Danese Cooper <dan...@gmail.com> wrote on 06/07/2011 02:19:38 PM: > > Just have to say...I have often been quoted saying the advent of > OpenOffice.org was a rare case of "corporate greed aligning with > human need". Safe to assume a high percentage of downloaders don't > have $.99. I know we're all excited by the commercial potential of > an unencumbered codebase, but let's not forget that this software > has been localized by the community into *many* languages (65 last I > checked, but probably more now) just so local people would have a > chance to learn to use computers without also having to learn one of > the 13 languages MSFT supports. >
An example, I was in South Africa at an ODF workshop a few years ago. They had a vending-machine like device called "Freedom Toaster" where you could stick in a CD ROM, pick from a list of open source applications, and have them burned onto your disc. All the software was stored locally. A great way to get around bandwidth limitations in that situation. (and yes, it had OOo) http://www.freedomtoaster.org/ It seems Apache will have a destination of value in OpenOffice.org. There should be a way to monetize this, similar to how Mozilla monetized their default search engine choice with Google. For example, ASF could take bids and award a contracts to providers who want to serve up OOo code. The money from this could be used to fund mirrors in under-served markets. Or the contract could require that the downloads be free to certain ranges of IP addresses, or something like that. Similar things could be done with respect to advertising. (With the obvious caveat that I have absolutely no idea whether any of this is permitted by ASF bylaws.) And remeber, let's not lock ourselves into something that "just works" for current OOo market share of 10% or so. We need to set our sights on what will work for twice or three times that number, at least. We need something that will scale both technically as well as financially. It is a challenge, I admit that. But I also cannot think of any open source foundation more up to this challenge than Apache. -Rob --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
