed the subject, because I want to follow your proposal to
position my concerns officially at the Community Council, while keeping
in this thread in order to inform the community about this specific request.
*Please don't support the application independency of the ODF document
icons!*
Cor Nouws schrieb:
[...]
IMO it can be very useful if community members that have either
positive or negative examples that they expect to be constructive and
helpful in this effort, contact the council. [...]
We've been discussing some of my personal concerns on several lists and
in private mail, but one point among several Sun/Oracle decisions in the
past few months needs clarification by the Community Council IMO:
Rosana Ardila stated on disc...@ux [1] and brand...@marketing [2] with
regards to the new document icons that don't include any OpenOffice.org
branding or resemblance: "Where there is no room for changes is on the
branding of the icons (no gulls). The idea of supporting ODF as a
application independent open standard is the priority."
This priority has never been decided nor supported by the community.
In Spring 2009 there has been a decision by the Engineering Steering
Committee going far beyond it's responsibilities described as "Provide
advice on technical implementations in case of conflicting interests."
on the CC homepage [3] that has only been mentioned in their minutes [4].
Half a year later Lutz Höger blogged about the new ODF icons on GullFOSS
[5] and if not an attentive community member had noticed it (Thanks,
Volker!), they would have been implemented in OOo3.2.0 without further
notice.
During the last months there have been concerns, discussions and
proposals on several lists, but the only result was an update of the
icons with slightly more contrast.
I don't want to discuss the design of the icons here - it's about their
basics:
Why should OpenOffice.org give away it's presence on the user's desktop
- the main place to be recognized by the people - only to support the
"application independency" of ODF?
We want to support ODF - even on the desktop. So let's add an "ODF"
badge to every ODF document and all the applications supporting this
document format.
But I know that I'm not alone, if I don't support giving up OOo branding
in the document icons.
Application independency is just one of several important aspects of ODF
- interoperability can be promoted by the ODF badge on similar (even on
different) document icons, but allowing us to promote OpenOffice.org at
the same time (and telling the users that they open *our* application to
work on ODF documents) will not reduce ODF perception to a measurable
degree.
On the contrast: I could imagine that it might be much easier for other
producers of ODF supporting applications to follow our way to support
ODF by similar document icons, if they would contain an application
related symbol like the ones I proposed for OOo [6].
It's reasonable for Oracle to remove the Sun branding in StarOffice
document icons already in the last version called "StarOffice". But
this can't be a reason for OpenOffice.org to follow this step.
StarOffice doesn't need it's branding any more - on the contrast, it's
nonconstructive for future development.
OpenOffice.org needs to stay visible on our users desktops - please find
a way to tell our major code contributor that being part of the
community means not to ignore the minority. Especially if this minority
(I'm quite sure that it is the majority if we would count people) spends
a lot of dedication, idealism and time for our community and our product.
I don't want to provide manpower for free to a marketing strategy that
doesn't have OpenOffice.org as main focus.
I hope you won't spare the council for any critique, remarks (may also
be positive).
Sorry, I don't have lots of positive remarks on this topic, but
following the recent CC meetings, it seems that your work becomes more
target- and community-oriented by an improved wiki presence,
participation in the newsletter and open IRC slots in your meetings :-)
But I also hope that we all try to really learn from what happened and
support each other in that process. If all that fails, it may be early
enough to run away :-\
I don't want to run away - I've spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours for
OOo during the last six years. I've done this with joy and have been
convinced of the necessity and reasonability of this work. I want to be
able to keep on with this work in future.
Best regards
Bernhard
[1]: http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=discuss&msgNo=4888
[2]:
http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=branding&msgNo=112
[3]: http://council.openoffice.org/esc/index.html
[4]:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ESC_meeting_minutes_20090309#proposal_for_unified_ODF_Document_icons
[5]: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/unified_odf_icons
[6]:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/File:ODF_textdocument_different_sizes_S.png
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