Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice] Proposal to join Apache OpenOffice

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 13:40, Pieter E. Zanstra <pieter@zanstra.eu> wrote:
> As an interested user I see a lot of noise passing by on this topic. I must
> say I am totally unimpressed. What counts for me is reality, not dreaming in
> the cloud. I was used to getting no response from Microsoft on my bug
> reports. I did join in a bug report in OOo about table autoformats not being
> saved properly. I did approach Sun and Oracle directly about this silly bug
> that has been sitting untouched since 2008 in the OpenOffice bug repository.
> I did not get any answers from Sun/Oracle either.
>
> I resubmitted the original bug report to the new TDF bug repository. There,
> within a quarter of a year, it has been evaluated and elevated to the
> "Easyhack" status. I would not be surprised if that problem would be solved
> by the end of this year. They have already done quite a pile of cleaning
> code and bug fixing. My confidence as a user is with them. The indians have
> to prove as yet. That is what matters at the end of the day.

Absolutely that is what matters. Whether the caretakers place *you* at
the forefront. Big faceless corporations generally don't, while
smaller communities usually do.

I believe the (recent) discussion stemmed from whether end-users care
about the *license*. They mostly want a great product and a responsive
caretaker. That's it. I can guarantee you that my mother, father,
brother, sister, and the rest of my extended family would give me a
blank stare if I told them they needed to use Free Software rather
than proprietary. Crickets would echo in the room.

There *are* end-users who want Free Software. Many of you care
strongly about it, and seek out Free Software. Granted. But when you
look at the tens of millions (hundreds?) of OOo and LO users, they
simply don't care.

Building and providing LibreOffice is a fabulous thing for people who
really care about Free Software. LO has an important place in our
software ecosystem. I just don't think projecting that philosophy onto
the "typical end-user" makes sense, however.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+help@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted