Jim Wagner wrote:
Wesley Allen wrote:
Jim Wagner wrote:
Steve Kopischke wrote:
on G. Roderick Singleton said the following:
Peter et al,
What is this about? Are you saying that I have no right to decide how I
invest my time in OOo except as you dictate? I hope not. I have said
time and time again you are free to do what you want. Please do not
expect that emails such as this over and over and over again are going
to change my mind. Surely I have that right.
G Roderick:
I am squarely in your corner on this. I, too, am becoming annoyed with the "but you *have* to" tone of some of the contrary posts.
Relabeled, repackaged software that has, *as its genesis*, OOo, is *not* OOo. As I indicated in an earlier post, how can we tell what changes have been made in between OOo as downloaded from OO.o and its mutation into whatever has been repackaged? Even if there are *no* changes, how are we to tell?
Platinum Perfect Pro (or anyone else) may be doing nothing wrong - ethically, morally, scripturally, dietetically or otherwise. However, they are on the hook for supporting their product and should not be expecting nor advertising anything else.
If I created and distributed a set of macros for OOo Calc, I would not send users to this list for support. I suspect their reception, if they asked, would be even more one-sided than this discussion. I see little difference between that situation and this.
Our collective, first response to such a request ought to be "have you contacted the vendor?" It should *not* be - "welcome aboard, how can we help?"
There are a couple of posters who advocate helping them anyway. I do not think this is a good idea. It's not that we *can't* help PPP users. How can we be sure our advice is accurate? Besides, if we do, where do we stop? Do we support *anything* that touches OOo? Windows XP? Mac OSX? Linux? What about printers? Mice? Browsers? Wireless keyboards? It's easier to see the dividing line when it is drawn so blatantly far away.
If some still believe they ought to support PPP, go right ahead. We can't stop you, but please don't argue that it is the *right* thing to do. There are those of us who feel there are good reasons to feel otherwise.
In my opinion, if it's not OOo, this list is not the right support medium. I would hate to see the value of this list watered down.
Please understand, I am _not_ saying people _must_ do something.
I am, however, on the side of those who feel a little courtesy wouldn't hurt.
If someone using Jimmy-joe's Super Office Suite, which includes as its "base," OOo 1.1, My own feeling would be to say, "I'm sorry, you've been sold an old version of OpenOffice, which is no longer in use. You'd be best to download the present stable version which is available at---"
Certainly we don't want to be giving bad advice. But we could consider giving good advice, like, "Try to get your money back and get the latest version, which we will be able to advise you on."
I think what people are reacting against is a similar situation where someone "branded" OOo, and then sent customers to this mailing list for support. So we got a whole bunch of e-mails with subject lines like, "Your product stinks, you must help me because your product stinks." When, (a) We had no idea what product they were talking about, (b) once we found out what the product was we found out it was based on an out of date version of OOo, (c) the people writing the e-mails were under the impression that this mailing list was run by the company that sold them the product.
It was a bit ugly for a while....
Yes, I understood that. And I agree that people demanding help because "you guys sold me a bum piece of software" are going to get everyone's back up.
I am talking about the quiet little person, not knowing Gnu Public License from an enraged Cape Buffalo, asking politely how to do something on this software they've just happened on.
In many cases, if one takes the time to answer them politely, explaining the facts, they may indeed become supporters of OpenOffice. If our general response to these people is "Get out of here, we won't help you," then we lose too.
Totally agreed.
JimW
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