2012/6/6 webmaster-Kracked_P_P <webmaster@krackedpress.com>
Thanks for this type of reply. I have no problem with the fast paced release plan, but as I stated others might have a negative impression of LO because of it. As a marketer of LO, we really must help the users know that our developers are not waiting for 3, 4, 6, or 12 months, to give our users the bug patched and the increased performance of the office suite. We do not want our users to wait like other software developers require you to do. It would be nice if we could agree on a way to "declare" that this version if the one that business users should try - first - and then go to a newer version for all the latest features but not as "bug free" as that "first" version. I used the last version of 3.3.x till the 3.4.x line got where it should be for business users. Now I choose 3.4.6 till I know 3.5.4 or 3.5.5 is ready. Then it will be 3.5.6 till 3.6.x is ready. We must find, for our marketing people, make our web pages business manager friendly - which is to say non technical and very easy to use, since many of the management people are not the tech-savvy type of person. I wonder if we could have a specific set of pages for the business user to go to and give them some advantages for using LO in terms and page layout that would be best for their informational needs. Personal users do not need as much information about the advantages of a product as a business user would need.
Yes it's a must have, alongside raising brand awareness.
I really think our future will depend upon how well we can get the business user involved with LO. OOo really got going in Europe because of the open source movement and the anti-MS movement. Now that there are several open source office suites out there, we will need to show the business user why they should go with LO over the other offering available.
Also agree, even if my personal perception is that many business will make you spend time about this or that issue, in the end not migrating, or moving to Google Docs. Many businesses point to bugs as fundamental issues, but you never hear them complain about even more critical issues when using MS Windows or Office; that's because the real issue is change vs. certainty. Best, Charles.
. On 06/06/2012 06:05 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:Hello Just to answer very quickly to your message. While we don't really want to keep comparing ourselves to AOO, because it's fruitless and does not focus on gaining new users at all, I'm not too worried by the version numbering. AOO 4.0 will have the Symphony interface, and what this means is that it will bring a whole new different set of bugs. So my question would rather be: is IBM ready to support users with bugs matching the OpenOffice.org bugzilla reports and the Symphony bugs? That's a tough one, because AOO might seem to be more conservative now -wait until they get their new interface. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing for everyone, as it will bring clear product differentiation. But the support question will be crucial and it's not being answered today. As for TDF/LO not looking as professional compared to AOO, maybe it's a matter of perception as you pointed out, but I think it's a meme that needs to be killed, as it's been spread all over the place for ideological reasons. This being said you will find 2 schools of thought here. One that says that LTS style releases or less frequent releases provide more stability and that more frequent releases provide more stability and quality. OpenOffice.org (the old project) followed the former path and our experience is that it was problematic and it often failed to deliver the expected quality. Patches would wait one year, sometimes up to three years to be included. TDF made the other choice. So far we're happy with it but it does confuse a few professionals. I'm pointing out professionals here, such as you, Marc, etc. Because users usually don't care, and service providers with a larger size or linux distributions are usually very happy with this model. I think the perception might be significantly changed when we'll be able to provide incremental updates for each branch. Most of the notion that our two branches create confusion or lack of readability will fade away, we'll have two branches, one older ("LTS"???) and another one which is more recent, and there will just be "updates". But I am afraid this mechanism might take longer than 6 months... best, Charles. 2012/6/6 webmaster-Kracked_P_P<webmaste**r@krackedpress.com<webmaster@krackedpress.com>If the last version of each line 3.4.6 and then 3.5.6 were kept in thesupport loop for a bit longer than just a few months, that would help some people. I know each line keeps getting better and better, by the time the .4 version is out, but I have been seeing references to AOO 4.0 as if they will be skipping over the 3.6, 3.7, etc., etc.. So if people see the original OOo version, now AOO, at 4.0 and LO is at 3.6 or 3.7, LO will look behind them. So we need to get people use to the fact that we are doing a different version numbering, and we are also supporting our earlier lines for longer than the 2 or 3 months it seems now. I do not know how to really explain my fears that people will start thing TDF/LO is not as professional as AOO seems, or LO is not something business users should use but AOO is. Also how many "normal" people would even get what a LTS version is all about? I do not think our developers should slow down the pace, but it does no good to have a new version needing to be installed every month or two, if business users will thing that LO is putting out buggy products just to keep a release schedule. MSO can get away with it, LO cannot. We have been told that there will be a version/line in the future that will not need to have a full install for every new version coming out, but some "patch" release changing a .3 to a .4 version. Hopefully that will happen before the end of the year. If not by then, hopefully it is as soon as possible after that. That will help all of us get business users to except a rapid deployment schedule if all they have to do is install a patch, like they now do with MSO. On 06/05/2012 04:55 PM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :)Thanks :) I think that reinforces what Marc Pare is saying about needing more than a month or so support. Also it seems the overlap period will be far greater, unless they switch to only doing LTSes every 4 years to be more in-line with MS. Regards from Tom :) --- On Tue, 5/6/12, Craig Olofson<c.olofson@gmail.com> wrote: From: Craig Olofson<c.olofson@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Of "business ready use" and bugs in LibreOffice and a LibreOffice LTS To: marketing@global.libreoffice.****org<marketing@global.** libreoffice.org <marketing@global.libreoffice.org>> Date: Tuesday, 5 June, 2012, 21:46 Fyi Canonical changed LTS support for the desktop from 3 to 5 years, starting with 12.04, to better accommodate their OEM customers. Normal Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 months. Previous Ubuntu LTS(Long Term Support) releases are supported for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server. Starting with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, LTS releases will be supported for 5 years on both the desktop and the server. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/****Releases<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/**Releases><https://wiki.ubuntu.**com/Releases <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases>> hth, -Craig On 06/05/2012 01:42 PM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :)Ubuntu LTS lasts for 3 years (for desktops) but are released every 2 years. This gives orgs the 1 year of testing they need before migrating from the previous LTS and moving to the new one. If they gave 3 years support and released every 3 years then orgs would have a 1 year gap running an unsupported LTS while they were still testing the new one. Now i understand why the 1 year overlap is so important to Ubuntu. Regards from Tom :) --- On Tue, 5/6/12, Marc Paré<marc@marcpare.com> wrote: From: Marc Paré<marc@marcpare.com> Subject: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Of "business ready use" and bugs in LibreOffice and a LibreOffice LTS To: marketing@global.libreoffice.****org<marketing@global.** libreoffice.org <marketing@global.libreoffice.org>> Date: Tuesday, 5 June, 2012, 21:23 Hi Charles, Le 2012-06-05 09:12, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit : Thank you for bringing that up, it's an interesting discussion. Here'swhat I think reading your message. You're asking in fact two questions. One of which might already have been answered by a few of our corporate members/sponsors. * LTS obviously means long term support. Both "support" and "long term" deserve careful consideration. I will in this email first focus on the term "support". If we speak of support, we must think of a support provider. In this case, does this mean we should think -as TDF, as a project- of providing professional support to users (obviously for a fee)? I don't think it's your idea, but I thought I would highlight the implications of such a matter. * Have we studied what some of the existing support/service providers on LibreOffice already offer? I am not so sure but I'm under the impression that you can order support (and in this case a "LTS" kind of support) from Suse and Canonical (there are others) on one specific version of LibreOffice. That is, these vendors have one reference version of LibreOffice, say the 3.4.5, and they provide support and services on it making it their de facto LTS version. Yes, this is fine as they will guarantee that LibreNormal Ubuntureleases are supported for 18 months. Previous Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) releases are supported for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server. Starting with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, LTS releases will be supported for 5 years on both the desktop and the server. Office will work on their systems and they will take care of any dependencies and network-ability. But I don't think they would undertake any code revision and code features into their LTS versions, not unless they have a large team of coders, which in this case would make them "competitors" to our work/product (read "fork"). This would take us back to the days of the many different versions of OOo -- the same situation that drew all of these different groups into one LibreOffice community. Leaving support/service providers to develop an LTS version, in my opinion, is not the right strategy to adopt. Back to your suggestion: do you mean we should relabel the older branch"LTS", knowing that each of our releases in one branch really works like a "service pack"? If we had the ability to provide incremental updates (we will one day) we would have the feelings we have two versions, and sometimes "maintenance updates". So at some point, say the 3.5.4, we label it LTS, because we're close to open a new branch, the 3.6, and we can suggest service providers to base their support offers on this one for the time being. Did I get you right? No. I suggest that at some point, the TDF/LibreOffice shoulddesignate an LTS version for large/small organizations/businesses. These would have developers oversee the fixing of bugs for a fixed term (let's say a 3 year period) after which time another LTS version would be designated. The LTS maintenance would NOT introduce any new functions to the distro but only service bug correction. IMO, if any business entity would like to add any new functionality, then this is where a support/service provider would step in and, hopefully, contribute any development of code back to the community. I don't really think this is a new concept as even Mozilla-Firefox offers its own "Extended Support Release (ESR)" version for corporate users[1]. When critical software packages are installed in large corporations, a lot of energy in investment of time, training and documentation is expended in order to get employees up to speed. LibreOffice certainly falls into this category (critical software -- wordprocessing software). While Firefox ESR is being released initially for a period of approximately 1 year, IMO, I believe they will ultimately find that a longer term will be necessary for these large organizations. As for a version of LibreOffice LTS (or ESR), the impact of change for large organizations is even larger due to the amount of training of staff of new features (even more so in the educational field with the training of younger students). If we are looking to supplant MSO in the office place, we need to realize and accept the simple fact that the amount of software/network testing as well as (and even more importantly) the training of staff for large orgainizations is considerable. I sincerely doubt that a "one year"-term LTS for LibreOffice would suffice; one year is just about enough time to test out the suite before it is even installed; most organizations simply do not have the manpower to move any quicker. If we wish to compete in the large business market place we need to plan and develop more strategically with our releases. Developing an LTS version will fix this. Otherwise, the choice will remain MSO for office use, where MSO has a longer term of support with incremental changes for bugfixes and where LibreOffice will remain marginalized as an office suite. Best,-- Charles-H. Schulz Co-founder& Director, The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.****org/imprint<http://www.** documentfoundation.org/imprint<http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint> **>Mobile Number: +33 (0)6 98 65 54 24. 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