Re: [libreoffice-marketing] LibO in Business

On 10/27/2010 12:14 AM, Frank Esposito wrote:


> trying to take their M$ world away form them, we have to play their
game for now.

Playing microsoft's game is guaranteed to be a losing proposition.

Rewrite the rules so that microsoft has to play LibO's game.   That is
how to win marketshare.

> there is no reliable  grammar check

"reliable" is in the eye of the beholder here.

The grammar checkers (note _plural_) for OOo are designed to catch
"simple" grammatical errors. If it says something is an error, it
probably is.  With microsoft, if it says something is an error, you need
to consult _The King's English_ to verify that the alleged error is an
error.

> there is no bibliography/reference manager,

There is a bibliography manager in LibO.  One of the problems with it,
is that it neither imports or exports any of the standard citation formats.

> no but compatible should mean "compatible"  and agian we are trying to take

Define "compatible".

From the documents I get, OOo, and LibO are more compatible with MSO
documents that MSO (any version) is with MSO (same version and edition
on a different CPU).  I won't even get into MSO (any version)
incompatibility with MSO (different version) or MSO (any version) with MSO
 (same version but different edition).

Of course your standards and definition of compatibility might be
tragically different from my own.

> but lacking in LO/OO. this is a sticking point for some,

Just how many more grammar checkers do you want LibO to have?

Or maybe that question should be: "How many different grammar checkers
should LibO offer?

Note:  Different grammar checkers, not different languages that those
different grammar checkers can check grammar in.

> the magic word you used is learning curve, business does not like to retrain,

Businesses don't like to train people in the first place, much less
retrain them

> imagine the worldwide affect it would have for FOSS and M$ stockholders.

There is some data to suggest that M$ may be subject to a dive bombing
by its stockholders. A documentable 10% marketshare in the US of either
LibO, or OOo might well be enough to do more than trigger that dive bombing.

> > The biggest barrier to adoption in business is the advocates themselves,
>  I am sorry to say it is not

Some advocates have overpromised and under delivered.  Some  that were
lulled by that, are understandably upset about the illusions that they
bought into.

> the barrier is what will be the most cost affective transition,

LibO can read and write more file formats --- both current and legacy,
than MSO can.

In a corporate migration, the most effective _long term strategy_, is to
convert all legacy documents to PDF format for archive/retrieval purposes.

All templates should be specifically recreated from scratch.  Not
migrated from other file formats.

The five to ten percent of the mission critical documents can be
converted to the new file format, with the understanding that they will
be reconstructed in the new file format, at a future point in time.

If you are wondering why the emphasis on constructing in the new file
format, and not simply converting an existing document to the new file
format, the reason is simple.  File format migration adds artefacts that
can cause compatibility issues.  (This is as true when migrating from
MSO2K3 to MSO2K7, as when migrating from WS5.5 to LibO.)
[]

Bonus feature for the office suite: Ability to open a PDF, and spit it
out as an editable document in the native file format of the office
suite that is being used.

> they stick with a product they have literally used for over a decade (and
> some place it is the same version for over a decade)

Everything I said about migration issues applies, regardless of if the
upgrade is to MSO2KX or LibO or GoogleDocs.

> Android is a good model to look at, it is killing the iPhone 

Er no, Android is _not_ killing the iPhone.  Android is killing Symbian
RIM, and Windows Mobile.


> The real longterm goal is to get the business world to adopt Oasis file
> formats. once that happens, OO will win more market

There are two different marketing messages to be presented:

* Why ODF formats are better;
* Why use LibO;

jonathon
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