Discussion about options available with marketing plan draft and timetable

Dear board, dear community,

Abstract:
I request the board to:
- provide software in accordance with the statues.
- remove parts of the software that are of no use for the intended
audience, hereby meaning the support key "feature" of LOOL.
- undo the "Personal" edition branding.

I am very concerned about the recent developments regarding the
strategic future of LibreOffice and The Document Foundation. As this
concern is shared by many no quick decision should be taken.

I want to remind all of you what The Document Foundation is all about,
as stated in the *unalterable* statutes
(https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/statutes/):

"The objective of  the foundation is the promotion and development of
office software available for use by anyone free of charge." - this does
not restrict the target audience.

"This software will be openly available for free use by anyone for their
own files, including companies and public authorities, ensuring full
participation in a digital society and without detriment to intellectual
property."

I would like to remind all members of the board of directors that first
and foremost you are obliged to pursue these statutes. As a consequence
you must not restrict the target audience of LibreOffice to a specific
user group in any way.

But this already happens for quite some time and is now getting worse:

1. LibreOffice Online - Unsupported Warning

The website for LibreOffice Online states: "The Document Foundation will
not be maintaining binaries for enterprise use". This is clearly in
violation of the statutes.
(https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/)

The website also includes a picture of a warning message that often
appears
(https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/LibreOffice-Online-limit.png),
and it is also stated: "... is designed for personal and/or development
use ..." This is not only in violation of the statues, but also very
questionable behaviour for Free/Libre and Open Source Software.

**I hereby request the board to take action to provide the software in
accordance with the statutes.**

2. LibreOffice Online - Containing Support Keys

Looking through the source code of LibreOffice Online, it can be easily
found, that there is a build option for support keys, this makes
absolutely no sense in our software product.
(https://git.libreoffice.org/online/+/refs/heads/master/wsd/LOOLWSD.cpp#1259)

**I hereby request the board to take action to remove parts of the
software that are of no use for the intended audience.**

3. LibreOffice "Personal Edition"

As I have already mentionend in my comment to the Bug Report
(https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134486#c23), I see
any restriction or even suggested restriction of the intended audience
in violation of the statutes.

I would also like to remind, that there are still and fresh versions
existing right now (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan),
and that the still versions are intended for "conservative, corporate
deployments". Will the "still" "Personal Edition" then be recommended
for "corporate deployments"? I don't believe that this is understood by
our audience in any way.

Also: I don't see the reason for the "Personal Edition" tag, as this
means that TDF must also provide another edition that is then targeted
for all other use cases.

**I hereby request the board to take action that this change be undone
to gain time for the community to find a consensus.**

My personal opinion is to keep the Brand LibreOffice as a name, and
certified vendors are able to provide support and services as
"LibreOffice Enterprise" partners. If you change the product, the name
is to be changed.

As this topic already gained significant public interest, it is now the
time for the board to re-evaluate the Marketing Plan and its hopefully
unintended side-effects.

The primary goal of The Document Foundation is to fulfill its statutes,
and the secondary goal is to cater for ecosystem vendors needs.

Alex

I second the opinion of Alex (alex@documentfoundation.org).

The moment any kind of restriction is imposed or proposed to be imposed on the user (be it individual, be it an NGO, be it a community, be it an enterprise) is no more a Freedom Software. As such the proposed LibreOffice Community Edition / Personal Edition cannot be a free software and it cannot be called "libre".

LibreOffice has reached this stage following the free software principles. There is no reason to commercialize the project for want of more contributions by 'demand'.

I also noticed (from Slide 16) that 68% of the contributions are from eco-system companies. They contributed their code without any enterprise edition. LibreOffice had evolved to this stage and can continue to evolve without any need of enterprise edition.

If at all TDF wants to focus on an enterprise edition, it is appropriate if they do it on a separate brand name, but not on LibreOffice. The draft marketing plan makes it clear that the eco-system companies' focus in future might be on the enterprise edition, leaving the 'actual' LibreOffice behind.

LibreOffice has been an outstanding freedom software suite till date. The proposed marketing plan may kill the positive direction in which the office suite had been heading. I feel that the board has already decided the matter since the Development Branch already has the personal edition tag without any sound discussion before the community.

- Aravind Palla

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Hi Alex,

I want to remind all of you what The Document Foundation is all about,
as stated in the *unalterable* statutes
(https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/statutes/):

"The objective of  the foundation is the promotion and development of
office software available for use by anyone free of charge." - this does
not restrict the target audience.

"This software will be openly available for free use by anyone for their
own files, including companies and public authorities, ensuring full
participation in a digital society and without detriment to intellectual
property."

I do not read that the statues say that this apply to all software
developed 'under TDF'.
Also, there seems to be room for debate - partly at least - about
whether software is code or binaries.
So providing a basic "Office-Paket, also Software für gebräuchliche
Arbeiten zur Erstellung z.B. von Texten, Tabellendokumenten,
Präsentationen, Zeichnungen, Bildern und Diagrammen" may be just enough?
Since the statues also say something about a sustainable community, I
think it is wise to try to find a good mixture.

...
The primary goal of The Document Foundation is to fulfill its statutes,
and the secondary goal is to cater for ecosystem vendors needs.

The statues say nothing explicit about "ecosystem vendors needs". As
already stated: the statues mention to take care for a sustainable
community (etc) too. So strongly dividing between TDF and ecosystem
vendors feels unnatural to me.
I know, agree, that it is not easy. But the draft marketing plan tries
to explain why doing the one (giving away free to use) without doing the
other (taking care for the ecosystem) will not last.
I believe that some details in the marketing plan, may even be less
positive, then you read them there.

Please understand that this all is not to say that I do not take the
statues seriously - I'm active long enough in the community to know the
importance, history etc.
But - as business man and board member - I like to make use of the
freedom, room, that is there, if it serves our goals :slight_smile:

Greetings,
Cor

Hi Alex,

I wanted to limit myself to those four tweets on this discussion, but this
one really rattles my bones, so here we go:

I want to remind all of you what The Document Foundation is all about,
as stated in the *unalterable* statutes
(https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/statutes/):

"The objective of  the foundation is the promotion and development of
office software available for use by anyone free of charge." - this does
not restrict the target audience.

"This software will be openly available for free use by anyone for their
own files, including companies and public authorities, ensuring full
participation in a digital society and without detriment to intellectual
property."

I would like to remind all members of the board of directors that first
and foremost you are obliged to pursue these statutes. As a consequence
you must not restrict the target audience of LibreOffice to a specific
user group in any way.

While we go into full language lawyering here, The Document Foundation is a
gemeinnuetzige Stiftung first and foremost. The "Gemeinnuetzig" in results in
certain limits on what the goals of the Stiftung are and nothing in the statues
can overrule that.

Being a commercial grade service or support provider to random companies or
public entities using productivity software is clearly NOT within these limits,
and no motte and bailey sophistication about the implied interpretation of the
foundations statues will change that or can make it the Document Foundations
mission.

There is quite a bit of excusable naivete going round in this discussion,
which is understandable given that TDF needs to finally adapt to the changes
that happened in the last decade, so there are a lot of fundamentals
reevaluated here. Its not even wrong, as we need to find new ways, because the
ones that worked a decade ago dont work anymore or will be failing soon.

The above on the other hand overconfidently states implications that dont even
stand basic scrutiny and deliver them as an argumentum ab auctoritate. As such,
it should be ignored at best -- however, given the international community, not
everyone might be comfortable in judging the core of that German legalese
argument on their own. Worse than that, it doesnt even provide a constructive
proposal on which way to develop the foundation and the community -- away from
a status quo that is clearly less and less working.

I am very happy that the new board attacks these hard challenges and am open
and eager to hear each and every constuctive proposal on how to bring the
projects and the community forward. I am also happy if fellow members of the
community reread the statues to find guidance and ideas to find ways to make
them work in the now.

So in order for this project and this community to not die it first needs
constructive proposals. Those can then be refined, improved and adjusted using
institutional learnings we made over the last two decades. But it needs a
constuctive proposal FIRST, because without it, there is nothing to refine or
improve by our learnings.

/end rant

Best,

Bjoern

Hi Alex,

thanks for your contribution and see inline my comments.

Dear board, dear community,

Abstract:
I request the board to:
- provide software in accordance with the statues.

Absolutely, there is no intention of changing that.

- remove parts of the software that are of no use for the intended
audience, hereby meaning the support key "feature" of LOOL.

Thanks for notifying us of that. I personally wasn't aware of it.

- undo the "Personal" edition branding.

That was a temporary placeholder used while the developers implemented a
potential tag line features that may or may not be used depending on the
outcome of this consultation. "Personal" was one of the many options
that came out while we were preparing this consultation.
Nothing has been yet decided about it.

I am very concerned about the recent developments regarding the
strategic future of LibreOffice and The Document Foundation. As this
concern is shared by many no quick decision should be taken.

I want to remind all of you what The Document Foundation is all about,
as stated in the *unalterable* statutes
(https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/statutes/):

"The objective of  the foundation is the promotion and development of
office software available for use by anyone free of charge." - this does
not restrict the target audience.

"This software will be openly available for free use by anyone for their
own files, including companies and public authorities, ensuring full
participation in a digital society and without detriment to intellectual
property."

I would like to remind all members of the board of directors that first
and foremost you are obliged to pursue these statutes. As a consequence
you must not restrict the target audience of LibreOffice to a specific
user group in any way.

The statutes and their principles are the reason why a vibrant Community
has been able to form around TDF and nobody in the Board has any
intention of doing anything that goes against them.

There has never been any idea of limiting access or the features of
LibreOffice.

But this already happens for quite some time and is now getting worse:

1. LibreOffice Online - Unsupported Warning

The website for LibreOffice Online states: "The Document Foundation will
not be maintaining binaries for enterprise use". This is clearly in
violation of the statutes.
(https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/)

The website also includes a picture of a warning message that often
appears
(https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/LibreOffice-Online-limit.png),
and it is also stated: "... is designed for personal and/or development
use ..." This is not only in violation of the statues, but also very
questionable behaviour for Free/Libre and Open Source Software.

**I hereby request the board to take action to provide the software in
accordance with the statutes.**

2. LibreOffice Online - Containing Support Keys

Looking through the source code of LibreOffice Online, it can be easily
found, that there is a build option for support keys, this makes
absolutely no sense in our software product.
(https://git.libreoffice.org/online/+/refs/heads/master/wsd/LOOLWSD.cpp#1259)

**I hereby request the board to take action to remove parts of the
software that are of no use for the intended audience.**

Thanks for notifying us of your concerns.
I'm not up to speed with those bits of code so I'll check with my fellow
members of the Board.

Keep in mind that LibreOffice On-Line derives mostly from development
carried out by Collabora for their On-Line product so there may be parts
in the code that are left from their own development.

I'm sure Michael Meeks will answer back ASAP to correct me if I said
something wrong.

3. LibreOffice "Personal Edition"

As I have already mentionend in my comment to the Bug Report
(https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134486#c23), I see
any restriction or even suggested restriction of the intended audience
in violation of the statutes.

I would also like to remind, that there are still and fresh versions
existing right now (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan),
and that the still versions are intended for "conservative, corporate
deployments". Will the "still" "Personal Edition" then be recommended
for "corporate deployments"? I don't believe that this is understood by
our audience in any way.

Also: I don't see the reason for the "Personal Edition" tag, as this
means that TDF must also provide another edition that is then targeted
for all other use cases.

There is no intention of providing another edition at all.
LibreOffice is and will remain LibreOffice. The proposal, as described
in the evolving marketing plan, is to potentially add a tag line which
would help in clarifying to corporate users that TDF does not provide
the enterprise support and consulting services they may require so that
they can realise that there is an ecosystem that can help them.
As above, no tag line has been decided and that's why we are here
discussing it.

**I hereby request the board to take action that this change be undone
to gain time for the community to find a consensus.**

My personal opinion is to keep the Brand LibreOffice as a name, and
certified vendors are able to provide support and services as
"LibreOffice Enterprise" partners. If you change the product, the name
is to be changed.

LibreOffice is surely going to be kept, members of the Community like
you are at present expressing their preferences on an eventual
additional tag line. That means there could be a tag line or not at the
end of this consultation.

If there is going to be one my preference would be for "Community
Edition" so that we make the world know that there is a Community behind
LibreOffice.

LibreOffice Enterprise is "just" a brand for the ecosystem, not a new
version of LibreOffice, not a new product or a company.
Members of the ecosystem will use their own names, brand, whatever they
prefer for their products and services and will be allowed to use the
name LibreOffice under certain conditions and through a TM agreement.

As this topic already gained significant public interest, it is now the
time for the board to re-evaluate the Marketing Plan and its hopefully
unintended side-effects.

We are actually here to discuss with you to avoid side effects while
making the world realise that we are a Community and whoever can should
contribute to the project.

The primary goal of The Document Foundation is to fulfill its statutes,
and the secondary goal is to cater for ecosystem vendors needs.

It seems like we have common goals.

Alex

Paolo

Hi,

Hi Alex,

I wanted to limit myself to those four tweets on this discussion, but this
one really rattles my bones, so here we go:

I want to remind all of you what The Document Foundation is all about,
as stated in the *unalterable* statutes
(https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/statutes/):

"The objective of  the foundation is the promotion and development of
office software available for use by anyone free of charge." - this does
not restrict the target audience.

"This software will be openly available for free use by anyone for their
own files, including companies and public authorities, ensuring full
participation in a digital society and without detriment to intellectual
property."

I would like to remind all members of the board of directors that first
and foremost you are obliged to pursue these statutes. As a consequence
you must not restrict the target audience of LibreOffice to a specific
user group in any way.

While we go into full language lawyering here, The Document Foundation is a
gemeinnuetzige Stiftung first and foremost. The "Gemeinnuetzig" in results in
certain limits on what the goals of the Stiftung are and nothing in the statues
can overrule that.

and there are three reasons, why TDF is "Gemeinnützig":

  * der Volks- und Berufsbildung,
  * der Wissenschaft und Forschung, insbesondere auf dem Gebiet der
    Informatik,
  * des bürgerschaftlichen Engagements zugunsten gemeinnütziger Zwecke.

(non binding English translation:

  * Public and professional education
  * Science and research, particularly in the field of computer science
  * Civic engagement for non-profit purposes)

There is nothing in this lines about the promotion of an ecosystem of
service providers (etc.).

Please be careful with the direction you are driving the foundation.

Regards,
Andreas

i don't believe anybody is claiming that promotion of an ecosystem of service providers should be a *goal* of TDF - what i understand is being claimed is that it can be a good *means*, a tool to eventually help reach the actual defined goals of TDF to a fuller extent, and the proposed marketing plan is a way to increase the ... leverage(?) ... of the means/tool.

Hi Aravind,

I've answered Alex's email.

Se if you are satisfied with my comments.

I've also answered the questions related to the slides in a reply sent
to Uwe today.

Executive summary:

There will be no restrictions to anybody, no change of licensing, no new
LibreOffice flavours and the only change we are proposing is to add a
tag line like "Community Edition".

There will be no LibreOffice Enterprise Edition, LibreOffice Enterprise
is just a collective name that regroups the members of the ecosystem.

I hope the answers provided clarify even the questions you haven't asked
yet :wink:

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Michael,

and there are three reasons, why TDF is "Gemeinnützig":

* der Volks- und Berufsbildung,
   * der Wissenschaft und Forschung, insbesondere auf dem Gebiet der
     Informatik,
   * des bürgerschaftlichen Engagements zugunsten gemeinnütziger Zwecke.

(non binding English translation:

* Public and professional education
   * Science and research, particularly in the field of computer science
   * Civic engagement for non-profit purposes)

There is nothing in this lines about the promotion of an ecosystem of
service providers (etc.).

i don't believe anybody is claiming that promotion of an ecosystem of
service providers should be a *goal* of TDF - what i understand is
being claimed is that it can be a good *means*, a tool to eventually
help reach the actual defined goals of TDF to a fuller extent,

please read through the whole discussion and you may get an impression
that there are some intent to use TDF for such a promotion.

Regards,
Andreas

There is no need to downplay the LibreOffice (Community Edition) in order to lure the proposed enterprise edition. The sudden and unexpected additions in the development branch to the extent that 'you are using a Personal Edition which is intended for individual use' has, undoubtedly created commotion among the community.

LibreOffice was and is regarded as a Freedom Software and many volunteers and including the eco-system companies (I believe) have contributed the vast-majority of the code without any commercial/enterprise edition. The office suite has achieved great heights all these years.

It is purely a moral obligation on the individuals / non-individuals to give back to the community.

Even if it is only to lure the governments/commercial entities to sell the proposed LibreOffice Enterprise edition, I reiterate that there is no need to downplay the standard edition.

What will be 'special' and what will be the exclusive 'support', etc., in the proposed enterprise edition? Can the board clarify?

- Aravind Palla

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

However, those with that impression are entirely mistaken and it is wrong to imply anyone is attempting the subversion you imply – no-one has proposed it. Those expressing the impression you describe have either misunderstood or decided to misunderstand.

For what it’s worth I’m unhappy with many elements of the proposal too, but because it is a mistake to imply that TDF offers support, or that LibreOffice as distributed by TDF is only for “Personal” or “Community” use as these leave corporate community members with more work to do explaining their value, not less. TDF needs to leave room for the companies who invest in the code to sustain themselves, as TDF itself cannot replace their work and its community are unlikely to be able to replace their work as volunteers. It can best do that by avoiding any mention of the field of use of LibreOffice.

S.

Hi Aravind,

please read the answers you received before firing off new ones:

https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/msg04604.html
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/msg04636.html
https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/msg04638.html

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Paolo,

I acknowledge the answers. Thanks.

Regards,
Aravind Palla

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

That was a temporary placeholder used while the developers implemented a
potential tag line features that may or may not be used depending on the

  If nothing else, it served a good purpose to actually get the
discussion started after we'd had several only partially successful
attempts to do that =)

1. LibreOffice Online - Unsupported Warning

  I don't have much to add to the explanation on the page:

  https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/

  AFAIK believe TDF is obliged to educate users, telling them
not to do silly things is perhaps wise.

2. LibreOffice Online - Containing Support Keys

Looking through the source code of LibreOffice Online, it can be easily
found, that there is a build option for support keys, this makes
absolutely no sense in our software product.
(https://git.libreoffice.org/online/+/refs/heads/master/wsd/LOOLWSD.cpp#1259)

**I hereby request the board to take action to remove parts of the
software that are of no use for the intended audience.**

  Arguably there is quite a lot of useless features in the
software =) if we apply this widely it could take a very long time.

  This feature is disabled even in most of our C'bra product
builds but is in some. Why ? We sell support & services based on the
number of users, and by baking a public key into the code we can
then sign a 'key' that tweaks that limit per customer; that shares
the binary across many customers. Mostly though we do trust-based
per-user licensing.

  C'bra wrote that code and published and included it - I believe
CIB has used it too, others are welcome to if they find that useful.
I imagine it's no different from innumerable other OSS support activation
keys in software.

  Is your concern that TDF hosts the bits? Or is it your concern
that the ecosystem sells support and services on a per-user basis ? or ?

  Generally as a development team we've had rather a friendly and
open view to including random features that are only of minority
usefulness - from Haiki OS support, to configure options to bundle
proprietary templates and so on. The more FLOSS the better.

  Would be good to have more precision on this concern,

  Thanks,

    Michael.

Hello,

first and foremost, thanks a lot to everyone for taking on the challenging task to work on a marketing plan. I am sure this was not easy, so thanks to all of you for your work on this - and thanks to the board for the transparent communication in public!

With all the feedback received, I strongly propose to leave 7.0 without tagging and finalize the plan for a later release.

Let’s use this time to come to a conclusion here in public, hear the community members and find something that works for everyone. First, I doubt we will achieve something positive if we rush things through. Second, adding one tag in 7.0 and then change it to another tag in 7.1 is likely to cause confusion. Third, the demand is to have something durable (the plan covers 2020-2025), something to rely on that doesn't change all of the time.

Timeline:

To have a concrete timeline, I would have proposed 7.0.3 for a final decision, not only because enterprises likely rather deploy .0.3 over .0.0, but also because it will be published around our annual LibreOffice Conference in October, and as such provides a good messaging opportunity. However, I understand UI changes in minor versions are not a good idea, so 7.1 might be a better choice.

I know there are concerns this would delay things infinitely and nothing will happen, but I sincerely do hope we have some options between a rock and a hard place. :slight_smile: That means driving forward a concrete timeline with deadlines, to not let this topic slip out of sight.

Personal vs. Community:

If I absolutely had to decide between “Personal Edition” and “Community Edition”, I would clearly favor the latter.

The name “Personal” excludes even small educational organizations, which are a part as per slide 29. It also excludes small NGOs - thinking of the local street worker office with two volunteers, or the youth care facility that hosts lots of FLOSS events, or the little kindergarten in town. Also, thinking of all the other fellow FLOSS organizations or other smaller foundations who likely prepare their annual filings (which are also “strategic documents”) with LibreOffice - would we want to discourage them from using TDF-provided LibreOffice for their association tasks?

Personal to me means for the individual use only. A personal website, in comparison to the website of the NGO I work for. A personal bank account, in comparison to an association one's. Now I acknowledge we don't talk about a legal license condition for LibreOffice, but about the framing and messaging - but still, I think “Personal” sets the frame too strict.

Also, if we go to universities for the budgeted campus ambassador program, with the above wording, even using in smaller working groups (“I show you how to write your final thesis with LibreOffice”) could sound to be discouraged.

I know the plan is to draw a line somewhere, but the above, at least for a non-native speaker, feels quite narrow.

Then, I also received feedback that “Community” can be read as an open core model or there’s no understanding in the general public what an open source community is, so it might be worth rethinking this as well - which is why 7.0, to be published in a month from now, is on too short notice for introducing a tag.

Relevance of Statutes and Regulations:

In course of the discussion, also the statutes were mentioned several times. Although I know their history and their ideas quite well, I don’t think the discussion is so much about regulations already at this point - much more important is the mutual understanding of what we want. From that point on, let’s see what we can do. We all grow and learn, regulations change, and more than once TDF has shown it’s will and ability to fight for good things. I want to contribute that we can have this discussion in the same positive and creating spirit.

Explanatory Texts:

Next to the tagging, also the various texts need to be agreed on and translated, like in the start center, the about dialog and the start center sidebar - and the same thoughts as for the actual tagging apply, how strict should the frame be set.

Legally, the license permits that organizations can use LibreOffice without contributing back - in the end, it’s free software. They do what the license allows them. We can't forbid it.

What we want to do is to very strongly encourage them, convince them, make things clear to them, because the project can only survive if there is sufficient funding, and the ecosystem is one of several key parameters for the success of TDF - we wouldn't be where we are without all of you, all of the community.

I find it much easier to celebrate things with a positive message than with a negative. As such, I seriously doubt we will convince people and bring across a good message if we communicate with too strong words. Positive wording and directions are always better than negative. And I think it's also much easier for the community to communicate that. Maybe we tried with messaging that was not successful so far, fair enough, so let's improve the message, but I would like to work on a positive framing, than on a negative one.

TDF is no different in this regard! We ourselves, we use lots of free software as an organization - be it for web, database, file services, mail, chat, conferencing and other servers. We have the skills in-house and we often rely on pre-compiled binaries from free software projects. We do contribute back e.g. by supporting upstream development, doing advocacy and working together on a common goal.

We don’t do this because of strong taglines and texts, but because we’re convinced of doing something good to the benefit of many, making improvements for us and others, achieving a common goal. Contributing and being a "good citizen" can be done in various ways.

It’s this message I would like to transport also for LibreOffice.

In the end, I trust the marketing team, I trust the board, I trust the community - and I’m sure our collective wisdom will bring up what is best for the project.

I know constructive discussions in public are not trivial and can be really demanding, especially on such an obviously emotional topic. Part of the positive progress we do make is also exactly this discussion - working together constructively, positively and creating things is what will set, literally, the foundation for the next decade of our Foundation, and everyone who is part of the ecosystem around it.

Florian

Florian,

I fully support what you wrote.

That's it.

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Flo, *,

Florian Effenberger wrote:

first and foremost, thanks a lot to everyone for taking on the challenging
task to work on a marketing plan. I am sure this was not easy, so thanks to
all of you for your work on this - and thanks to the board for the
transparent communication in public!

Seconded - the feedback here & elsewhere has been overwhelmingly
positive & constructive!

With all the feedback received, I strongly propose to leave 7.0 without
tagging and finalize the plan for a later release.

I think that would be a mistake.

- we see consensus forming now, around the community tag
- there's a unique opportunity now, with the 10 year / 7.0 marketing
  push & attention we're getting
- there's _additional_ attention now from the press, due to the
  ongoing, public discussion
  (quite a nice & balanced article:
   https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/825598/21fb7c2a3f9358e7/)
- instead being seen from the outside as not being able to resolve
  conflicts amicably & in finite time would further the impression of
  a project mired in internal fights

I propose instead to use the available time, focus the minds, and
settle on something that seems to have broad-enough support
(LibreOffice Community Edition).

I've seen great artwork & mockups already from the design team, and it
would be a shame to let the current focus, energy & thrust fizzle out.

As it inevitably will, because the next release is 6 months out, and
for a project also relying on volunteers, real life will certainly
take over again.

One more thing:

Relevance of Statutes and Regulations:

In course of the discussion, also the statutes were mentioned several times.
Although I know their history and their ideas quite well, I don’t think the
discussion is so much about regulations already at this point - much more
important is the mutual understanding of what we want.

Can you (perhaps in a separate mail) clearly state that with the
current marketing plan, those allegations are baseless? Or if not,
where perhaps some care need to be taken?

Explanatory Texts:

Next to the tagging, also the various texts need to be agreed on and
translated, like in the start center, the about dialog and the start center
sidebar - and the same thoughts as for the actual tagging apply, how strict
should the frame be set.

Yep - but for those, I've also seen good suggestions (and I'm more
willing to e.g. only have an inobtrusive banner instead of a wall of
text for the start center, if that makes things more palatable).

I find it much easier to celebrate things with a positive message than with
a negative.

I agree.

Two thoughts here:
- I'm much happier with a text many here agree with, than no message
- Whatever we do, we'll learn how effective it is, and we can iterate
   the approach for 7.1

But I very, very strongly feel the need to act for 7.0 - with a change
that is broadly acceptable, but with a _change_. Because if every
change for the LibreOffice product takes a year to iterate, any
learning & adapting we can pull up will be too slow for the internet
age.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

With all the feedback received, I strongly propose to leave 7.0 without
tagging and finalize the plan for a later release.

  I share Thorsten's view. While I've generally been a big proponent of
getting everything nailed down in one try, I would strongly prefer to
get a weaker solution "Community Edition" out which seems to be
collecting a weight of support against Personal. That support arriving
even before we had a clear write-up of the issues we want to solve.
Perhaps we can iterate it based on feedback, we at least generate some
hard data on its effectiveness.

  I would also really like to avoid stalling effective improvements to
our website to encourage enterprises to support the project. The
improvements there to date have been really small and incremental, and
as we now know ineffective.

I know there are concerns this would delay things
infinitely and nothing will happen,

  Ultimately, we're getting press, and interest, and relevance, and
feedback from the community: integrating that into something better
while people are interested sounds good to me. I'm sure marketing can
turn that into a success story.

  It is now widely known that the status-quo is working extraordinarily
poorly. Rather than accepting and extending that for six months - I'd
prefer to use the momentum to encourage at least some improvement.

The name “Personal” excludes even small educational organizations, which
are a part as per slide 29. It also excludes small NGOs - thinking of
the local street worker office with two volunteers, or the youth care

...

but still, I think “Personal” sets the frame too strict.

...> Also, if we go to universities for the budgeted campus ambassador

program, with the above wording, even using in smaller working groups

...

I know the plan is to draw a line somewhere, but the above, at least for
a non-native speaker, feels quite narrow.

  I really don't think we want to discourage contributing to LibreOffice.
That's why it's important we get our marketing right.

  However carving out Education, Universities, NGOs, youth care - as
markets which should not support the project financially is really
unhelpful.

   It is hard to predict the future, and the best predictions are sold to
people rather than being free but checkout:

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/collaboration-software-market

  This has a pretty pie-chart in it "Canada Collaboration Software Market
share by Application 2026":

https://www.gminsights.com/assets/img/collaboration-software-market-by-application.png

  Education is approaching 25% of that.

  In recent time, Education has been a bright point for actually
contributing to the ecosystem.

  As one example - we can now build and run on iOS and tablets because of
a single education area in Switzerland - as well as a big chunk of
Adfinis and Collabora's investment. Perhaps a good thing we didn't tell
them that they don't have to contribute or get support.

  Education sales has helped to fuel a similarly significant chunk of
C'bras development team via sales in lockdown.

  It is quite unclear to me why some segments that pay for a premis,
heating, lighting, hardware, sysadmin time, network bandwidth,
deployment, a Windows OS :wink: and more should not be encouraged to
contribute to LibreOffice's growth.

  For our friends, we can sooth their conscience and tell them that using
the Personal or Community version is just fine for them, and that we
contribute for them - or whatever =) that's easy to do personally
surely? That means we can help our friends and neighbours while not
killing the market for whole segments.

What we want to do is to very strongly encourage them, convince them,
make things clear to them, because the project can only survive if there
is sufficient funding, and the ecosystem is one of several key
parameters for the success of TDF - we wouldn't be where we are without
all of you, all of the community.

  Thanks for those words.

I find it much easier to celebrate things with a positive message than

  Problem is; this celebration party is great - but currently has nearly
zero attendees =) The hosts are tapping their watches and wondering if
they even bothered to send an invitation out =)

  I would really like to see some messaging that we can show is effective.

TDF is no different in this regard! We ourselves, we use lots of free
software as an organization - be it for web, database, file services,
mail, chat, conferencing and other servers. We have the skills in-house
and we often rely on pre-compiled binaries from free software projects.
We do contribute back e.g. by supporting upstream development, doing
advocacy and working together on a common goal.

  I think this is generally acceptable in the society of FLOSS projects
because we contribute very heavily ourselves.

  We don't spend our time complaining about Nextcloud mailing the
sysadmins of larger users' to suggest paying for support though =) or
for Ubuntu having a 'Pricing' button on its front-page or ... :wink: Most
of these other projects are doing the hard (but much easier)
corporate-owned FLOSS project branding thing.

  We show their brands rather regularly to our users - contributing at
least that value to them.

  The brands we don't effectively show are from those of our ecosystem
that contribute to LibreOffice :wink:

In the end, I trust the marketing team, I trust the board, I trust the
community - and I’m sure our collective wisdom will bring up what is
best for the project.

  That is a positive view.

  ATB,

    Michael.

Thank Thorston

I think the discussion was well and we have now something we can work with.

LibreOffice Community Edition

If we wait for another 6 months nothing will happen. Only the spirit will go away and the community need a clear message how future will be.

Design proposals can be done until next week meeting on 17.07. for LibreOffice and also for the webpage if we have a go for LibreOffice Community Edition. So that in the meeting you can vote for something to implement.

So please give feedback in the design irc what are the guidelines.

Cheers
Andreas_k

Many people from the hispanic Community is in favor of Community tag, myself included. This term identifies pretty well a group of people who are passionate, in this case about a free and open tool.

However, the adoption of such an appellation must be communicated in an appropriate manner and with sufficient notice so that everyone is prepared.

Having said that, I agree with Florian's statement about postponing the tag implementation until the next major version. With the definition of a timetable with the key dates involved and an strong communication strategy.