On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 4:59 AM, Graham Lauder <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, 2011-07-11 at 20:21 +0300, Daniel Shahaf wrote: >> Javier Sola wrote on Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 18:43:17 +0700: >> > If Apache forced this without discussion it would be a bad start for >> > the project. >> >> You're misportraying the facts; it's a preexisting Apache policy that >> predates OOo being proposed as a podling. >> >> Now, we're generally reasonable people here, and the podling can always >> request an exception (talk to trademarks@). > > > >> But, with my Member hat on, >> this collective "Let's join Apache, but not be called Apache, and not >> work with existing Apache entities" spirit leaves a rather bad taste. > > I'm not saying we the community, should not be called Apache whatever. > Nobody is down on Apache, but I just don't want to dilute the strong > brand of the #product#. OOo has a very strong market share in the > Office Suite Software Consumer market. > > http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-openoffice-market-shares.html > > It is important that we maintain that share and grow it. > There is a large community: 35,000 individuals subscribed to OOo > maillists when I last checked, Louis may have more up-to-date numbers > Around 800 have signed the JCA/SCA > Scores possibly Hundreds of Millions of Users worldwide and growing > > All this under the OpenOffice.org Brand. There has been a lot of noise
Yes, under the Apache brand. But also under the Obama presidency and under the Chinese Year of the Rabbit. We don't know what is coincidence versus a real essential cause and effect relationship. In other words, we don't know if we'd have the same number of users, or even more, with a different name. These seems like something we could debate endlessly without resolution. But I wonder if a more definitive answer might come from a survey of users and other market participants, looking at branding perceptions, trying out a few variations on the name, seeing which ones elicit the most positive responses. I'd be happy to yield to facts. > around LibreOffice with those Linux Distributions who used Go-OOo now > distributing with LO, but those numbers, compared to OOo across all > platforms are miniscule and I believe that will remain the same unless > of course this stalling of development, forced on us by Oracle, > continues or the brand is modified violently so that we have > re-establish our brand right from the beginning. In our consumer market > tacking Apache on the end would do just this. This not a slight on > Apache or lack of appreciation for their efforts thus far, just a > statement of the circumstances. > > Cheers > GL > -- > Graham Lauder, > OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ > http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html > > OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant. > > > >
