Hi everyone,
Le 2012-12-28 12:39, Cor Nouws a écrit :
Hi Florian, all,
(taking advantage of discussion so far..)
Florian Monfort wrote (27-12-12 11:34)
I've seen a lot of browsers recently moving towards silent updates.
I was wondering whether this could be a relevant approach for LibreOffice
or not.
Changes in office suites can have far more impact...
So it's not for nothing that both power users and companies won't like it.
But of course, just as our current update notification, it would be
quite easy to make it - whenever it comes through - optional.
Indeed I've seen many people complaining about LibreOffice features, UI
etc. While using LibreOffice 3.4... Of course the first advice is "just
upgrade" but for people I doesn't seem like such a good think to do, just
like it somewhat scares them. I'm pretty sure that happens with at least
half of our userbase.
Since the difficulties in getting to silent updates (it's not yet
technically close; it should be turned off by default, so then how to
convince people that they turn it on ;-) .. ) I would propose another
view at the current situation: every opportunity to explain users
something is a chance for communication and thus better mutual
understanding :-)
What do you guys think? I think this would improve the overall quality of
our userbase making sure that almost everyone has the very last stable
version, with all the fixes and improvements it brings.
Plus, for once we wouldn't be copying MS Office...
Hmm, there are for sure cases in which we did not, and also the other
way round happens!
Cheers,
As also previously mentioned in one of the responses, I also believe
that the current etiquette is that any changes to software via updates
are to be made optional to users whether silent or not. Defaults are
usually set to no automatic update unless the user permits auto-update.
I don't believe it to be to our users advantage to update a package when
the package they already have is working exactly to the specifications
they needed. We have repeated this constantly to our users, that, one
version of LibreOffice 3.4 or 3.3.5 ... may be better suited to their
needs. If after convincing them of this argument, then forcing everyone
through silent updates would be quite contrary to our own advice.
Furthermore, I don't believe I have a single piece of software where
updates routines do not have the option to turn "on". This on my Android
cellphone, BlackBerry cellphone, Nokia cellphone, BlackBerry Playbook,
Mageia Linux systems, 2 windows gamer systems, Wii, Xbox360, Kobo ... as
well as the software that are installed on all of these platform. They
all have options to turn on/off auto-updates that are decided by the user.
In the face of such a large amount of makers (hardware/software)
experience pointing to leaving the choice of auto/manual updates up to
the users choice, IMO, we should not push updates to users without
giving them the option of turning on/off updates.
I agree that it would be best to try to educate our users as to the
benefits of auto-updating. However, I am reminded of silent updates
being of a bad decision by the fact that a couple years ago, a virus
maker pushed an update to its users when what it really did was turn off
their windows systems ... those who were on manual-update were not
affected. This even left their corporate clients in a real bind.[1]
I would suggest pushed/silent updates as not a good concept to adopt. We
cannot become so arrogant to think that we are never going to make
errors in update security, nor should we become so arrogant to think
that we know better than the people who use our software. Let's be
better than this and show our users how better off they may be with an
up-to-date LibreOffice package instead.
Cheers,
Marc
[1]
http://www.pcworld.com/article/261165/mcafee_antivirus_update_causes_problems_for_home_and_enterprise_customers.html
--
Marc Paré
[email protected]
http://www.parEntreprise.com
parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF)
parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org
--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected]
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
