Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Glyn Moody's article

Hi,

Le Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:53:55 -0400,
webmaster for Kracked Press Productions <webmaster@krackedpress.com> a
écrit :

> Here is a marketing question that came from this thread;
> If we do not capture a large market and following - larger the better
> - what will happen to LO's market share when AOO comes out and they
> spend the marketing dollars that LO does not have?
>
> For this year, LO was lucky.  Without OOo producing a package after 
> 3.3.0, LO started to get OOo people looking for a package that is 
> continuing to update its package.  I truly wonder how many OOo users
> LO got because OOo was no longer issuing updates.  When AOO comes
> out, how many will switch back?

I don't think it will be a "switch back". IBM has explained they would
contribute large chunks of code in 2012, which means the Apache
OpenOffice will become some sort of "New Symphony" office suite. It
will be two different products, so the people will switch based on
different factors. 


> Then there is the question on how do we keep our users instead of
> them going back to the "original" version, not under Apache?  Right
> now, open-source users have an older OOo version and the much more
> developed LO package.  LO is the only way to go is you want to use
> the best MS Office compatibility.  That was a major issue with the
> older OOo.  That is currently LO's biggest feature with our
> marketing, besides the price.  LO now can read/write .docx documents
> [and the other formats] better than any other free alternative that I
> know of.  If you do not have a MS document/spreadsheet/etc. filled
> with complex micros, you can use LO with all your old MSO documents
> and create all of your new ones as well.  This seems to work with
> everything but Access [so I have read in these lists].
>
> LO needs to gain marketing shares and do such a good job at
> explaining why people and businesses should use our product, when AOO
> comes out, we will have a market share that is very happy with out
> product and will not be too willing to try AOO.  When it finally does
> come out, we need to make sure our package is still the better one.
> All of the initial articles stating that LO 3.3.0 was much better
> than OOo 3.3.0 went to our favor.  Now we do not need to have
> articles saying AOO is now better than LO.
>
> So
> ramp up marketing to get more loyal users
> ramp up services to keep them loyal
>
> When AOO comes out, we need to be the better product by a big
> margin. They can send a lot of cash with marketing, while LO cannot.

er... they can't, actually. 

> We to keep growing and marketing at every event and show available.
> We to get the public to back out package to the point that they will
> not go to a big company's version.  Now the work really begins.

I'd  say you're making a very good point :-)
One thing though: we do have convergence points with AOO/Symphony, one
which being ODF, but there can be others.

For instance, the Apache Foundation seems to have release policies that
would make it perhaps hard to release binaries. In which case, it would
be up to someone else (IBM?) to release an actual product. In this case
AOO as it is would not be a direct competitor. But this needs to be
thought through.

best,
Charles. 

> On 10/18/2011 06:03 AM, Ian Lynch wrote:
> > On 18 October 2011 10:53, Charles-H. Schulz<
> > charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org>  wrote:
> >
> > > Hello Ian,
> > >
> > > 2011/10/18 Ian Lynch<ianrlynch@gmail.com>
> > >
> > > > > I don't think you have to hand over your copyrights at ASF; but
> > > > > the
> > > > licence
> > > > > allows anyone to take your contribution and turn it into
> > > > > proprietary software.
> > > > Which is a consideration everyone should take seriously. There is
> > > > a clear philosophical issue there. On the other hand, if you want
> > > > a standard like .odf to proliferate as widely as possible - a
> > > > real goal for marketing... Apple has spread the BSD code more
> > > > than desktop GNU/Linux from all the distros.
> > > Thank you Ian. Please do not take my following comment as a
> > > refusal to discuss, but I'd like to keep this marketing list as a
> > > list for marketing LibreOffice, and not as a general discussion
> > > list (but you can have this discussion on discuss@, of course).
> > I thought it was relevant to marketing since the license is likely
> > to affect proliferation. Of course there is then a tension between
> > philosophy and marketing benefit and the judgement might well be
> > that philosophy is more important.
> >
> > Also I'd say if ASF has a weakness it is that most of their product
> > line has never needed marketing in the same way as an end-user
> > product has. That is where marketing strategies might differ, both
> > because of the license and because of different culture. From an
> > objective point of view communities might learn from each other as
> > to which aspects within their own sets of constraints are most
> > effective.



-- 
Charles-H. Schulz
Membre du Comité exécutif
The Document Foundation.

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