Hello Marc,
Le Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:15:07 -0400,
Marc Paré <marc@marcpare.com> a écrit :
HI Kannan and Charles,
If we are to expound the values of LibreOffice in the educational
sphere we need to list those values that really count. We already
know of the obvious ones of file compatibility etc., but we need to
work on the assets that really count to educational organizations.
Here is what I believe LibreOffice needs to offer to become a solid
contender in the "educational organization office suite arena".
========================
What I believe would be on an educational IT list of "must-haves"
========================
* LTS version (like it or not, an LTS version is most likely a
show-stopper for most educational organizations here in N.America
(not sure how much in EU or Asian etc markets), this is just the
reality of the way the system works. Educational organizations work
on long range planning and they do not like software where there is
no long term support -- 2 yrs LTS is what I would consider the
shortest acceptable term, and, even then, there would most likely be
push back at such a short term, even making it 2.5yrs would be better
than only 2yr LTS. Regarding LTS versions and LibreOffice: we just
can't seem to acknowledge/admit to the need for an LTS version. We
seem to think that the system will bend to our will, but it does not
nor will it. Educational organizations work on fixed income delivered
through political policy, these policies come with fixed terms and
thus, budgets also then come with fixed terms of expenses. All IT is
then measured by predictable costs of expense and LTS versions offer
this -- that is to say, an LTS version represents to IT staff a
predictable expense cost over a certain term of months/yrs. If you
manage a small educational setup of 10,000 computers, then paying the
MSO tax for an LTS version is a lot less trouble than going with
another office suite that has no LTS and thus possible unpredictable
costs of maintenance and trouble-shooting. Even FF has recognized
this and has its own LTS version that is used by the edu.
organizations.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Extended_Support_Release])
* easily configurable to cloud solutions (we need to list the
solutions). Educational organizations do not really care of MSO365 or
of the MS cloud. They would prefer to work things out on their
intranet. Different stack solutions are more interesting to them. I
would suggest we propose a working variety of stacks, with proof of
concept where educational organizations could see it at work, Some
organizations may in fact team up with LibreOffice to make this work.
* available and accredited support solutions for large enterprise
installations (this is a must!!!) (if we are saving the organizations
a large chunk of their budget, it then makes sense that they will
have a bit of it to pay for IT support from TDF/LibreOffice
accredited sources, it is pretty certain that the educational IT
departments will use this money for technical help. All levels of
help will most likely be best to make available to the organizations.)
* available on many operating systems (we already have this)
* a robust help network from experienced users (we already have this)
* QA response (I don't really consider our QA worse than that of MS
and the team is working on quicker QA) (our dev response to QA
identified problems with the suite is quite rapid and IMO quicker
than MS)
========================
Must haves for educational organization users
========================
* large bank of clipart installable on their intranet (we could have
this from the openclipart.org site. The organizations will want to
have the clipart reside on their system to optimize for speed. We
could create a bank of clipart or banks of different sizes for their
use or users' use -- downloadable from our extensions site)
* bank of templates (we don't have enough, we need to establish a
team of template creators whose primary objective is to create
templates, the planning pages may be found here
[https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Ideas/Template_team]
* documentation that is easily obtainable and in large sets (we
already have a prolific docs team that keeps all module textbooks up
to date. Printed materials can be bought in small/large amounts from
Lulu.com
* a competent bibliographic tool. (by all accounts, the LibreOffice
bibliographic tool is not useful enough for serious work. It has been
suggested that it be scrapped and re-built. OR in the meantime, we
could partner up with Zotero and make sure the Zotero plugin has
oversight by our devs who would make sure the plugin work correctly
OR alternatively, create our own Zotero plugin to LibreOffice. Either
way, we would need to provide a competent bibliographic tool for our
educational org. users [you may find a discussion here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/LibreOffice_In_Academia]
This to me would go a long way in making LibreOffice a serious
contender in the educational organization office suite arena and help
capture a larger portion of that market share.
Here's my quick and frustrating comment on this. I have spent alongside
several people here about ten years pitching OpenOffice.org and since
over 2 years LibreOffice to various organizations: SMEs, large
companies and governments. To be fair, I haven't gone too much into the
education sector, and so you may well have more insight than me on this
one.
What I wanted to say is that I have seen features added, bugs fixed,
small and big improvements occurring to the software suite for many
years. And each time one hurdle was overcome we were thinking that it
would have been the signal this or that major entity was waiting to
receive before making the decision to migrate. The reality is much more
frustrating than that. True enough, after some close contacts and
serious discussions some would. But for the most part, a migration from
an office suite to another involves so many changes that there is not
one improvement or feature that generally creates the right condition
for decision makers to switch. One day you're told about the VB macros.
Another about this or that specific feature in Excel that you'll lose
if you switch (and you're biting your tongue trying not to tell them
that if this feature in Excel is that important then their business is
doomed). And one day, one of them made the decision to migrate to
LibreOffice; another one to Google Docs.
The decision is rarely taken on technical merit. It's a political
decision, be it driven by costs reduction, by concerns about digital
independence, nurturing and growing the local expertise and economy, or
even ensuring the workforce is skilled not in one product but in a
generic tool.
I honestly do not think anyone will convince the education market to
switch because of that or this feature. MS Office being offered for
free to teachers is great news for them (here in France) because most
of them are not advanced users, and they get what they're used to
without paying anything, creating no disruption and keeping them happy.
Period.
I think we could spend weeks discussing about this or that feature and
it still would not matter (at least not too much). Identifying the
decision makers and their process, getting the right message across,
be it political or otherwise is key.
Best,
Charles.
Cheers,
Marc
Le 24/04/13 12:00 PM, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit :
They do it in France as well and in many other countries. The cost
is one argument, but then there can be other arguments on costs as
well. This being said, there are plenty of policy arguments to
counter that.
best,
Charles.
Le mercredi 24 avril 2013 à 20:26 +0530, Kannan Moudgalya a écrit :
MS is giving this solution to India free of cost!
Kannan
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