Donald,
Am 20.12.11 19:39, schrieb Donald Harbison:
Götz,
Thank you very much for this information. We wish we had heard from you
much sooner.
Thank you! I hope it's not too late!
Some additional comments and questions inline.
2011/12/20 Götz Wohlberg<[email protected]>
Hi all,
May I introduce myself? My name is Goetz Wohlberg and I spent the last 16+
years working on OpenOffice.org and it's commercial derivatives like
StarOffice or Oracle Open Office. At the moment I'm helping Martin and
Stefan from Team OpenOffice.org e.V. to setup a team with full-time
developers to join the Apache
OpenOffice podling. My focus is to create value for customers and to build a
successful commercial business.
Pleased to meet you.
I have not read all of the posting here and I'm not a native English
speaker. So I might have missed some topics or discussions. But my
impression is that there is a major disconnect between the ASF and Team
OpenOffice.org. I guess it's time to be more direct and blunt about our
situation. Please let me try to explain what our ideas are with Team
OpenOffice.org, what we did, what we learned and what our next steps are.
First off, we are not evil! We don't want to mislead consumers (although I
admit we did)! We are not collecting donations for our own coffers! We
don't have a business model that is just based on donations! What we plan
to do can be summarized in the following three goals:
1. We want to help existing Oracle customers that they continue to use
OpenOffice.org
Great!
2. We want to make money with support and service for OpenOffice.org
and Apache OpenOffice
Go for it!
3. We want to be able to sponsor developers working full-time on
OpenOffice.org and save as much developer know-how as possible from
the primary contributor Sun/Oracle
Do you mean full-time on Apache OpenOffice?
Yes, that's the plan but we are not there yet.
To 1:
I'm in contact with a number of customers and I can assure you, that they
are desperately looking for a sign of life and new releases for
OpenOffice.org.
Would you like to help us communicate directly to these customers from the
Apache OpenOffice project team as well?
Sure! Let me know, what you have in mind.
Keep in mind that we released products every 3 month. Customers haven't
seen an OOo release since nearly a year now. I understand that AOO 3.4 is
in preparation and on the horizon, but how reliable is this? The ASF does
not have a track record yet for AOO. Customers and consumers are also
asking for support for their current version -- and this is OpenOffice.org
3.3.0 and earlier. That's the reason why we strongly believe, AOO 3.4 is
important, but OOo 3.3.1 is also important. We think that a maintenance
releases for OOo 3.3.0 can help to create trust in the project and help
customers to wait for AOO 3.4.
We encourage you to follow our progress on AOO 3.4 and beyond. You may be
surprised to see how things are coming along.
I'm seeing some good things from your team!
To 2:
Important part of our business model is to sell support and service
contracts to OpenOffice.org and -- in the future -- Apache OpenOffice
customers. With the withdrawal of the main sponsor Oracle there are not
many companies on this planet doing so. We believe that this is quite a
cool unique selling point (USP). Unfortunately decision-making in the
Enterprise about OOo support contracts normally takes around 6 to 9 month.
We don't have that reach. So we need to close this gap until we see service
revenue coming in.
To 3:
Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to help us to make our
case. I think this is a pretty good explanation of our situation: "Oracle
used to pay our salaries to work on OpenOffice,org, but since Oracle turned
OpenOffice.org over to the Apache Foundation, it no longer pays us. We were
primary contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love it, and we want to be able
to work on it full-time. Unless a large company or government hires us to
do this (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), we are trying to support ourselves via
donations -- until we are ready to sell service contracts. Donations to the
Apache Foundation, while a nice thing to do, can not be used for this
purpose, so you will need to donate to Team OpenOffice.org as a separate
entity."
And collecting donations is something -- as you know -- Team
OpenOffice.org always did!
Yes, but in the past the donations were disbursed for a different purpose,
AFAIK; e.g. support to individuals to travel and attend OpenOffice.org
conferences, education, etc., but not salaries for development purposes.
Other things were the summer of code, advertisement, give aways,
exhibition stand, conference fees and a lot more. The purpose was always
the same: the development and dissemination of OpenOffice.org.
Donations are very important for us in this phase to close the gap until
we see service revenue coming in. And there are also very successful
companies like the Wikimedia Foundation that are based on donations.
Therefore I authorized the donation campaign "Save OpenOffice.org" - and I
want to apologize for that! It was a mistake because I didn't realize that
at the same time this implies that OpenOffice.org is not doing well at the
ASF. Believe me or not, it was not my intend to bring discredit upon the
Apache OpenOffice project.
OK, let's move on. We have too much work to do than worry about this.
Thank you!
What are our next steps though? We are of course accepting the ASF
ownership of the OpenOffice.org trademark. As we worked since 2003 smoothly
together with Sun and Oracle, we were surprised to see that non-commercial
Apache is seeing us as a troublemaker. Btw, Team OpenOffice.org is also
non-commercial.
We will not stop asking for donations to sponsor developers! Please take
your time to understand what we are asking for. We are asking for money to
help developing OOo! We are not asking to donate for the ASF or OOo! If our
communication on this topic is not clear enough, we'll fix it! Do you see
the difference? Again, we want full-time developers working on the project
and contributing their work to the Apache OpenOffice podling -- something
the ASF can't do! How bad is this? Without full-time developers our
business model won't fly.
So long as your campaign for fund raising does not mislead donors through a
misappropriation of the OpenOffice.org trademark there is no problem here.
We reviewed our material very carefully from this perspective. If we
missed something, let me know. It's not an easy task to talk about what
we want to do and at the same time avoid mentioning OpenOffice.org
wherever this could cause confusion.
We will not stop telling the world that we were the primary contributors
and inventors of OpenOffice.org.
Yes, but there are other primary contributors working for SuSE. Canonical,
Red Hat, and IBM, so you have good company.
Yes, you are right and I don't see this as a "but". We are trying to
make this point. Sponsors and companies have changed over the course of
time but there is a team that has remained the same since the beginning.
I guess you will make the point, that the project will benefit from the
new situation under the ASF - and I agree with this as well. I'm not
living in the past.
The development team in Hamburg created it -- with the help of the
OpenOffice.org community -- and is happy to continue developing it. I don't
think that this is confusing users. It's the truth. The ASF should use this
as a weapon not as a threat. We will also defend ourselves against
malicious gossip or suspicion -- same like the ASF does. So please stop the
own-coffers-thing.
Perhaps you might consider creating something like a 'Hamburg Hanse
Association of OpenOffice Developers' to bring your 'primary contributor
team members. I don't know if this makes sense, but it may be useful to
represent the talent base accordingly to everyone's user communities
whether or not they are consuming LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org 3.x or Apache
OpenOffice....just a thought.
As service and support is part of our business model, we are listening to
OpenOffice.org Enterprise users and customers. They asked us for a
maintenance release for OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 due to the security issues --
and we will deliver! This release will carry a name that does not conflict
with the OpenOffice.org trademark. Using another name is clearly not the
best solution for all of us: users and customers, the ASF and Team
OpenOffice.org. This should be motivation enough to work on a better
solution.
Just one more paragraph with my personal thoughts: We recognized our
mistakes! Reason for the mistake was to get donations to hire full-time
developers. We are also working hard on other ideas to get funding but we
are not there yet! We want to be a committer to the Apache OpenOffice
podling and we basically share the same goals.
Great! Jump right in. Martin and Stefan joined as Initial Committers. We
are hoping they begin to become more active in the community here. You are
also most welcome to help out on the marketing side. I think that would be
win-win for you and your goals with Team OpenOffice.org.
I'm happy to do that!
We inserted a very prominent link to the ASF on our website (see the box
"Home of the Development Project" on teamopenoffice.org). I hope that
this email does not have a negative impact on our chance to establish a
cooperative relationship between Team OpenOffice.org and the Apache
OpenOffice project. Does it? We are not evil!
This is a very constructive email. Thank you very much.
Thanks again!
Goetz
Thanks,
Goetz
