[tdf-discuss] Re: Stepping back from The Document Foundation

Hi Michael,

I think I might have made it a little too dramatic...

I'm not saying you don't meet my expectations, I'm saying you're doing
well, but I just don't feel comfortable with the way we actually work.

Also that doesn't mean I'm totally leaving everything that is LibreOffice:
I'll keep on saying how awesome it is, I'm just stopping from following
mailing lists etc...

As to starting a business, have to admit that this is something that goes
in my mind from time to time, just haven't figured out whether I really
want to do something like that or not yet.

Thanks




On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 7:02 PM, Michael Meeks <michael.meeks@suse.com>wrote:

> Hi Florian,
>
>         So - first, this belongs on the discuss list - please follow up
> there
> and not on the developers list where it is out of scope.
>
> On Sun, 2013-01-13 at 16:54 +0100, Florian Monfort wrote:
> > And that has consequences: we're too slow -acting..
>
>         As a foundation - IMHO we're pretty good at decision making :-) at
> least - compared to larger companies; still we're worse than small
> consultancy outfits.
>
> > And you can talk about "contributors", but the thing is, here it is
> > totally different: those guys are paid by Red Hat, Canonical or SuSe.
>
>         One third of our patches (and often the coolest ones that are not
> commercially driven but really improve stuff), come from un-affiliated
> volunteers.
>
> > The truth is the community is mainly made of people who are paid full
> > time for it: so YES, we should promote an actual "product", not a
> > community that is practically non existent.
>
>         I don't know where you get this 'truth' from :-)
>
> > But it looks like speaking of a "commercial offer" would sound crazy.
>
>         What do you want to sell ? if it is such a good idea - why can't
> you
> start a VC funded firm (or whatever) to produce it, and be part of the
> LibreOffice community along-side other companies that make a business
> out of supporting and developing the project & their derived products ?
> Is there any real need to bet TDF's success on some business venture,
> for-pay-product etc. ? Ultimately we're a charitable non-profit
> foundation. Don't let me discourage you doing that though - if you have
> a good idea: start a business, and if it helps LibreOffice I'd be happy
> to help you help us.
>
> > Well I'm sorry to say I disagree with all this, and I'm thinking this
> > is too bad: LibreOffice could actually grow faster and with a larger
> > community, if at least people were capable of recognizing that
> > "business" is the actual model to adopt
>
>         Seriously; we have applied a -lot- of brain cycles collectively to
> the
> problem of how to make the project self-sustaining (OpenOffice was not),
> and create opportunity for businesses around it. If you're aware of some
> magic bullet that we are not - please discuss it on discuss@. If you can
> raise seed funding for your idea - I'd be most happy to help identify
> people to hire, etc.
>
>         Anyhow - again, please follow-up only on discuss. Thanks for your
> contribution ! I'm sorry we didn't manage to met your high
> expectations :-)
>
>         All the best,
>
>                 Michael.
>
> --
> michael.meeks@suse.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot


-- 
*Monfort Florian*
BM2 Student at France Business School
Marketing Apprentice at Red Hat
florian.monfort@gmail.com
Mobile : +33 6 58 97 15 61

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+help@documentfoundation.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
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