It has been said that Apache is a developer-centric org, and relative to other orgs that is probably not too far off. However OOo's user community will be important for us to preserve, nurture, and grow as we start moving the services over to equipment managed by the ASF.
If the concern is about existing services provided by the OOo domain, my hope is that in the near future we will transfer control of the domain to the ASF, and subsequently migrate the existing services largely unchanged from their existing URLs. If there are concerns beyond that, please specify what those are and I'll try to answer as best as I can. ----- Original Message ---- > From: Italo Vignoli <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Sun, June 5, 2011 7:30:43 AM > Subject: End Users ? > > I have lurked at the mailing list over the last four days, as I was away on a > >short break. Using a smartphone has not made my life easier, but I have been >able to read most of the relevant messages. > > I am a founding member of TDF, and a member of the SC, but first and > foremost >I am an end user. I am not a developer, I do not write docs, I am not able to >do QA tests (to me, a bug is a feature, although in the wrong direction), I >am >not able to localize SW, and so on. To make it short, I am basically useless >for a SW project. > > So, after having read hundreds of emails discussing the merits of different >licenses and processes, concentrating on the geography where the code should >live (basically, US vs EU, or Delaware vs Germany), I am asking a very simple >question: what about end users? > > OOo has over 100 million of end users, who use the SW for their basic needs >(write a letter, produce an expense note, build slides, manage their address >book, and so on). > > What is going to happen to these guys, apart from the fact that if they > prefer >to use OOo over LibreOffice - which is perfectly acceptable - it is still not >clear (but here I might just have missed some bit of info) if and when they >will be able to install a new version of the SW? > > I understand - but I might be wrong - that ASF is not used to deal with such > a >huge end user base (actually, the third in terms of absolute size after MS >Windows and MS Office). > > In the past, not even IBM with Lotus SmartSuite has been able to reach that >size of user base, while the OOo community - not Sun, not Oracle - has been >able to grow and nurture it. > > Just a heads up, not to forget the end users. > > -- Italo Vignoli - The Document Foundation > email [email protected] > phone +39.348.5653829 - VoIP +39.02.320621813 > skype italovignoli - [email protected] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
