[libreoffice-marketing] TDF marketing discussion paper ...

Hi everyone,

        I've now published a big chunk of rational, with pictures around this
topic here:

https://people.gnome.org/~michael/data/vendor-neutral-marketing.html

        Hopefully in an easy to reference way.

        As a very brief summary of the thinking it seemed that while the
marketing assumptions, strategy & direction created for TDF in its first
months were ideal for our situation, seven+ years on things have
changed. As such, it is well worth re-thinking our approach to match our
messages to the different situation of today and discussing taking
action broadly in this direction - with suitable feedback & improvement
of course.

        There is clearly more to be said here, and I wanted to have this
discussion in public. There is also a balance between driving adoption
with a free product (and then selling services of fixing & improve
LibreOffice afterwards) vs. being more up-front about the expectation
that enterprises should pay and hence indirectly invest in improving
LibreOffice and putting some free corporate users off. Clearly I'd like
to adjust the balance here a fair bit.

        It has been pointed out that making the investment that we want pay in
terms of some clear marketing benefit - hinges on our quality metric
(eg. count of certified developers, trainers, migrators etc.) That may
lead in turn to more interest in gaming the metrics and/or stress in
certification.

        Otherwise - I hope a number of the suggestions here seem like
common sense after reading the background - and that we can act on
many if not all - ultimately, the proposal is primarily to change our
marketing.

        I would love us to collectively steer LibreOffice & TDF in a
direction where we excessively credit, celebrate and encourage all of
our contributors - both individual and corporate - and in doing so
grow a more diverse, richer and thriving community and open source
codebase.

        Thoughts and discussion much appreciated, particularly on suggested
changes. I'd also really appreciate people who comment having taken the
time to read (at least once) the whole rational, rather than just the
last bits.

        https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/zJMTtMw8GQSNqMM

        Also attached - but perhaps that won't make it =)

        Thanks !

                 Michael.

-- 
michael.meeks@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity
Hangout: mejmeeks@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks
(M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe

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