Date: prev next · Thread: first prev next last
2010 Archives by date, by thread · List index


Hi Carolina, all,
Carolina Flores Hine wrote:
On 09/30/2010 03:19 PM, Marc Paré wrote:
 Le 2010-09-30 15:32, jonathon a écrit :
On 09/29/2010 05:45 PM, Bernhard Dippold wrote:

If they insist on keeping the trademark given to Sun Microsystems bec
au
se the community hadn't an entity to claim violations and abuse,

I seriously doubt that Oracle will donate the trademarks to Document
Foundation.

Selling them is a possibility, but the price would probably be for
whatever OOo, as an independent company, would sell for.

As such, all planning should be done on the basis that the project has

been rebranded to LibreOffice.

jonathon

It wouldn't surprise me if Oracle did hand over the "OpenOffice.org" trademark name. They will no doubt have been on this mailist and seen how many of the localization teams have moved to the LibreOffice group. I don't think that this change in direction was a big surprise to them as it wasn't for the "OpenOffice.org" community. It would be in their interest as corporate citizens to establish good will with the "OpenOffice.org" community, and, as the LibreOffice is happening with or without the "OpenOffice.org" name, the game to them is lost. It's just a matter of clearing all liabilities from their end of their

business model and joining the Document Foundation project along with everyone else. I don't think that there is any animosity between the group, we should all be thankful that Sun bought and delivered the code to OSS regardless of how they may or may not have run the "code" approval system. Just imagine the pre-StarOffice days, when the only real word processor in town was MSOffice and Wordperfect had been decimated by its competitor. Without Sun's generosity, we would not now be in a position to create a foundation based on an OSS office suit
e.

So, "hats off" and congratulations first of all to Sun Microsystems who gave us this wonderful piece of software, and hopefully, "hats off" with congratulations and upmost of thanks to Oracle for helping us with the transition from being under the safety of a corporate umbrella to a document foundation based on OSS and the sharing of code. Oracle/Sun would then be remembered as a darling corporation who

helped foster OSS adoption. With a little luck, Oracle could offer support for the Document Foundation with seed money and hardware facilities/support until the foundation's business model is put into work and able to stand on its own financially. This is what happened to Mozilla when it first set out on its own.

Hopefully, the LibreOffice will be only a temporary and brief episode and the "OpenOffice.org" brand will live on along with the great community that it has always had. Let's keep the lines of communication open and remain positive.

Cheers

Marc

I participated in a long discussion about this last night with fellows from the Central American community (with some guests from Argentina & Colombia) and we shared some ideas:

1. We are all celebrating LibreOffice and we support the project, no matter it's trademark name.

2. We are worried about marketing. We know regular users don't understand this process and we have been working for a long time promoting OpenOffice on government, universities and other institutions. There are "hostile environments" out there, and this great news are kind of bad news for some people (for example Panama, where government contracts ask for MSOffice or OpenOffice mentioned as a
trademark).

3. Our great news are confusing and can be used against Free Software, if the Document Foundation don't coordinate a communication's strategy. We know this project will succeed as a development project but there a other areas needed. A fork enhances the most common unfounded fears about Free Software: projects are unstable and there's a lack of support.


So, of course, the scenario will be better if Oracle gives the trademark
to the community, but if we have to wait a month for that to happen, the
situation will still be complicated. In that case, it may be better if we start positioning LibreOffice now because in two months, it may be too late.

Of course, we decided to wait for your guidances but we want to make sure you are thinking about the consequences of waiting for the trademark
.

We are well aware of this marketing issue and more, the lack of confidence it can bring to our users. We won't wait a long time and meanwhile we will continue to work on the foundation settlement and the quality of the version we want to deliver. We need to show to the world what we are able to do and the quality we aim, and we are going to do it :)

Thanks a lot for doing what some of us only dared to dream: building a home for OpenOffice.

Thanks a lot for being there, without the community, a dream would stay a dream !

Kind regards
Sophie

Carolina


--
To unsubscribe, send an empty e-mail to discuss+unsubscribe@documentfoundation.org
All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted.
List archives are available at http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/discuss/

Context


Privacy Policy | Impressum (Legal Info) | Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified, all text and images on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPLv2). "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use thereof is explained in our trademark policy.