Although we respect every opinion, I would leave marketing decisions to
people who have some marketing experience, and not to everyone (because
marketing is a profession as much as software development, and I avoid
to make comments to development decisions exactly because I know that I
am not competent in that area).
Of course, you are free to deploy the LibreOffice version you prefer,
but this doesn't mean that your judgement is absolute and is valid for
millions of users worlwide. Normal users, i.e. over 98% of all users,
are scared by technical jargon and are not able to recognize a bug from
a feature. We have to communicate to these users, and not to developers
who perfectly know how to manage the software they use.
So, with 42 years of marketing profession under my belt, I am rather
tired to see people without any marketing understanding making comments
about marketing decisions. We leave developemnt decisions to developers,
please leave marketing decision to marketers.
On 12/06/24 16:22, Justin Luth wrote:
I completely disagree with your definition of "stable". Stable in this
context means "it works just as good (or better) with my existing
documents as the version of LO that I want to upgrade from". It means no
regressions, no crashing, no surprises. It does not mean "no new
development" since nothing on the download page has "new development" in
it. This is important because EVERYTHING about the download page
revolves around the issue of whether one version is "more stable" than
the other version, and is the whole reason why people should chose
between "the older" and "the newer" version.
FRESH is still only suitable for early adopters. 24.2 will only be
suitable for "everyone" when it reaches STILL status. (For me
personally, I don't even consider STILL to be stable and won't deploy it
until it has reach the last planned point release.) [I see that you have
dropped the FRESH/STILL wording, but the underlying concept is still
100% valid.]
By removing "early adopter", you actually confuse the issue, because now
there really is no distinction between what FRESH and STILL mean.
It shouldn't be that hard for people to choose. Use the STILL version if
you just want to "do work". Use the FRESH version if you want to help
the community improve the product by testing and bug reporting. It
doesn't get much clearer than the current "If you're a technology
enthusiast, early adopter or power user, this version is for you!". You
can only be confused about that if you don't know what an enthusiast or
an early adopter is. FRESH is for people who want to "Get Involved".
STILL is for people who want to "take".
If you change the wording now, you will just confuse the issue in a
month, when 24.2.5 moves into STILL status, and 24.8 becomes the FRESH
version. Are you going to imply that 24.8.0 will be "ideal for everyone
and not just early adopters"? I certainly hope not.
You need to get out of marketing mode. People are correct to believe
that 24.2 is "not stable" yet. You shouldn't be afraid to acknowledge
that. And until you acknowledge that, you will continue to make it
difficult for people to "decide" which of the two options to chose from.
Justin
On 6/12/24 8:51 AM, Mike Saunders wrote:
Hi everyone,
Check out the two boxes on the download page, for (currently) the
LibreOffice 24.2 and 7.6 branches:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/
We've heard from users on social media and at our info@ and download@
addresses that they're confused which version to choose, or believe
the 24.2 branch isn't stable etc. Obviously both branches are stable
(in the sense that they don't change radically, and only receive bug
and security fixes -- no new features in the middle of the branch).
So let's look at updating the text for clarity! My initial suggestion:
Newer branch (currently 24.2): The very latest version, with lots of
new features and improvements.
Older branch (currently 7.6): Our previous release, which we are still
supporting. For business deployments, we strongly recommend getting
long-term supported versions from our ecosystem.
What do you think? Bear in mind that we want to keep the text short
and snappy here!
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