Some problems..

https://people.gnome.org/~michael/data/vendor-neutral-marketing.html

Yes I agree there are some problems. Michael Meeks.

But attempting to fix those problems is not a valid reason to make an
individual version as this creates more problems.

Collabora really is forking the brand making their own brand of
Libreoffice. Same with the Linux Distributions and all the different
LTS versions. Sorting out the Linux Distribution problem is really a
huge problem in itself by the end of this there is a path to profit
that does start to fix this. Why the different LTS versions will be
why X user of X distribution at times will have problems sharing a
document with Y user on Y distribution. .

I have no problem with a LibreOffice Enterprise and LibreOffice
Community. I have no problem with the about dialog and/or installer
heck even space out the toolbar being use to advertise that you are
using a non commercial version and where to buy a supported commercial
version. But this has not really be doable without a LibreOffice
Enterprise product.

https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/jzryGw7XDkJadmo#pdfviewer
Page 35

Ecosystem members providing a LibreOffice Enterprise version should coordinate their announcements with the LibreOffice Project

This reads like branding where each existing vendor makes their own
LibreOffice Enterprise versions with different features and different
levels of compatibility. We have distributions all ready undermining
the libreoffice experience doing this. We don't need commercial
support side doing this as well long term either.

Say we look at this position more carefully look at what competitors
and FOSS projects in the same boat have done that is successful .

Look what Microsoft has done to give us some base. Microsoft turned
out they were not making as much money as they expected from MS office
installed on personal machines as they expected. How did they fix
this. Cloud services.
Another one is blender. Application is free but if you want access
to training and resources you pay a monthly cloud access fee.
Adobe is another with their creative cloud as a marketplace..

Libreoffice online could be used by TDP and partners to provide a
software as service competing Microsoft Office online and Google Docs.
  If this was under the Libreoffice Enterprise branding a percentage
of this income can come back to TDP.
Libreoffice has a problem getting extensions and templates and
documentation and training videos.... There is no money system here
this area has not been monetised. There is nowhere for people to
sell their content so there is no major reward to create this content
either.

There are a lot of places with Libreoffice to make a lot of money that
are currently not monetised. The want by the commercials parties
like your Collabera who Micheal Meeks works for is going the wrong
way. Yes, a lot of this monetise process requires the TDP really to
take the lead backed by the commercial parties not the current
commercial parties take the lead and expect TDP to follow.

This Libreoffice Personal edition is really the wrong way. You want
to have as many people install Libreoffice as possible and you want to
be offering something where they can pay and get something so profit.

If I am paying a professional party like Collabera does that payment
give me access to more templates, images, documentation.... that are
integrated so I can be more productive? Lets say I buy my office
suite from another libreoffice fork vendor. I get different stuff
right and Collabera has no chance to profit from that user unless they
change right. See Michael Collabera is not getting access to every
customer they could sell what they are making for Libreoffice today
because there is no market place that all Libreoffice users can access
to buy parts of your product that is integrated into the provided
client. So the problem is not just bad for TDP because they cannot
get a percentage on the sales in the marketplace/cloud those providing
support items are missing out on sales as well. So everyone is short
on cash here.

Lot of talk of how we can market Libreoffice. This risks the grass is
greener on the other side of the fence and you get tempted to poison
the item on the other side of the fence instead of fixing what you are
doing on your side wrong.

LibreOffice Personal edition instead of Community is really poison
what is on the other side of the fence. Looking at providing
something like a blender cloud/adobe cloud that the enterprise version
has access to with coded into the enterprise client integration and
even in the Community edition. Of course the Community edition could
show content for the enterprise version and that if they had the
enterprise version this would be buyable .

There are ways to split the community and enterprise versions without
having to say 1 version is not for enterprise or is for individuals.
Reality: this requires focus on making an ecosystem for end users so
that end users who spend get more access to items that are useful for
what they are doing and the possibility for end users to be selling
some of the stuff they have made. Providing end users with an
ecosystem they need cannot be achieved while all the companies
providing supported versions of Libreoffice are doing their own
things. There needs to be cooperation between groups supporting
Libreoffice to build the marketplace where all can profit including
TDP. Mind you for stock images and the like you may be doing
integration deals with services already providing this for a
percentage of kick back on any purchases done TDP because of
Libreoffice.

Yes, having a cloud solution like blender or adobe that the clients
are connecting to can be used to start pushing back against the LTS
version fragmentation. Yes cloud requires X version of client
software you are using someone fork the cloud is not going to function
perfectly so starting to undermine the LTS fragmentation as the
fragments end up less functional as they end up cut out of access to
the cloud services.

Marketing is a great way to waste money trying to sell a product with
critical defects undermining its usefulness to end users. Incorrect
marketing can basically destroy your market share as well. Remember
the best advertising is word of mouth by end users who use the product
and like it so recommend it. Best advertising will come if your
product is providing what end users need. Libreoffice is not
providing the paid content people need at times to-do their work and
does not have a workflow for using paid content this is one of the
biggest gaps in Libreoffice profitability.

Paid content Libreoffice could be providing a marketplace for or access to.
1) Commercial Fonts.
2) Commercial Stock Images/videos the paid for ones.
3) Commercial Templates yes paid for ones.
4) Documentations paid versions
5) Training materials videos/guides/workbooks paid versions
6) Certifications.

There are most likely a few more ways to make money I am not even thinking of.

Yes documents using Commercial Fonts, Stock Images and Templates there
could be metadata placed in the ODF format and product PDFs so that
end users were aware these are commercial items and where to buy them.
  Profiting from all these areas does not mean needing to make a
Personal edition. Yes there would be a lot of coding work to
make Libreoffice up to task of being a client to end user to provide
ways to buy, acquire and use commercial content simply. Of course
those who don't want to use commercial content could. Doing this
would fix a lot of the Libreoffice profitability problems.

Commerical Fonts, Stock Images and Templates to be able use correctly
would require quite a bit of changes. All three you need to see
what is paid and what is not and what the restriction on usage for all
3 is in fact.

TDP being a not for profit does risk the mindset of not thinking how
to make profit because that seems counter to being a not for profit.
Long term stability you need to think how to make a profit so the
foundation stands on its own two feet very solidly. Making a profit
does not come from restricting how end users can use your software.
It is making your software provide what end users in fact need and
profiting from the process. Think is like printer makers selling
printers cheap and making money off the consumables. Fonts, Stock
images, Templates are the consumables of an office suite. Blender
consumables are like textures, models... all stuff the blender cloud
provides and the blender cloud basically funds the core blender
foundation these days.

Libreoffice project really needs to solve how to sell end users the
consumables they need as it a path to lots of ongoing money.

Peter Dolding

In my opinion, and based on recent experience, I consider it necessary for TDF to be open to community participation in a more modern and accessible way to everyone.

In this sense, it is clear that the use of mailing lists, IRC/Telegram channels does not allow to reach the majority of LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members and that is why I would like to propose the adoption of a platform that favours participation, debate, interaction and collaborative elaboration of lines of action between TDF and the community.

In this sense, the ticket https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3251 has been created in the interest to present alternatives to reach the proposed goal and get feedback from the community about the topic.

Everyone is invited to participate.

Hi Daniel,

[sry for the repetition, missed this public mail initially]

Daniel Armando Rodriguez wrote:

In my opinion, and based on recent experience, I consider it necessary for
TDF to be open to community participation in a more modern and accessible
way to everyone.

I agree. The recent discussions where spread across a lot of places.

In this sense, it is clear that the use of mailing lists, IRC/Telegram
channels does not allow to reach the majority of LibreOffice users, free
software advocates and community members and that is why I would like to
propose the adoption of a platform that favours participation, debate,
interaction and collaborative elaboration of lines of action between TDF and
the community.

One comment:

- I'd strongly suggest that any new tool we introduce comes with a
  commitment to shutdown / discourage at least one (but better more!)
  existing tool. We'll otherwise quickly get to https://xkcd.com/927/ :wink:

So if https://democraciaos.org/ is to solve the
too-many-communication-channels problem - are we then shutting down
IRC/Telegram, or even the mailing lists?

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Thorsten Behrens kirjoitti 9.7.2020 klo 2.51:

Hi Daniel,

[sry for the repetition, missed this public mail initially]

Daniel Armando Rodriguez wrote:

In my opinion, and based on recent experience, I consider it necessary for
TDF to be open to community participation in a more modern and accessible
way to everyone.

I agree. The recent discussions where spread across a lot of places.

In this sense, it is clear that the use of mailing lists, IRC/Telegram
channels does not allow to reach the majority of LibreOffice users, free
software advocates and community members and that is why I would like to
propose the adoption of a platform that favours participation, debate,
interaction and collaborative elaboration of lines of action between TDF and
the community.

One comment:

- I'd strongly suggest that any new tool we introduce comes with a
   commitment to shutdown / discourage at least one (but better more!)
   existing tool. We'll otherwise quickly get to https://xkcd.com/927/ :wink:

So if https://democraciaos.org/ is to solve the
too-many-communication-channels problem - are we then shutting down
IRC/Telegram, or even the mailing lists?

Please also take into consideration that we intend to replace AskBot with a forum.

DemocracyOS vs. anything we currently have is an apples to oranges comparison meaning we *can't* shut anything down.

Ilmari

Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote:

DemocracyOS vs. anything we currently have is an apples to oranges
comparison meaning we *can't* shut anything down.

But how would DemocracyOS then help to solve the too-many-channels problem?

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Thorsten Behrens kirjoitti 9.7.2020 klo 11.44:

Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote:

DemocracyOS vs. anything we currently have is an apples to oranges
comparison meaning we *can't* shut anything down.

But how would DemocracyOS then help to solve the too-many-channels problem?

In my view it would not help solve that specific problem. I guess the idea was instead to have a channel geared towards a very specific purpose (feedback to TDF governance) with an interface that would be pleasant for the majority.

Ilmari

Ilmari did the reading I was aiming at.

One example, spanish ML has 329 subscribers so far. Takign just the 1% of the spanish speaking people worldwide, which is about 500 millions, that number is not even insignificant.

That's the main reason that motivates me, to bring new users closer through a channel more in tune with the current times and, therefore, something that most computer users are used to.

Hi all

[...]

One comment:

- I'd strongly suggest that any new tool we introduce comes with a
  commitment to shutdown / discourage at least one (but better more!)
  existing tool. We'll otherwise quickly get to https://xkcd.com/927/ :wink:

So if https://democraciaos.org/ is to solve the
too-many-communication-channels problem - are we then shutting down
IRC/Telegram, or even the mailing lists?

IMHO IRC/Telegram and mailing lists have different aims. One is for "instant
communication" the other is for "more complex discussions".

I love mailing lists and was quite "shocked", when other big F/OSS projects
started to move away (see for example [0]). However at some point I realized,
that the hurdles to participate in discussion on mailing lists are indeed too
high([1]) for many people. I'm not sure if killing all mailing lists is what I
would propose - but why not discussing to move most of the "non developer"
lists to something like discourse (and migrate AskBot as well)?

Some half-baked thoughts:
* Talk to e.g. the Gnome folks about their experience regarding Discourse
* Discuss a migration of AskBot to tool xyz
  -> could be Discourse or whatever people like
* Discuss migrating a set of mailinglists to the same tool

Thoughts?

[0] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2019-February/msg00001.html
[1] Younger people don't have an e-mail address anymore, signing up requires
    too man steps, spam is an issue, most people don't know how to quote
    mails, etc.

All the best,
Nicolas

Hi,

Thorsten Behrens kirjoitti 9.7.2020 klo 11.44:

Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote:

DemocracyOS vs. anything we currently have is an apples to oranges
comparison meaning we *can't* shut anything down.

But how would DemocracyOS then help to solve the too-many-channels
problem?

In my view it would not help solve that specific problem. I guess the
idea was instead to have a channel geared towards a very specific
purpose (feedback to TDF governance) with an interface that would be
pleasant for the majority.

Ilmari did the reading I was aiming at.

One example, spanish ML has 329 subscribers so far. Takign just the 1%
of the spanish speaking people worldwide, which is about 500 millions,
that number is not even insignificant.

That's the main reason that motivates me, to bring new users closer
through a channel more in tune with the current times and, therefore,
something that most computer users are used to.

I agree, and by the way, it's not yet another communication channel as
some may see it, it's a participative platform to collect feedback from
large groups in an organized way either by comments, supports or votesœ.
Decision takers spend less time to analyze and sort the feedback
provided than on mailing lists. For a project of our size, I feel it's
also needed to have participatory mechanisms that are welcoming to NLPs
too and civic technologies are an answer to that.
Thorsten, I understand your fears that the communication may spread over
another tool, but it's a matter of education and contributors will
quickly see the advantages of using it instead of posting on Telegram,
BZ or mailing lists because it's exactly done for governance. It's also
a way to value their feedback by having a mean to support it.

Cheers
Sophie

As stated at the meeting, the number of subscribers to the mailing lists is significantly low. The user list, for example, has about 1500 subscribers, the Spanish and Brazilian lists have about 350 people each. TDF has today 221 members and this list only 160 people. Therefore, beyond the fact that the subscription is voluntary, it cannot be said that many people are encouraged to participate in the discussions.

It has to do with a social issue, as someone said, but also with the language barrier and the ability to argue an idea. And I'm pretty sure that providing a platform where people can vote on comments/ideas will allow TDF to attract much more participation, even from those who don't speak English as fluently... as I do.

To make it clear, this is not an attempt to solve several problems at once, I don't expect to present a final solution, if there is one. But as a foundation with a global reach we need to make people willing to participate. If such behavior modification is achieved through technical change, then we welcome it.

What I propose is to give the platform a chance without leaving any other tools aside, for a certain period of time, and then evaluate the performance.

Agree with Sophie's and Daniel's POV.  Civic technology like this has been proved successful in many countries/areas including Taiwan.

BTW, even if it becomes 15th useless channel, which can be tweaked, tried and improved from the running experiences, it will not be a big deal IMO.

Hi Franklin, all,

Franklin Weng wrote:

BTW, even if it becomes 15th useless channel, which can be tweaked,
tried and improved from the running experiences, it will not be a
big deal IMO.

Sure, it would create more silos & further fracture the community.

As I said during the board call - this is lovely technology, that I
can imagine we can put to good use, for some areas.

But it doesn't solve the 'too many channels' problem (as it was
advertised to do). Let's not fool ourselves.

Unless we're willing to shut down mailing lists & telegram channels,
and actively shepherd community members over.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Hi Daniel, *,

As stated at the meeting, the number of subscribers to the mailing lists
is significantly low. The user list, for example, has about 1500
subscribers, the Spanish and Brazilian lists have about 350 people each.
TDF has today 221 members and this list only 160 people. Therefore,
beyond the fact that the subscription is voluntary, it cannot be said
that many people are encouraged to participate in the discussions.

It is indeed right that mailing lists are not for _all_ - any more.
/me those were good times :wink:

It has to do with a social issue, as someone said, but also with the
language barrier and the ability to argue an idea. And I'm pretty sure
that providing a platform where people can vote on comments/ideas will
allow TDF to attract much more participation, even from those who don't
speak English as fluently... as I do.

Of course it is not needed to get votes in the first place, but allowing
people to provide input, without the need to set up an email address for
that, is indeed important.

To make it clear, this is not an attempt to solve several problems at
once, I don't expect to present a final solution, if there is one. But

I heard a likewise comment in the BoD meeting indeed, and could not well
understand it myself.
Maybe the idea was to express that the problem is a complex one, and not
only solved by different tooling. Maybe the tooling even is less
important than an attitude that encourages participation.
I remember quite some moments from the past, that on a mailing lists, in
a discussion, or at the start of it, it was recognized that we should
try to use more public lists for the kind of topics.. Sometimes that
worked. But to often, with the load of work, difficulty to manage,
moderate (more widely) discussions etc. we fell in old habits.. :wink:

as a foundation with a global reach we need to make people willing to
participate. If such behavior modification is achieved through technical
change, then we welcome it.

Indeed. Technical means can help.
If a mailing list was available for all, one could say that it would be
sufficient to announce on all channels that discussion.topic is ongoing
there to encourage people to join - if they so wish.
And of course that applies to any preferred tool: make sure that people
in other channels get a ping to make them aware.

What I propose is to give the platform a chance without leaving any
other tools aside, for a certain period of time, and then evaluate the
performance.

I did not look into details of https://democraciaos.org/en/
But I have a high trust in open source and tooling developed to support
democracy. So, with only the condition that it allows to have (some)
interaction with mail (and I guess it has), I'm much in favor to give it
a try!
Maybe with a few projects, topics to start with - not do a complete
remake of our work immediately - it yields good experience. And imagine
it makes it even easier to improve our attitudes at the same time :slight_smile:

So yes. Thanks!

Cor

We have to show the community the usefulness of the platform. We can't make use mandatory, that doesn't work.

I already commented on the numbers related to the number of subscribers that have some mailing lists, and such numbers are not representative of the whole community IMO.

Hi Daniel, *,

As stated at the meeting, the number of subscribers to the mailing lists
is significantly low. The user list, for example, has about 1500
subscribers, the Spanish and Brazilian lists have about 350 people each.
TDF has today 221 members and this list only 160 people. Therefore,
beyond the fact that the subscription is voluntary, it cannot be said
that many people are encouraged to participate in the discussions.

It is indeed right that mailing lists are not for _all_ - any more.
/me those were good times :wink:

It has to do with a social issue, as someone said, but also with the
language barrier and the ability to argue an idea. And I'm pretty sure
that providing a platform where people can vote on comments/ideas will
allow TDF to attract much more participation, even from those who don't
speak English as fluently... as I do.

Of course it is not needed to get votes in the first place, but allowing
people to provide input, without the need to set up an email address for
that, is indeed important.

To make it clear, this is not an attempt to solve several problems at
once, I don't expect to present a final solution, if there is one. But

I heard a likewise comment in the BoD meeting indeed, and could not well
understand it myself.
Maybe the idea was to express that the problem is a complex one, and not
only solved by different tooling. Maybe the tooling even is less
important than an attitude that encourages participation.
I remember quite some moments from the past, that on a mailing lists, in
a discussion, or at the start of it, it was recognized that we should
try to use more public lists for the kind of topics.. Sometimes that
worked. But to often, with the load of work, difficulty to manage,
moderate (more widely) discussions etc. we fell in old habits.. :wink:

as a foundation with a global reach we need to make people willing to
participate. If such behavior modification is achieved through technical
change, then we welcome it.

Indeed. Technical means can help.
If a mailing list was available for all, one could say that it would be
sufficient to announce on all channels that discussion.topic is ongoing
there to encourage people to join - if they so wish.
And of course that applies to any preferred tool: make sure that people
in other channels get a ping to make them aware.

Once implemented, of course an invitation will send through all the channels
to let people give it a try. I'm thinking in a blog post also.

What I propose is to give the platform a chance without leaving any
other tools aside, for a certain period of time, and then evaluate the
performance.

I did not look into details of https://democraciaos.org/en/

Well, unfortunately DemocracyOS is currently without maintenance. So the preferred choice is decidim, which is a most complete and powerfull tool.

But I have a high trust in open source and tooling developed to support
democracy. So, with only the condition that it allows to have (some)
interaction with mail (and I guess it has), I'm much in favor to give it
a try!

Indeed, notifications are send through email

Maybe with a few projects, topics to start with - not do a complete
remake of our work immediately - it yields good experience.

Of course

I'd agree to using Discourse [1]. I genuinely think this one has potential to solve LO/TDF's communications needs. For the unaware, Discourse was started by Jeff Atwood (of Stack Overflow fame) and is free software. Think of it like a forum software for those that use the web interface, and a mailing list for those that use it with email.

Some arguments for Discourse:

* Easier user engagement. I like mailing lists, but the amount of obnoxious little netiquette rules are not (and will never be) followed by all but the beardiest graybeards. Half the community (half the board members, even) top post, use HTML, use their own weird ideas of formatting and commit a number of faux pas that mix in chaos to the discussion. Discourse's forum-like web interface provides a much saner, human approach for the general populace.

* Providing the opportunity to consolidate needs, such as:
     * Polling/Voting [2]
     * Community support channels (Fedora replaced their askbot instance with Discourse [3])
     * Mailing lists: Discourse has a "mailing list mode" - Mozilla's got a nice FAQ on how to use it via email [4].

* GDPR compliance tooling is available (not sure how mature it is, but surely it's easier than managing mailing lists).

* SAML support [5]

I don't like that the web interface requires JavaScript but that battle was lost long ago.

I can see Discourse serving all needs for asynchronous communications while the newer Matrix deployment can serve all synchronous communications (Even though Slack-style chat promotes pseudo-synchronous hellscapes there needs to be an attractive alternative to Telegram). Discourse provides a friendly-enough (if ugly/flatly designed) interface to welcome the unwashed but still powerful enough for the particulars.

A previous employer of mine used Discourse for internal async communications and it worked pretty well for me using mailing list mode/NeoMutt.

[1] https://www.discourse.org/
[2] https://github.com/discourse/discourse-voting
[3] https://ask.fedoraproject.org/
[4] https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-do-i-use-discourse-via-email/15279
[5] https://github.com/discourse/discourse-saml