Discussion about options available with marketing plan draft and timetable

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.

Hi Andreas, @!

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 11:18 AM kainz.a <kainz.a@gmail.com> wrote:

As I wrote, community edition is fine for me. Fun Project, Fantastic People will be something like a backup which describes the LibreOffice community and can be from my point of view a bit more motivated to donate or use an enterprise release (for companies).

Thanks for sharing this amazing concept in some past email!

Let me suggest my cents (instead ‘LibreOffice Community Edition’) based on it: ‘LibreOffice for People’.

Best!
Gustavo.

On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 12:46 PM kainz.a <kainz.a@gmail.com> wrote:

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

Michael Meeks <michael.meeks@collabora.com> schrieb am Fr., 10. Juli 2020, 16:27:

On 10/07/2020 11:12, Florian Effenberger wrote:

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.


michael.meeks@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity
Hangout: mejmeeks@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks
(M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe


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

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.

They might be mistaken, but in as much as Collabora has stated that they
have had zero new customers since 2018, it looks a lot like Collabora,
and the rest of the LibreOffice Ecosystem are looking at TDF/LibreOffice
to also do their marketing for them.

because it is a mistake to imply that TDF offers support, or that

TDF/LibreOffice offers Tier 0 support. As far as I can tell, that won't
be changing.

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 inves in the code to sustain themselves,

There is absolutely nothing preventing the LibreOffice ecosystem vendors
from marketing Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 support. (FWIW,
Collabora currently does market Tier 3 support.)

However, as Collabora also pointed out in that email, there is no profit
in SOHO support (^1). Unfortunately for the LibreOffice Ecosystem, the
majority of organisations in the world are SOHO --- between 1 and 20
people work in them. My rough estimate is that 90% of the organisations,
globally, have under 20 employees. (There are 250 countries on the
planet. It takes roughly an hour per country, to get the appropriate
data. So if somebody else wants to get that data for each country, and
sort it out, for revenue, number of employees, and type of organisation,
go for it. If TDF/LibreOffice is expected to do the marketing for and on
behalf of the LibreOffice Ecosystem, then LibO Marketing absolutely has
to have that data, to construct country specific/industry specific
marketing plans. )

The issue that everybody is dancing around, is that the LibreOffice
Ecosystem support vendors focus on large (More than 250 employees)
organisations (^2), but the majority of LibO users are either
individuals, or SOHO users.

Going back to Italo's presentation, _Work From Home_ is going to be far
more common, than it was prior to January 2020.

Between businesses filing bankruptcy, and organisations deciding that it
makes better financial sense to give every employee US$10,000 to set up
their own home office, and eliminate leased office space, the commercial
real estate market in the United States is looking at a tough future.
(Of the businesses in the United States on 1 January 2020, projections
are that roughly 25% of them will have filed bankruptcy by 1 January
2021, and almost as many will have permanently closed their doors by
that date.)

Your current large business might be willing and able to sign a support
contract for Tier 1 or Tier 2. However, how much profit will the support
vendor have, if, instead of one site per organisation, there are 500
sites per organisation? With WFH, can support vendors even offer on-site
support? Those are issues that the support vendors need to address.

#####

1) The profit in SOHO support comes from systems integration --- both
hardware and software. Back when white box makers were a dime a dozen,
such contracts were readily available, albeit not advertised.

2) https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76842 exemplifies
the potential client that the support vendor was unable to convert.
8,500 seats would be either £51,000 per month, or per year, assuming the
publicly stated seat prices are accurate. (One place gave the base price
as being per year. A different place gave the base price as being per
month.) Without having the facts on hand, I'd guess that the issue was
money --- specifically, that the bug-reporter was blind-sided by both
the amounts involved, and was provided with none of the virtues of how &
why paying for support would enable his organisation to be more
effective. (Did the vendor rep point out that their support included
software that enables rolling out new releases on a more timely basis,
including extensions, templates, corporate palettes, and the like?)

jonathon

I think the best solution probably lies in just using simple branding of "LibreOffice", and "LibreOffice LTS" for eco-system branding.

As many have already said, LibreOffice Personal implies licensing - which simply isn't true, and so is a particularly bad term.

LibreOffice Community edition implies crippleware - which currently is not true, and is not the intended direction. So also a poor term.

The factual distinction currently between TDF LibreOffice vs Eco-system versions is rolling releases vs Long Term Support releases. Since "LibreOffice Rolling" would hold no meaning for most people, it is best to go with the common suggestion to just stick with "LibreOffice". LTS is a fairly common term for business-focused open-source, and thus "LibreOffice LTS / supported by XXX" provides a branding distinction that immediately conveys confidence and desirability to the business sector.

On a related topic, I also wanted to comment on the underlying tone that some segments are using LibreOffice, but not contributing. I think that is hard to measure because open-source is a very large field, and in my opinion, anyone who invests well in open-source anywhere should have the moral right to use all open-source products. So for example, a company that supports a lot of code development for GIMP shouldn't be shamed for not contributing/donating directly to LibreOffice even if they heavily use it.  For me, it made most sense to "pay" for our open-source use as a volunteer LibreOffice developer.

Justin

Hi Toki,

They might be mistaken, but in as much as Collabora has
stated that they have had zero new customers since 2018

  To correct this mis-apprehension; I spoke about new Desktop product
customers, and Thorsten reported a similar experience at CIB.

it looks a lot like Collabora, and the rest of the
LibreOffice Ecosystem are looking at TDF/LibreOffice to
also do their marketing for them.

  Clearly both Volunteers and Ecosystem are important parts of the
LibreOffice community. If we frame the discussion as them vs. us, we
exacerbate conflict.

  You will be surprised to know that C'bra and CIB have
funded TDF/LibreOffice Marketing / outreach in the past too. Mike can
perhaps report on the results there. It heavily foundered on the
hard-gratis messaging. Everyone wants something for free, then they want
to complain about it =)

  IMHO TDF needs to build space for an ecosystem that
can afford to invest in improving LibreOffice. Or alternatively - it
needs to bin its ecosystem and become the one-company that controls the
brand and does everything: Mozilla style (though I'm far from a fan of
this model, I think it's broadly doomed to failure as I wrote in my
ecosystem paper, and our current efforts at TDF to spend money on
development are are not encouraging).

2) https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76842 exemplifies
the potential client that the support vendor was unable to convert.
8,500 seats would be either £51,000 per month, or per year, assuming the
publicly stated seat prices are accurate.

  This is an example of a spectacularly entitled and unpleasant
government deployment expecting free LTS, rapid response to their
problems, and also not to pay anyone for it.

(One place gave the base price
as being per year. A different place gave the base price as being per
month.) Without having the facts on hand, I'd guess that the issue was
money --- specifically, that the bug-reporter was blind-sided by both
the amounts involved, and was provided with none of the virtues of how &
why paying for support would enable his organisation to be more
effective. (Did the vendor rep point out that their support included
software that enables rolling out new releases on a more timely basis,
including extensions, templates, corporate palettes, and the like?)

  Sure; Tim worked for me back then - he was a professional sales person,
and I'm sure he provided a compelling view of the value-add (vs. what
you can get for free without support).

  Of course - being aggressive in up-stream bug reports to try to get
free support is something that many try. It would be nice if they did not.

  It seems to me that having deployed something for free, saved a
significant amount of money on Microsoft Office licenses - say half a
million per year; it is unhelpful to complain. Problem is - he was
talking to a sysadmin who wants an immediate fix: by which time we're
-far- too late in the cycle; much better to have worked this out in advance.

  There are a number of larger deployments that buy the gratis message,
then they fall over an increasing number of small annoyances that
cumulatively drive them away over the years. It's not a good model for
the project to promote, it results in unhappy users, a bad experience of
the brand, and starves product development.

  Another thing that strikes me is - that I travel on RyanAir, and the
flight is crammed but the service is not particularly dire, and yet the
number of aggressive complaints is high. I fly on a higher cost airline
and I can't tell the difference in service, but there is often much less
grumbling when you pay more. Curious.

  Either way - moving marketing away from gratis towards libre sounds
like a good move to me.

  ATB,

    Michael.

Hi all,

I think the best solution probably lies in just using simple branding of "LibreOffice", and "LibreOffice LTS" for eco-system branding.

I support this. In addition LibreOffice partners should be allowed to put a "powered by XYZ" on the start screen.

As many have already said, LibreOffice Personal implies licensing - which simply isn't true, and so is a particularly bad term. >
LibreOffice Community edition implies crippleware - which currently is not true, and is not the intended direction. So also a poor term.

"Edition" itself is dangerous too, because it implies, that the download from TDF might not contain all features.

The factual distinction currently between TDF LibreOffice vs Eco-system versions is rolling releases vs Long Term Support releases. Since "LibreOffice Rolling" would hold no meaning for most people, it is best to go with the common suggestion to just stick with "LibreOffice". LTS is a fairly common term for business-focused open-source, and thus "LibreOffice LTS / supported by XXX" provides a branding distinction that immediately conveys confidence and desirability to the business sector.

Another distinction is the kind of support.

To make these more visible, I can think of changes for the download page:
Introduction
Download option "fresh"
Download option "still".

Introduction
The Document Foundation (TDF) provides LibreOffice releases on a /time based cycle/. TDF provides a feature release half yearly, followed by usually six bug fix releases.

Other versions, including long-term support versions, and special services for the needs of companies and larger organizations are available from LibreOffice partners, read /<site to be created>/ for more details.

[// are meant to be links.]

Remove the comment "If you're a technology enthusiast, early adopter or power user, this version is for you!" from "fresh"-rectangle.

Replace the comment "This version is slightly older and does not have the latest features, but it has been tested for longer. For business deployments, we strongly recommend support from certified partners which also offer long-term support versions of LibreOffice." with the comment "Last bug fix release for this LibreOffice series is in <month year>".

The short time where bug fixes are available for a LibreOffice series, should make it clear to companies, that they need a different solution than just downloading LibreOffice.

On a related topic, I also wanted to comment on the underlying tone that some segments are using LibreOffice, but not contributing. I think that is hard to measure because open-source is a very large field, and in my opinion, anyone who invests well in open-source anywhere should have the moral right to use all open-source products. So for example, a company that supports a lot of code development for GIMP shouldn't be shamed for not contributing/donating directly to LibreOffice even if they heavily use it.  For me, it made most sense to "pay" for our open-source use as a volunteer LibreOffice developer.

This is an important aspect. Shaming people for not paying for LibreOffice without knowing the background is not the right way.

Kind regards
Regina

Michael Meeks wrote:

  There are a number of larger deployments that buy the gratis message,
then they fall over an increasing number of small annoyances that
cumulatively drive them away over the years. It's not a good model for
the project to promote, it results in unhappy users, a bad experience of
the brand, and starves product development.

Quite.

There's been some good points being made from all sides of the
argument; but this one here needs stressing: there is _negative_ net
value to LibreOffice (and the ecosystem), to sell it as basically a
zero-cost alternative to MS Office. Merely pushing up numbers of users
is not a goal in and of itself, as we need people being happy & served
well with our software.

I know people here are aware of it (some of you have even tried to
rescue projects which started like that - at great personal cost
sometimes), but our product marketing to this date apparently still
does not convey the message clearly enough.

The discussion we're having is basically about how to change that.

TDF, in my humble opinion, was not founded to 'sell a zero-cost office
suite' - the collective motivation & mission statement would be IMO
much better served by marketing an experience - 'LibreOffice the
community'. That will likely involve distributing the bits of the
compiled program, but only as a means to an end, not as the sole
purpose.

As such, I find the label 'LibreOffice Community Edition' quite
suitable.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Hi

To make these more visible, I can think of changes for the download page:
Introduction
Download option "fresh"
Download option "still".

Introduction
The Document Foundation (TDF) provides LibreOffice releases on a /time based cycle/. TDF provides a feature release half yearly, followed by usually six bug fix releases.

Other versions, including long-term support versions, and special services for the needs of companies and larger organizations are available from LibreOffice partners, read /<site to be created>/ for more details.

[// are meant to be links.]

Remove the comment "If you're a technology enthusiast, early adopter or power user, this version is for you!" from "fresh"-rectangle.

Replace the comment "This version is slightly older and does not have the latest features, but it has been tested for longer. For business deployments, we strongly recommend support from certified partners which also offer long-term support versions of LibreOffice." with the comment "Last bug fix release for this LibreOffice series is in <month year>".

The short time where bug fixes are available for a LibreOffice series, should make it clear to companies, that they need a different solution than just downloading LibreOffice.

+1
Can be done immediately. No preliminary decision on other topics.

I support Regina’s proposal.

S.

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 2:13 PM Regina Henschel <rb.henschel@t-online.de> wrote:

Hi all,

Justin Luth schrieb am 13-Jul-20 um 13:08:

I think the best solution probably lies in just using simple branding of
“LibreOffice”, and “LibreOffice LTS” for eco-system branding.

I support this. In addition LibreOffice partners should be allowed to
put a “powered by XYZ” on the start screen.

As many have already said, LibreOffice Personal implies licensing -
which simply isn’t true, and so is a particularly bad term. >
LibreOffice Community edition implies crippleware - which currently is
not true, and is not the intended direction. So also a poor term.

“Edition” itself is dangerous too, because it implies, that the download
from TDF might not contain all features.

The factual distinction currently between TDF LibreOffice vs Eco-system
versions is rolling releases vs Long Term Support releases. Since
“LibreOffice Rolling” would hold no meaning for most people, it is best
to go with the common suggestion to just stick with “LibreOffice”. LTS
is a fairly common term for business-focused open-source, and thus
“LibreOffice LTS / supported by XXX” provides a branding distinction
that immediately conveys confidence and desirability to the business
sector.
Another distinction is the kind of support.

To make these more visible, I can think of changes for the download page:
Introduction
Download option “fresh”
Download option “still”.

Introduction
The Document Foundation (TDF) provides LibreOffice releases on a /time
based cycle/. TDF provides a feature release half yearly, followed by
usually six bug fix releases.

Other versions, including long-term support versions, and special
services for the needs of companies and larger organizations are
available from LibreOffice partners, read // for
more details.

[// are meant to be links.]

Remove the comment “If you’re a technology enthusiast, early adopter or
power user, this version is for you!” from “fresh”-rectangle.

Replace the comment “This version is slightly older and does not have
the latest features, but it has been tested for longer. For business
deployments, we strongly recommend support from certified partners which
also offer long-term support versions of LibreOffice.” with the comment
"Last bug fix release for this LibreOffice series is in ".

The short time where bug fixes are available for a LibreOffice series,
should make it clear to companies, that they need a different solution
than just downloading LibreOffice.

On a related topic, I also wanted to comment on the underlying tone that
some segments are using LibreOffice, but not contributing. I think that
is hard to measure because open-source is a very large field, and in my
opinion, anyone who invests well in open-source anywhere should have the
moral right to use all open-source products. So for example, a company
that supports a lot of code development for GIMP shouldn’t be shamed for
not contributing/donating directly to LibreOffice even if they heavily
use it. For me, it made most sense to “pay” for our open-source use as
a volunteer LibreOffice developer.

This is an important aspect. Shaming people for not paying for
LibreOffice without knowing the background is not the right way.

Kind regards
Regina


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