Re: [libreoffice-marketing] LibreOffice get involved and donation infobars - how often to show them?
This starts to become interesting. My initial (lazy) view, no objecting against showing the 'info bar' slightly more often. However, Justin is making a good point too. Someone donating code for free (without strings attached) and making LibreOffice what it is and someone else going to nag about donations. Something a (or multiple) contributing developer dislike (or even disagreeing with). So we arrive at discipline of Philosophy and Ethics. The more Philosophy question what are objections against the infobar? Certain can think of some of those. Dislike the begging? Seeing this as profiting of others work? The way donations are used? Seeing donations of some kind disguised license fee? From my perspective - having plenty of bug in mind - I love 'progress'. And default answer: "no budget". So fund raising is not something I'm against. If donations contribute to the (developer) budget.. However there is also the whole TDF spending trouble. Generating money without purpose (can't be spend) being useless. Or can be spend, but not on practical user-bugs but some hidden code-refactor. Nothing against code-refactors. But well sometimes you want to see something touchable. Not something hidden deeply under the hood. So needs bigger strategic plan (vision) about donations & spending. Which obviously include the topic about being 'fair' to those who contribute code for free. Which might entail a substantial (not exclusively; but proportional) say in the spending of the donations (as those donations all generated by their efforts). As far this helps to reduce the objections; only guessing here.. Maybe missing the point (objections). There is some tendency 'of doing something'. Taking action without proper carefully preparation and overthinking (a plan) Yes overthinking can cause another round of plenty of input. But this can be managed with timelines (for input an such) and decent decision hierarchy and proper level, by those who are appointed to make these decisions. Kind regards, Telesto Op 27-4-2021 om 17:52 schreef Justin Luth: You are already getting my code contributions completely free, so IMHO you should be satisfied with people making general donations to TDF instead of ever nagging them via infobars. So I still think this is a bad idea. Justin On 4/27/21 5:28 PM, Mike Saunders wrote: Hello everyone, In recent versions of LibreOffice, we have an infobar that's periodically displayed at the top of the screen, including some text and a link. Currently the configuration is: * 90 days after installation: show a "Get involved" button * 180 days after installation: show a "Donate to support our community" button We know that the donate infobar results in a lot of donations; people using LibreOffice for six months are (hopefully!) still satisfied. So the question is: should we change how often these are shown? We don't want to "nag" anybody, but at the same time, one bar every three months isn't much, I think, given that users get a completely free office suite. IMO we could show the "get involved" bar after two months, and the "donate" after four -- but what do others think? -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: marketing+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] LibreOffice get involved and donation infobars - how often to show them?
Le 2021-04-27 à 11 h 52, Justin Luth a écrit : > You are already getting my code contributions completely free, so IMHO > you should be satisfied with people making general donations to TDF > instead of ever nagging them via infobars. So I still think this is a > bad idea. > > > Justin > > > On 4/27/21 5:28 PM, Mike Saunders wrote: >> Hello everyone, >> >> In recent versions of LibreOffice, we have an infobar that's >> periodically displayed at the top of the screen, including some text and >> a link. Currently the configuration is: >> >> * 90 days after installation: show a "Get involved" button >> >> * 180 days after installation: show a "Donate to support our community" >> button >> >> We know that the donate infobar results in a lot of donations; people >> using LibreOffice for six months are (hopefully!) still satisfied. >> >> So the question is: should we change how often these are shown? We don't >> want to "nag" anybody, but at the same time, one bar every three months >> isn't much, I think, given that users get a completely free office >> suite. IMO we could show the "get involved" bar after two months, and >> the "donate" after four -- but what do others think? >> > There are many ways to contribute. As I am not a coder, I try to contribute as best as I can to the project. However, others may not have the time to contribute to the project with marketing, QA verifying bugs and triage, docs etc. So, people who join in to help the project by donating some funds makes of them part of the project. Those who would rather help out with donating funds are aware that funds generally go to infrastructure, meetup/conference costs, hardware purchases, marketing kits for our native language groups in various countries, etc ... Donors are a category of contributors to the project that should not be ignored. I believe that LibreOffice users are quite aware that they are donating to the project and not for the product ... they all know that the product comes with no financial requirements; if they believe they are donating to the product, then usually one of our contributors on the help list/forums will set them straight. IMO, best we consider all categories of donations to the project, whether it be code, design, QA, Docs, Marketing, Advocacy, financial supporters to the project (this is our donor-base). If one is assuming that the code alone has made the project what it is, then, it would be a sad statement on the TDF/LibreOffice project and would do nothing more than be-little all of the other contributors donation to time, help and financial support to make LibreOffice so great a project. So, yes, I am for this. As far as frequency, I favour every the three month info-bar. I think every second month a little too quick. I would also favour more like: * after 3 months -- info-bar on "Get Involved" * after 6 months -- info-bar on "Donate to support ..." * then skip to a 9-month schedule after that last 6-month info-bar. Asking for either "Get Involved" and "Donate" -- by then a new version of LibreOffice would be in the wings and users would be hyped about the next LibreOffice iteration. To be transparent of these info-bars, I would like it to appear somewhere on the official LibreOffice site where the frequency is shown and perhaps also the rationale for the frequency and a good explanation of what is meant as "Get Involved" and "Donate ..." (or linked to their appropriate pages). Make it clear as to where the money is being invested and to the German non-profit/charitable laws governing the use of the money ... do the German non-profit/charitable laws/rules force the project to spend all of the donation income within that fiscal year? And also add to the page financials that show where past donations were spent and perhaps any projections as to the next fiscal year's plans for donation-income spending. Cheers, Marc -- Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com https://www.parEntreprise.com parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF) parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org LibreOffice Office Suite - 200 million users and growing! Over 1,000 project developers with impeccable help from its user base. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: marketing+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] LibreOffice get involved and donation infobars - how often to show them?
You are already getting my code contributions completely free, so IMHO you should be satisfied with people making general donations to TDF instead of ever nagging them via infobars. So I still think this is a bad idea. Justin On 4/27/21 5:28 PM, Mike Saunders wrote: Hello everyone, In recent versions of LibreOffice, we have an infobar that's periodically displayed at the top of the screen, including some text and a link. Currently the configuration is: * 90 days after installation: show a "Get involved" button * 180 days after installation: show a "Donate to support our community" button We know that the donate infobar results in a lot of donations; people using LibreOffice for six months are (hopefully!) still satisfied. So the question is: should we change how often these are shown? We don't want to "nag" anybody, but at the same time, one bar every three months isn't much, I think, given that users get a completely free office suite. IMO we could show the "get involved" bar after two months, and the "donate" after four -- but what do others think? -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: marketing+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
[libreoffice-marketing] LibreOffice get involved and donation infobars - how often to show them?
Hello everyone, In recent versions of LibreOffice, we have an infobar that's periodically displayed at the top of the screen, including some text and a link. Currently the configuration is: * 90 days after installation: show a "Get involved" button * 180 days after installation: show a "Donate to support our community" button We know that the donate infobar results in a lot of donations; people using LibreOffice for six months are (hopefully!) still satisfied. So the question is: should we change how often these are shown? We don't want to "nag" anybody, but at the same time, one bar every three months isn't much, I think, given that users get a completely free office suite. IMO we could show the "get involved" bar after two months, and the "donate" after four -- but what do others think? -- Mike Saunders, Marketing and Community Coordinator The Document Foundation -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: marketing+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] My new slogan.
Your losing me already ;-). I'm already struggling what 'open source' entails. It's a fuzzy concept to me. It's even a term hijacked by marketing. There are currently multiple variants and concepts around 'open source'. There as many interpretations as we have religions (probably even more). Say reading open source literally en figuratively. Is OnlyOffice true open source? And we have 'open core'. Or closed core open the rest (SpringMail in the past). And surely not seeing that Open Source being the utopia/ Walhalla. Every approach having it's pro's and cons . This kind of topic is say non-topic for closed source: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-nfs/YH/fM/tsbmczz...@kroah.com/ So open source isn't without flaws either. I personally do like "open source' in literally way. So components can be re-used and you can can learn how problems are tackled (for you're own implementation). Have seen enough projects - sorry also closed source - existing because of open source components. Without those components those projects where not feasible in economic sense. Technically it could be home build but would cost to much effort; large prior investment. Making product price far to high. Same holds true for buying pre-build closed source components. Being 'open source' - in sense of public source code isn't everything. Big part is code reading skills. Well you can read the code, but true understanding takes lots of time. So the whole open source topic is actually more domain for developers. And how big part of the world population being developer? Obviously software products of developers are affecting the whole world, because of the usage of the stuff software developers build. But well the source code that's not a topic what the end-user keeps awake at night. Everybody wants to get the job done. And well open source can fail to. Chromium has big potential for disaster: we are getting pretty much a mono-culture (one browser engine, one design and all browser developers aggregated around same place). Not much room for different voices or doing it differently. Yes, forks are open. But well before you have a reputation for new browser engine. And well Chromium is more or less defining the standards in this case (about being dominant). Which has also it's good side of 'dropping' legacy security flawed stuff. And creating momentum for software changes in company (still relaying on very old security flawed systems). But in the long run this can/will backfire. The Linux community kind of lacking 'stability'. How many different distro's have been on the top of Distrowatch in the 20 years. The user must constantly adapt to something else (different concepts etc) as your favorite distro making less optimal choices, goes bust, or developers running away to something more 'cool' (so development progress gets a hit). It's always touch an go. Whereas Microsoft being pretty old stable company and still alive and kicking. Yes, pretty dominant entity; setting standards. Having enough practices you can disagree with. And surely has its (big) flaws in technical sense, but still getting away with that commercially. And money - or even wider economic - plays a big role even in the open source community. You need financial stability to actually do something. You need to have a model to make money. And open source doesn't make the business model easier. If you key capital is the 'code' and put that online for free. Mozilla is tied to Google search engine revenue (dependency) . LibreOffice tied to the eco-system partners. And those eco-system partners still having issues with their business model. Read: LibreOffice is cannibalizing on their products. And people are more interested functional software (even SaaS). Not some kind get product for free with bug fixing agreement for the issue which appear. Where you can't estimate the costs this way. You want to pay fixed price in advance which includes bugfixes (in general). That obviously exceptions. Additional special contracts for priority bugfixes and/ or features something else. The only thing private part of "open source" and code knowledge (documentation is mostly so, so) . There only few people with true knowledge. Even at LibreOffice. Only one person working on scheduler in recent years. And the writer layout code (including track & changes) is also more or less domain of single developer. Skia the same. From risk management quite interesting. What would happen one of those developers suddenly stop? Would the gap be filled. And what if 3 developers would quite. How would affect the development progress and bug fixing. How sustainable would the eco-system be? Theoretically/ technically everybody could look into it, but you need lots and lots of tacit knowledge to truly change something. Something the old guard has. There plenty of abandoned projects on GitHub/ sourceforge. Everybody can continue, fork and so o
