On Thursday 28 Oct 2010 14:02:54 Nelson Marques wrote: > Jos, > > I've shared that because that's my own concerns. In a way what I mean > is, Libre Office is going to have a very tough job ahead. oo.o has a > strong brand and has made some quite amazing work. While for people more > close to free software, this issue has a very own meaning, for all the > audience outside the free software, and open office was present, for > example, when I bought my ticket to the openSUSE Conference, the agent > was actually running open office 1.1!. I'm pretty that old lady wasn't > aware of our cultural movement. > My concerns on marketing are mainly around those people, because people > connected to free software, aren't exactly lacking the information the > others are. > > I hold nothing against either sun or libre office. I did used Libre > Office for my presentation. For me it's quite transparent. But for > example from school I get loads of microsoft documents, even my own > teachers push them to me... I require good compatibility because I'm not > preaching the word to my teachers... > Those are problems to everyone outside. I didn't meant to be attack, > but for me as a marketeer (or future one), those kind of issues are > things that are interesting... of course I do like to follow them, > there's always something to learn. > > For where it's published, I do not know. It's probably as hard for you > to understand some of my perspectives as it's hard for me to understand > those that are more friendly to you, because in way, we have different > prisms to look for. > > nelson.
Firstly I saw no real criticism, I thought Nelson's blog summed up the situation from Marketing perspective quite well, everything he pointed out we are quite aware of. However let's be clear on a couple of things, OpenSUSE has never used SUN's OOo, it uses the Novell sponsored Go-oo.org version. LibreOffice is the Oracle source with Go-ooo code that was not upstreamed to the vanilla version because of the SCA. Mike Meeks of go-ooo fame is one of the founders which is probably as much the reason for the shift in SLE and openSUSE as anything else. The creation of libreoffice is purely about the foundation, to put the code under an independent entity so that no single Corporate has control. This has been a goal of the project since day one back in 2000. There is hope that Oracle will join and gift the trademarks to the foundation (right now this looks unlikely, but is still a possibility) The Foundation's creation at this time was precipitated by fear in the community with regard to Oracle's intentions especially after the killing of OpenSolaris and that was the major driver for the broader community, the corporate partners were probably more attracted to the dropping of the Copyright assignment. Right now infrastructure is the important thing, that is being setup as we speak. Translations are being done and the first release will probably coincide with the release of OOo 3.3. The marketing project has a full head of steam and we are working on the branding right now. We don't consider this a fork any more than go-ooo is considered a fork, there will still be code sharing, so this is just an alternative version of OOo we live in interesting times cheers GL > > On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 00:37 +0200, Jos Poortvliet wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > A while ago there was a blog by Nelson on LibreOffice. I had a quick look > > and thought 'Ok so you don't get the dynamics of Free Software huh'* but > > didn't think about it otherwise. > > > > Then the blog was selected as one of the articles in the Weekly News, put > > together by the hard work of Sascha and his team. Which tickled of some > > rough feathers at the LibreOffice camp - as you can imagine after > > reading the blog. There was a link to an article putting down the > > LibreOffice efforts (part of openSUSE!) - in an 'official' openSUSE news > > article! > > > > So, I don't really want to discuss the blogpost itself - it's the > > personal vision of Nelson and I get the point he was trying to get > > across). > > > > Even if his critisism was completely founded and sensible, the question I > > have is: should it have been in the Weekly news? That is actually > > something Nelson can surely comment upon: does it make sense, from a > > marketing perspective, to put your 'dirty laundry' (internal discussions > > and critisism) out to the world if you don't have too? > > > > Frankly, I have had this discussion in KDE as well - some argued that > > even on Planet KDE, critisism did not belong. Planet, as they saw it, > > was a communicationchannel OUTWARDS. If you had critique, say it on a > > mailinglist or in private, use planet for positive comments. I disagreed > > with that - imho planet is for community discussion and personal views, > > hence should be open for critisism. > > > > But for something like the weekly news, I think it might make sense for > > the team doing it to think about what their purpose is - yes, informing > > the community. But those part of it or very close most likely do follow > > the planet. The weekly news is most likely read by users further away > > from the project and journalists and such - who don't have to be > > bothered by infighting or bad news ;-) > > > > Yes, I am saying the Weekly News is a great marketing asset - and hence > > should be treated as such. > > > > Comments? As usual, feel free to disagree and fall all over me now - but > > please end it with a hug :D > > > > Jos > > > > > > > > > > > > * so the blog was about the marketing side of the fork. Sure. Still, it > > was a bit clueless - indeed, from a marketing point it's not smart to > > create two projects - from the Free Software dynamics pov it's the best > > thing that has happened to OpenOffice in years and it should've happened > > years ago... Marketing is clearly secondairy here. And yes, I imagine it > > would be fun to see the marketing battle. From a FOSS perspective - I > > just hope it won't take LibreOffice long to win. > > > > Link to the blog in question: > > http://nmarques.digitalwhores.net/2010/10/18/openoffice-org-and-libre-off > > ice/ -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant. INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Open Technologies) www.theingots.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
