[libreoffice-users] Q&A on the LibreOffice project

Hi,

I'm intentionally starting a new thread, as Charles's replies this 
morning raised a few points that are rather important for subscribers of 
this mailing list to know about. At least it seems that Charles reall 
assumed certain things about our project that are inaccurate and in turn 
that makes me think many peope here may make the same assumptions.  I 
hope this post will help, and maybe we could turn this into a page in 
the wiki that we could point to, from time to time.

1) "Most or the majority of developers are paid to work on LibreOffice"

Not at all, and it is quite the opposite. In rough numbers, there are 
about 800 people who contributed code to LibreOffice ever since the 
beginning, and the number is constantly increasing. On this number a 
very small minority are paid to work on LibreOffice, full time or only 
partially. They are either self employed or are paid by a company to do 
so. The Document Foundation does not employ anyone to code.

Still talking in rough numbers, on these 800 people there are about 120 
more or less regular developers (we have more accurate figures 
periodically published here: http://blog.documentfoundation.org ) 
developing LibreOffice . Among them, roughly 20 of them are paid to 
develop LibreOffice more or less full time. A dozen more are assumed to 
work on a periodic basis, with very specific focus on certain parts of 
the code and for a limited time only.


2) "Developers should at least test their builds"

While this may sound counterintuitive, not all of them do that, far from 
it, and when they do, many of them run automated tests, which is a 
standard practice in development these days. These automated test do 
include regression tests (more info here: 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Testing/Regression_Tests ) 
Ultimately, the development process leads to a specific "sub process" 
called the release process. Certain criteria must be met, and they are 
listed here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Release_Criteria . 
Obviously no process is ever perfect but we encourage everyone to join 
our Quality Assurance team. Only you, not the developers only, can 
improve LibreOffice. This is how Free Software works, and what sets us 
apart from more traditional vendors. Actually, there are several other, 
sometimes less technical ways to help: 
http://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/


3) "I manage and run systems for my customers.....I am just a user"

Congratulations, you are a system administrator. But no, you are not 
just a user. You are a professional and while LibreOffice may not be 
what generates revenue for you, you are a professional distributing, 
installing and configuring software to your customer. As such, you must 
at least read our release notes. They are always on the wiki (for 
instance, here : https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.3 ) 
and in an abridged version in our download section here: 
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/release-notes/

4) "Patches integration have never been notified to me / We have not 
been warned on this list"

This is not a detailed answer. It is possible some developer did not 
warn the issue thread on the bug tracker - that is a mistake. However, 
and as a general remark, the users list is only meant for users support 
(watch me, I'm writing stuff and upsetting everyone). Information is 
spread all over the project, on mailing lists, twitter accounts, and the 
wiki. Some useful pointers have already been given in the points above, 
this page however is rather dense in its links and might be useful: 
http://www.documentfoundation.org/contribution/


5) How can you all be volunteers? This is crazy! You'll never make it!

Maybe. Or not. It depends. We strongly suggest acquiring a license of MS 
Office in order to remediate to the current insanity one may be 
experiencing and going back to the normal world. The worrying trend here 
is that we're not the only ones: http://www.kernel.org and 
http://www.debian.org are but two random examples. Maybe someone ought 
to call the cops.


6) Welcome to the LibreOffice project.

How are you doing? Thank you for reaching the end of this mail. We hope 
it helped.




Best,

Charles.

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