On 08/16/2012 10:36 AM, Tom Davies wrote:
My observation is that LO/AOO will be your default office suites for Linux users because we support ODF and MSO file formats as well as many others. While MSO formats can be problematical, they are extremely common.Hi :) I am not sure about current usage levels but 2 areas that Sun had problems trying to break into were 1. Windows users 2. US and England etc Europe, Brazil and many other places were quite happy to use a product that wasn't primarily about making huge profits for a certain US company. There is always a risk, when going for new markets, of losing stable and existing loyal customers. Would gaining a lot of Windows users annoy the Gnu&Linux users so much they would leave? (It might be worth noting that the "extremist" group (probably not the way extremist is usually used these days), the "Free Software Foundation" and Richard Stallman backed LO where they would never back OOo (OOo is what AOO used to be called under Sun) so i doubt Gnu&Linux users would leave! More likely the opposite and tons more would continue to keep joining.) Regards from Tom :)
For Mac and Windows users, you have more options both commercial and FOSS that support MSO file formats. IMHO the problems here are lack of awareness and the perception of "geekiness" being required to install LO. Many Windows users rely on friends or family to help maintain their systems, install software, etc. I suspect most LO users are more comfortable with working on their system since LO requires a user install of either LO itself or the Linux distro. Note, I am not saying installing LO is difficult but that many potential users are afraid to personally install any software on their computers. Installing LO makes one a comparatively advanced computer user; you can actually install software on a computer.
IMHO, the real problems for LO are the overall size of the user base, reliance on word of mouth marketing, and lack of support by hardware vendors. The user base size means that many potential users are unaware of LO and have never seen it used. There are regional differences where LO is stronger. Word of mouth advertising is actually very effective but not necessarily very fast. Most hardware vendors (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc) do not normally install LO on the retail machines but often install a crippled/trial version of MSO. This may change if MS continues to move into device manufacturing, hardware vendors may promote/install other products to avoid supporting MS.
--- On Tue, 14/8/12, Steve Edmonds <steve.edmonds@ptglobal.com> wrote: From: Steve Edmonds <steve.edmonds@ptglobal.com> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Reply settings on this list have changed To: "anne-ology" <laginnis@gmail.com> Cc: "Mark LaPierre" <marklapier@aol.com>, users@global.libreoffice.org Date: Tuesday, 14 August, 2012, 1:03 I primarily use SUSE but also osx and win. I support Anne. If (as an example only) 80% of LO potential is win based and this is the target for growth then to be non-exclusive and encourage advancement in the win platform the support list should cater for the most common win. mail applications. Browser (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.) or outlook. If we are trying to stifle growth and keep LO in the linux club, then make it easy for linux users and less convenient for others. Steve On 2012-08-14 11:55, anne-ology wrote:you're mis-informed; I, for one, have never used a Linus-based machine; and I bet I'm not the only one. On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Mark LaPierre <marklapier@aol.com> wrote: On 08/12/2012 12:31 PM, Florian Effenberger wrote:Hello, this is to inform you that the reply settings on this list have changed (so-called "Reply to mangling" has been disabled). So far, e-mails had set a reply-to the mailing list address. In other words, with any e-mail client, replies to e-mails on the list were automatically sent directly to the list. In the past, this lead to two major problems: 1. Several times, people have sent direct replies to the public list, where deleting them is nearly impossible. I remember at least one case where confidential information has been sent out that caused lots of worries for the sender and his employer. This happened because people hit "reply" and thought it would reply to the sender only. 2. I have heard complaints in the past from people, stating that working with the non-developer lists of LibreOffice is a pain for them, because of reply-to mangling, resulting in a lack of communication. This also led to the fact that numerous tasks were done by the same people, who needed to spend more and more time, instead of sharing the work burden with others. While I do not fully believe this argument, there's just one way to find out... Therefore, I have applied a change: Replies to e-mails from the list now only go to the original sender. You either need to use the "reply to all" feature of your e-mail program, or - preferably - the "reply to list"/"reply to group" feature, which will direct replies directly to the list. This is common practice on most mailing lists, and even the default setting for our mailing list software, so we did not re-invent the wheel here. Those seeking for details should have a look at http://www.unicom.com/pw/**reply-to-harmful.html<http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html> I know we had numerous discussions on this topic in the past, but the outcome was that roughly 50% were for this change, and 50% refused it, so I am really sitting between two chairs here, for which I beg for your understanding. On the one hand, those complaining the lists are unusable with reply-to mangling, on the other hand, those complaining the lists are unusable without reply-to mangling. Unfortunately, combining those two, even on a per-recipient basis, is not possible, so they are mutually exclusive to each other. In order to find out the real impact, I simply changed the setting, and again, I beg for your understanding. Do not worry: The mailing lists are for the community, so it's the community deciding how they should work. What I'd like to ask all of you is to try out for a few days if that change is good for each list or not. Should we find out it is more harmful than it helps, I will immediately switch back to the old behaviour. Sorry for this short notice, and I beg for your understanding that I'm somehow sitting between two chairs here. FlorianHey All, Not trying to be rude. All of you should be smart enough to run an email tool. After all you're all Linux users who administer at least one Linux installation. For those of you having trouble with email filters try filtering on "libreoffice-users" in the subject line. That should get all your email to the right folder. -- _ °v° /(_)\ ^ ^ Mark LaPierre Registerd Linux user No #267004 www.counter.li.org ****
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