Board statements to the 7.0 rc "Personal Edition" label

Board Discuss
#1

Dear LibreOffice Community, supporters and friends,

Thanks to the hard work put in by many individual and ecosystem
contributors, working together as a team in different fields, such as
development, QA, design, marketing, localisation, release engineering,
infrastructure, just to mention some, in a few weeks’ time we will be
welcoming our LibreOffice 7.0 milestone.

At the same time, we are discussing our vision for the next five years,
with a starting point being marketing and branding. See our marketing
and board-discuss mailing lists.

Due to draft and development work in the area of branding and product
naming, some speculations, in particular related to the “Personal
Edition” tag shown in a LibreOffice 7.0 RC, have started on several
communication channels. So let us, as TDF Board of Directors, please
provide further clarifications:

1. None of the changes being evaluated will affect the license, the
availability, the permitted uses and/or the functionalities. LibreOffice
will always be free software and nothing is changing for end users,
developers and Community members.

2. Due to the short time frame we are working with the tagline
appeared on the RC and we apologise if this caused some of you to think
we unilaterally implemented the change. Rest assured that the
consultation with the Community is still ongoing.

3. This "Personal Edition" tag line is part of a wider 5 years
marketing plan we are preparing and it has the purpose of
differentiating the current, free and community supported LibreOffice
from a LibreOffice Enterprise set of products and services provided by
the members of our ecosystem. The marketing plan is still under
development and discussion so we are eager to receive and evaluate your
feedback!

4. Any feedback (in an appropriate way) to our marketing plan is
welcome.  There are several ways to send feedback to the Board of
Directors: the most preferred way is to subscribe to the "board-discuss"
mailing lists (e-mail to
board-discuss+subscribe@documentfoundation.org), in which many of the
discussions will take place in public and be archived
(https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/).
Besides the mailing list, we have a regular time slot (around 10-15
minutes maximum) in our Board meeting public section
(https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Meetings), for which we
welcome all the Community members to join and raise their questions. The
Board meetings are held every two weeks and are announced in a timely
fashion on the board-discuss mailing list.

5. We are strongly opposed to any form of harassment, on any medium.
Feedback itself is not an harassment, but personal attacks are.  Please
stay focused on the objective and be polite in your conversations!

6. The team of editors for the marketing plan is weighting all the
input, as it is important to get the feedback to define a clear strategy
supported by the entire Community. We encourage everybody to support the
Board, the marketing team and the Community working out the details;
certainly we don’t want to make any decisions that is backed only by a
small minority.

7. This is a complex decision involving many overlapping concerns.
We encourage people to read the detailed background slide-deck that
Italo has produced at
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/jzryGw7XDkJadmo so that they
can contribute to the current state of the discussion.

Apologies again if misunderstandings arose! We would very much
appreciate your feedback and support!

Best Regards,
From all of The Document Foundation Board members

#2

Hi everyone,

Due to draft and development work in the area of branding and
product naming, in particular related to the “Personal Edition” tag
shown in a LibreOffice 7.0 RC, have started on several communication
channels.
2. Due to the short time frame we are working with the tagline
appeared on the RC and we apologise if this caused some of you to
think we unilaterally implemented the change. Rest assured that the
consultation with the Community is still ongoing.

The people involved in the decision set this time frame themselves.
Nothing is forcing this change to be made in the LO 7.0 release cycle.

Sure the major version bump will already increase visibility, which will
eventually amplify the "Personal" edition change. I can understand this
rush. Still please don't try to blame this "secret" change being done
due to some "unchangeable forces". FWIW the release plans could even be
changed, if "people" agree.

3. This "Personal Edition" tag ... The marketing plan is still under
development and discussion so we are eager to receive and evaluate
your feedback!

6. ...; certainly we don’t want to make any decisions that is backed
only by a small minority.

7. This is a complex decision involving many overlapping concerns...

It feels strange, that this information is officially shared "after the
fact" (as in "after the LO source was patched"). I'm aware that the
patch can be easily reverted; that is not the point. My point is, a
minority made this decision, not the community / TDF members, and now it
should be discussed by the community. This is not about the proposed
changed, just the seemingly "secret" implementation.

And I personally think, arguments like Michael Meeks (quoting from IRC):

"Individual users don't need to contribute, but they would be OK with
Personal. But corporate users, that also don't have to contribute, must
realize that any software used in a business process must be supported
by some spercific people: either their employees, or hired staff."

are simply invalid. LO is free software, so everyone can use it, not
just a "person", like it's IMHO implied by the rename. I guess the
people are already aware of the support implications, and otherwise
don't care. And if not, then this should be made more prominent.

What eventually will happen is a lot of people wondering, what is going
on. No idea, if this will be good or bad marketing in the end; either
for the commercial LO editions or the (now) "personal" TDF one. There
are also enough other (mostly non-free) office suites available.

Maybe it would simply be better to offer downloads to the TDF version,
clearly stating the 6 / 9 months support cycle and linking to the
"Professional Support" page, stating that commercial versions with
longer support cycles and paid support are available (just stating this
fact as it) and TDF endorsed, then these naming shenanigans?

ATB

Jan-Marek

#3

Hi Jan-Marek,

  Thanks for your mail; there are lots of interesting points here, some
of them shared by others too. Here is my take:

The people involved in the decision set this time frame themselves.
Nothing is forcing this change to be made in the LO 7.0 release cycle.

  True; and deferring is an option the board has outlined. At some stage
soon we need to grasp this nettle as a community though. I guess after
you wrote this - I outlined the problems that the proposal solves. I
would be interested in your feedback in the light of that really.

7. This is a complex decision involving many overlapping concerns...

It feels strange, that this information is officially shared "after the
fact" (as in "after the LO source was patched").

  Clearly we could have done better by blogging, having a wider
discussion but there were lots of opportunities to get involved and give
feedback in board meetings, on board-discuss and so on, this was in the
agenda and public minutes for weeks. We even had abnormally large
numbers showing up to those board meetings so people were interested.
Clearly next time we'll do more shouting from the roof-tops.

And I personally think, arguments like Michael Meeks (quoting from IRC):

"Individual users don't need to contribute, but they would be OK with
Personal. But corporate users, that also don't have to contribute, must
realize that any software used in a business process must be supported
by some spercific people: either their employees, or hired staff."

are simply invalid. LO is free software, so everyone can use it, not
just a "person", like it's IMHO implied by the rename.

  Because it is free software lots of things are possible is true - that
because they are possible they are therefore good, is not necessarily so.

  Many things are legal, but many fewer are moral.

  As a silly example: you have the complete right to fork LibreOffice and
not contribute anything back - but this is something we generally
discourage except in extremis: we want everyone to contribute and work
together.

  Steering people towards things that help to build the community and
codebase is extremely useful. In the same way many people think that
steering people towards environmentally friendly alternatives might help
improve the environment despite there being no legal requirement.

I guess the people are already aware of the support implications,
and otherwise don't care. And if not, then this should be made
more prominent.

  This is one way of making it prominent, as you say it is implied by
the rename; it is also an industry standard for successful ecosystems:

  Fedora vs. RedHat Enterprise Linux vs. CentOS.
or
  SUSE vs openSUSE

  Each has a clear, trademarked brand, and a clear separate positioning,
they 'proprietize' via the branding. All of them are "free software, so
everyone can use it" =) Just like a potential "LibreOffice Personal".

  TDF's current positioning (despite the download page having this
green/highlighted text):

  "For business deployments, we strongly recommend
   support from certified partners which also offer
   long-term support versions of LibreOffice."

  is demonstrably ~completely ineffective, as I outlined. It simply fails
to encourage ~anyone to get support. We get many hundreds of thousands
of people a month ignoring that, many thousands per day.

  That impacts the whole ecosystem - not just developers but trainers and
migrators too who contribute in many other ways across the project.

  As such - I think a more drastic approach is called for, somewhere;
whether it is the product name, or a more drastic steer on the download
page, or ... something.

  Where do you think that should be ? Or are you up for a much smaller,
pure volunteer project ? (which is where the status quo heads).

What eventually will happen is a lot of people wondering, what is going
on. No idea, if this will be good or bad marketing in the end;

  Absolutely. It will encourage a lot of conversations - that's not all
bad; some will say:

  "Just use Personal in our business you don't have
   to pay, and it has all the features"

  others will be:

  "I didn't deploy that because I'm scared of it,
   I can afford to run a large enterprise and buy
   PCs but want my enterprise software for free"

  yet others might be:

  "I didn't realize its a good thing to contribute by
   buying support & services, I can't deploy Personal
   to my staff, so lets see: wow it's far cheaper
   than the alternatives, and my money pays for fixes
   that make my staff and the community happy !"

  And many other options including direct contribution =) We don't know
the impact exactly. It will ensure that people talk about this, and ask
about it, and help promote the idea of contributing via the ecosystem.

  Clearly we may loose users who don't want to contribute initially; but
in return we may get more developers - which in turn drives a virtuous
cycle of feature/function improvement.

  Currently we have a very large number of users, and a rather small set
of paid developers 3+ million users for each paid developer or so =)

  For myself, if there is a trade-off to make here - and I'm sure people
are right that there is; I would accept temporarily fewer users for more
developers; if we have to loose a million users (0.5%) to gain 10
full-time developers - +25% - to me that is a reasonable short-term
trade-off. Now it's different when it comes to loosing volunteer
contributors - that is a tragedy too. When TDF had a mentor we would ask
~everyone leaving for their reasons & follow up on that - I wonder if we
still do that.

  Anyhow we have tried the "if you give it away for free to everyone, and
set the price expectation at zero, then they will come and contribute"
mode for a decade. Aside from a small number of remarkable successes -
your work at Munich was awesome =) this model is not delivering
sustained growth for LibreOffice.

  If we make this trade-off, and if it results in ecosystem growth, I am
certain that LibreOffice will improve significantly. Quite possibly then
people will come back and use it regardless of the splash-screen =)

  My real concern is how to make LibreOffice ever more awesome and
kick-start that virtuous cycle for the desktop.

Maybe it would simply be better to offer downloads to the TDF version,
clearly stating the 6 / 9 months support cycle and linking to the
"Professional Support" page, stating that commercial versions with
longer support cycles and paid support are available (just stating this
fact as it) and TDF endorsed, then these naming shenanigans?

  We do that with a rather light touch currently. And we know it doesn't
work. The current open discussion also includes how to water down the
'About' dialog message to make it a mild suggestion. So can we build
consensus on a website that actually tells people to use an enterprise
edition in business ?

  What message is that going to use ? the software is the same in both
cases - so ? ...

  Possibly a stronger steer on the website would be effective - we can
try that, if we can build consensus across several hundred people for that.

  For my part I really think a chunk of the push-back here is based on
understanding how effective the Personal tag is at driving change here,
and not wanting to change in a way that grows the LibreOffice ecosystem,
the product, at the expense of a possible temporary dip in the user-base =)

  ATB,

    Michael.

#4

  Because it is free software lots of things are possible is
true - that because they are possible they are therefore good, is
not necessarily so.

  Many things are legal, but many fewer are moral.

  Steering people towards things that help to build the
community and codebase is extremely useful. In the same way many
people think that steering people towards environmentally friendly
alternatives might help improve the environment despite there being
no legal requirement.

The wording being now considered clearly tries to steer all
business use, big and small, towards a paid-for "ecosystem supported"
version. For that steering to actually work, it requires that the
"ecosystem companies" actually scale down and have a working business
proposition for SME business use. That is a challenge on the plate of
these companies, but that is critical for the success of this
community plan.

it is also an industry standard for successful ecosystems:

  Fedora vs. RedHat Enterprise Linux vs. CentOS.
or
  SUSE vs openSUSE

Redhat will sell you a yearly subscription for a single workstation,
as low as 180 USD. So will SuSE for 32 GBP. Will any ecosystem company
scale down? That takes a fully automated setup, where people
self-register and pay on your website.

Closer to home, Microsoft will sell you a single licence for their
office suite, either as "perpetual" or "subscription" starting at 5
USD/month or 8.25 USD/month, no upfront payment, pay each month. I
wouldn't call the process entirely pain-free, but from their point of
view, it doesn't require human intervention for every sale, for every
invoice, for every payment.

The above are "self-support" options without support by a human. They
also benefit from far bigger economies of sale than the LibreOffice
ecosystem developer companies.

So, if ecosystem companies want to attract the same "every business
user pays" model, they need to make that actually workable, easy and
as painless as possible. Currently, my feeling is that it is
deadlocked into a chicken and egg type problem; the ecosystem
companies are the chicken, and they need to invest effort (and
capital) lay the first eggs. They cannot wait for the economies of
scale to drop into their lap and make it worthwhile to setup the
human-free "pay us" system. They need to put the system in place, and
only then can the number of small scale paying users actually grow.

If the developer ecosystem companies are not willing to put their
money where their mouth is (and "lay the first eggs" for the SME
market), the whole presentation needs to be refocused so that it is
clear that only "enterprise" deployments of "many" (for some value of
"many") users are invited/encouraged/under moral obligation to pay.

I've seen some recent progress in the right direction, but I don't
think we are there yet. CIB probably is closer, with all the irony of
being directed to the Microsoft store when trying to buy a single
licence, from a GNU/Linux browser (which may suggest the use of for
GNU/Linux).

#5

Hi Lionel,

  First - thanks for your thoughtful feedback. I essentially agree =)

Redhat will sell you a yearly subscription for a single workstation,
as low as 180 USD. So will SuSE for 32 GBP. Will any ecosystem company
scale down ? That takes a fully automated setup, where people
self-register and pay on your website.

  Right - and such infrastructure requires significant investment to
setup; absent any need for that - no-one will do make that investment I
guess (outside of app-stores). Currently interest is negligible, so that
investment looks premature.

Closer to home, Microsoft will sell you a single licence for their
office suite, either as "perpetual" or "subscription" starting at 5
USD/month or 8.25 USD/month, no upfront payment, pay each month. I
wouldn't call the process entirely pain-free, but from their point of
view, it doesn't require human intervention for every sale, for every
invoice, for every payment.

  Right.

So, if ecosystem companies want to attract the same "every business
user pays" model, they need to make that actually workable, easy and
as painless as possible. Currently, my feeling is that it is
deadlocked into a chicken and egg type problem; the ecosystem
companies are the chicken, and they need to invest effort (and
capital) lay the first eggs. They cannot wait for the economies of
scale to drop into their lap and make it worthwhile to setup the
human-free "pay us" system. They need to put the system in place, and
only then can the number of small scale paying users actually grow.

  Sure. Then again - if there is an explosion of interest that proves
demand (this would be a good problem to have) - I'm confident that the
ecosystem can respond in a matter of days to weeks to plug that gap =)

If the developer ecosystem companies are not willing to put their
money where their mouth is (and "lay the first eggs" for the SME
market), the whole presentation needs to be refocused so that it is
clear that only "enterprise" deployments of "many" (for some value of
"many") users are invited/encouraged/under moral obligation to pay.

  Which is a completely fair comment too. It's unclear of course if eg. a
Community Edition will yield any significant traction, and certainly
encouraging enterprises of a certain size to contribute (because others
might swamp the ecosystem with transaction & setup costs) is hard to do
in a single word =)

  I imagine this can be finessed initially by careful marketing on the
LibreOffice Enterprise portal to steer the right people to use
LibreOffice Community vs. an Enterprise version.

  Thanks,

    Michael.

#6

Redhat will sell you a yearly subscription for a single workstation,
as low as 180 USD. So will SuSE for 32 GBP. Will any ecosystem company
scale down ? That takes a fully automated setup, where people
self-register and pay on your website.

  Right - and such infrastructure requires significant investment to
setup; absent any need for that - no-one will do make that investment I
guess (outside of app-stores). Currently interest is negligible, so that
investment looks premature.

That is the SOHO market, and if WFH becomes the standard, that is the
environment that support companies across the board will have to be able
to support.

So, if ecosystem companies want to attract the same "every business
user pays" model, they need to make that actually workable, easy and
as painless as possible. Currently, my feeling is that it is
deadlocked into a chicken and egg type problem; the ecosystem
companies are the chicken, and they need to invest effort (and
capital) lay the first eggs. They cannot wait for the economies of
scale to drop into their lap and make it worthwhile to setup the
human-free "pay us" system. They need to put the system in place, and
only then can the number of small scale paying users actually grow.

  Sure. Then again - if there is an explosion of interest that proves
demand (this would be a good problem to have) - I'm confident that the
ecosystem can respond in a matter of days to weeks to plug that gap =)

Whether or not the ecosystem can scale up, depends upon:
* How the ecosystem provides support;
* What type of issues the user is having;

By way of example, whenever I open a document in Apache OpenOffice, I
get an error message about the document having been created with a newer
version, and to update Apache OpenOffice. However, I've got the most
recent official release, and I point blank to refuse to run either
weekly, or nightly builds. The issue is that the document was originally
created with LibreOffice 6.x, but AOo is on 4.1.x. How long would it
take your Tier 1 support person to determine that that was the issue,
and that AOo and LibO are slowly migrating towards mutual incompatibility.

If the developer ecosystem companies are not willing to put their
money where their mouth is (and "lay the first eggs" for the SME...

  I imagine this can be finesse initially by careful marketing on the
LibreOffice Enterprise portal to steer the right people to use
LibreOffice Community vs. an Enterprise version.

Each of those vendors needs to figure out their target market, both in
terms of field of endeavour, and size (either gross revenue or
employees) of the organisations that it targets.

Where the LibreOffice paid support page can help, is having indicators for:
* These firms specialise in this field of endeavour;
* These firms specialise in firms of this size (number of employees);
* These firms specialise in firms of this size (gross annual revenue);
* These firms specialise in individuals;

#

For the places that claim to offer training, what do they mean by training:
* LibreOffice 201: A college level introductory course in LibreOffice;
* LibreOffice for your Office: A series of 2-16 sessions, on using
LibreOffice in your specific office, with each session being roughly 45
minutes in length;
* LibreOffice: A training session that purports to take one from
computer novice, to LibreOffice superstar, in 30 minutes;
* Integrating LibreOffice into your workflow: How to adapt to
LibreOffice, without having to relearn everything, or throwing away your
existing documents;

#

LibreOffice and A11Y tools

Three years ago, _Services For The Blind_ went on a nationwide hunt, for
somebody who had the appropriate qualifications, to teach people how to
use A11Y tools with LibreOffice and Linux. No trainers were found. For a
SOHO, or SMB, that automatically disqualifies both LibreOffice, and
Linux, from consideration. It isn't that these trainers are cheap. (The
individual that was hired to teach LibreOffice, who had the appropriate
qualifications to teach MSO & Windows, admitted that they knew nothing
about the software, billed their discounted rate of US$1,000/hour.)

Can _any_ of the LibreOffice Ecosystem support vendors provide A11Y
support? Going by the websites I've seen, it would appear that they do not.

jonathon

#7

Hi Toki,

By way of example, whenever I open a document in> Apache OpenOffice

  I think I've detected the location of the bug already.

and that AOo and LibO are slowly migrating towards
mutual incompatibility.

  I expect that this is a matter of keeping up with standards. It takes
significant investment to stand still in the market we're in.

LibreOffice and A11Y tools

...

Can _any_ of the LibreOffice Ecosystem support vendors provide A11Y
support? Going by the websites I've seen, it would appear that they do not.

  Collabora sells root cause bug fixes for a fixed (published) price; and
have extensive experience available around a11y - so if you want
code-fix support; then yes. RedHat have fixed a11y issues, I'm sure CIB
and others can to if that is the support you want.

  If you want training or AT fixing - I imagine Hypra or NV Access would
know where to start. The problem is of course, that there is nearly an
infinite amount of work and/or customization that can be done in this
area. Almost all user want it to have been done already, rather than to
pay for that.

  The search for support you outline was apparently not terribly
rigorous; at least I didn't hear of it.

  ATB,

    Michael.

#8

  I think I've detected the location of the bug already.

and that AOo and LibO are slowly migrating towards
mutual incompatibility.

  I expect that this is a matter of keeping up with standards. It takes
significant investment to stand still in the market we're in.

I keep AOo around, mainly because it is easier than configuring LibO to
allow two simultaneously open instances.

Until about a year ago, there were two or three things that worked
slightly better with AOo than with LibO.

LibreOffice and A11Y tools

...

Can _any_ of the LibreOffice Ecosystem support vendors provide A11Y
support? Going by the websites I've seen, it would appear that they do not.

  Collabora sells root cause bug fixes for a fixed (published) price; and
have extensive experience available around a11y - so if you want
code-fix support; then yes. RedHat have fixed a11y issues, I'm sure CIB
and others can to if that is the support you want.

  If you want training or AT fixing - I imagine Hypra or NV Access would
know where to start. The problem is of course, that there is nearly an
infinite amount of work and/or customization that can be done in this
area. Almost all user want it to have been done already, rather than to
pay for that.

  The search for support you outline was apparently not terribly
rigorous; at least I didn't hear of it.

It starts with being on the list of approved vendors. If an organisation
isn't listed there, it won't get considered.
The screening then goes:
* Does their paperwork indicate that they do "x";
* Does their paperwork indicate that they do "y", which is a superset of
"x";
* Does their paperwork indicate that they support "w", which is a
specific a11y tool;
* Does their paperwork indicate that they support "v", which is a
category of specific a11y tools;
* Does their website/marketing material indicate that they do "x";
* Does their website/marketing material indicate that they do "y";
* Does their website/marketing material indicate that they support "w",
which is a specific a11y tool;
* Does their website/marketing material indicate that they support "v",
which is a category of specific a11y tools;
* Does their paperwork indicate that they do "z", which is a superset of
"y";
* Does their paperwork indicate that they do "z";

So, to go back to the search in question:
First cut, who offers training in LibreOffice? Zero results;
Second cut, who offers training in Linux?
Third cut, which of those vendors offers training in Office Suites;
Fourth cut, which of those vendors claims to be able to teach users for
specific a11y tool
Fifth cut, if the fourth cut comes up empty, which vendors claims to
teach users for the specific category of a11y tools;
This is the point at which that MSO trainer popped up.

Geography is important, only for hardware/software that requires
physically demonstrating to the individual how to use the product. How
to physically turn it on. How to physically turn it off.

Periodically, that agency will put out a bid request, and help all of
the bid applicants get onto that list of approved vendors, if they are
not currently there.

A SOHO or SMB that hires somebody that needs a11y tools, will usually
rely exclusively on whatever the agency that helps them purchase and
configure the a11y tools that are recommended.
If an organisation is not on that list of approved vendors, it probably
won't get on the list of recommended vendors, that the SOHO/SMB
receives. It definitely won't get any contracts from the agency.

Getting on that list of approved vendors is about as straightforward as
anything government related is. Which is to say that there are firms
whose sole source of revenue, is helping organisations get onto that list.

Deciding how beneficial it will be, to be on that list of approved
vendors, is something each support vendor has to individually decide.
Is the effort (energy, time, money) going to have either a direct, or
indirect positive ROI?
FWIW, my thinking is that if the organisation is not physically located
in the US, do not try to get on the US list, until it has been on the
equivalent list of the countries that the organisation in physically
located in, for several years.

jonathon

#9

Redhat will sell you a yearly subscription for a single workstation,
as low as 180 USD. So will SuSE for 32 GBP. Will any ecosystem company
scale down?

  Right - and such infrastructure requires significant
investment to setup; absent any need for that - no-one will do make
that investment I guess (outside of app-stores). Currently interest
is negligible, so that investment looks premature.

  (...) if there is an explosion of interest that proves demand
(this would be a good problem to have) - I'm confident that the
ecosystem can respond in a matter of days to weeks to plug that gap
=)

What this whole "marketing plan" is trying to do is to create the
demand, so that businesses inject money into the ecosystem, and send
the message businesses need to contribute. It is entirely fair for the
ecosystem companies to not believe the "small business" demand will
successfully be created, and thus not invest in that infrastructure
for that, but then:

(...) the whole presentation needs to be refocused so that it is
clear that only "enterprise" deployments of "many" (for some value
of "many") users are invited/encouraged/under moral obligation to
pay.

  Which is a completely fair comment too. It's unclear of course
if eg. a Community Edition will yield any significant traction, and
certainly encouraging enterprises of a certain size to contribute
(because others might swamp the ecosystem with transaction & setup
costs) is hard to do in a single word =)

Depending on where you want to put the threshold:

LibreOffice Personal & Home Office
LibreOffice Personal & Small Business
LibreOffice Personal & SME

Maybe even better:

LibreOffice Personal & Small Teams

Or replace "Personal" by "Family" or "Home" or "Private" in any of the
above.

I like the "& Small Teams" version. It refers to a group of students
collaborating on homework, to a small non-profit, to a small business,
etc.

All these are Not a single word, but roughly within the size other
Office suites are called, and makes your point.

My point is: do not send a message that people should pay (try to
create the demand), if the offer is not there.

#10

Lionel Élie Mamane wrote:

My point is: do not send a message that people should pay (try to
create the demand), if the offer is not there.

I agree.

But I'm pretty sure that unmet demand is a problem worth having in the
ecosystem, and we're happy to meet it. :wink:

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

#11

Hi Lionel, *,

  Which is a completely fair comment too. It's unclear of course
if eg. a Community Edition will yield any significant traction, and
certainly encouraging enterprises of a certain size to contribute
(because others might swamp the ecosystem with transaction & setup
costs) is hard to do in a single word =)

Depending on where you want to put the threshold:

LibreOffice Personal & Home Office
LibreOffice Personal & Small Business
LibreOffice Personal & SME

Maybe even better:

LibreOffice Personal & Small Teams

Or replace "Personal" by "Family" or "Home" or "Private" in any of the
above.

I like the "& Small Teams" version. It refers to a group of students
collaborating on homework, to a small non-profit, to a small business,
etc.

I'm very positive about the words "Personal & Small Teams".
Since 'teams' for some reason is popular, it can also easily generate
extra traction for LibreOffice.

Cheers,
Cor

#12

Now that we are at it:
LibreOffice Personal
LibreOffice Personal & Home Office
LibreOffice Governmental
LibreOffice Universities
LibreOffice Business/LibreOffice Enterprise

Just my two cents.

On 14/07/2020 08:09, Cor Nouws wrote:

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Hi Lionel, *,

Lionel Élie Mamane wrote on 13/07/2020 18:05:


On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 12:04:41PM +0100, Michael Meeks wrote:




	Which is a completely fair comment too. It's unclear of course
if eg. a Community Edition will yield any significant traction, and
certainly encouraging enterprises of a certain size to contribute
(because others might swamp the ecosystem with transaction & setup
costs) is hard to do in a single word =)


Depending on where you want to put the threshold:

LibreOffice Personal & Home Office
LibreOffice Personal & Small Business
LibreOffice Personal & SME

Maybe even better:

LibreOffice Personal & Small Teams

Or replace "Personal" by "Family" or "Home" or "Private" in any of the
above.

I like the "& Small Teams" version. It refers to a group of students
collaborating on homework, to a small non-profit, to a small business,
etc.


I'm very positive about the words "Personal & Small Teams".
Since 'teams' for some reason is popular, it can also easily generate
extra traction for LibreOffice.

Cheers,
Cor

emails_signature2020msc_b.png

#13

------------------------------------------------------------
indeed, creating the demand makes it possible to immediately assess the real need of the users, people are often very skeptical as soon as they hear that it pays; I agree with Elie.

cheers,

#14

-----------------------------------------------------------
agree with LibreOffice Personal & Small Teams, easily trace group and team work,

cheers

#15

INTRODUCTION

In general economic terms, what all these systems do, and what the
LibreOffice ecosystem is trying to achieve, is to spread the cost of
making, maintaining and improving LibreOffice over multiple users. The
spread is (nearly) never equal; all those systems extract more money
from some users than others. Typically business users, or different
markets: The exact same software for business will "cost" more for
"business use" than for "family use", or more in "high cost of living"
countries that in "low cost of living" countries.

For most software, no single user will fund it all. While it may work
for some FLOSS software (where "developer" and "user" are very
overlapping categories), the pure, money-less, model of "the commons",
where everyone/most contributes 1 to 10 units of development work, and
everyone gets back the result 1000 units of development work, does not
work for LibreOffice.

So the need for a money flow.

I'm going to speak about individuals and small teams (SMEs etc); I do
understand this is not the short-term focus now, but it what I know
and it is close to my heart; most of a country's GDP is made by SMEs;
that's where, in the aggregate, most of the money is, but it is there
by many small streams, not as a few big rivers (English doesn't use a
different name for small and big (Rhine or Danube size) rivers, so the
French expression doesn't translate well...).

INDIVIDUALS AND SMEs: (half-)voluntary

I want to believe in the goodness of humanity, and that a
non-negligible percentage (suitably educated / made aware of) people
and SMEs will voluntarily, or half-voluntarily, contribute in money
when not contributing otherwise, if and when that is easy and low in
non-monetary costs (such as _time_ and effort to jump through the
hoops to do it, and to figure out to whom send money and how). This
can only work for "user visible" software (it will not work for
OpenSSL), but LibreOffice is highly "user visible" (funding OpenSSL in
that model requires that other FLOSS developers relying on OpenSSL and
that get money for their FLOSS "voluntarily" send some money to
OpenSSL). The disadvantage that LibreOffice has is that, except for
the TDF, which doesn't fund development to a sustainable level, it
doesn't have an easily identifiable "target".

The "on the Apple/Microsoft stores" angle being pursued is more or
less part of this "aim for the small guys" thing.

I've already made these points abundantly clear in previous emails, so
I'll stop that here.

INDIVIDUALS AND SMEs: directly useful services

Another angle, maybe more "real world realistic", is to offer directly
useful services, in small chunks so that the "sticker price" is low.

Individual support
------------------

I'm convinced that many people would pay for personal "user support",
here and now, at an appropriate price point; even if the answer to
their question is teaching them to use a particular feature of the
software. In the 1990s, pay-per-seat closed source software from
anyone smaller than Microsoft actually included that; it was called a
"hotline". You phoned and you were helped. Games had that, WordPerfect
had that. I think even Microsoft included some of that at the time,
very limited in scope and time, and useless in terms of competence of
the person one got on the phone; I think Apple actually sold that
service as a subscription... and didn't Microsoft do it at some "pay
per incident" rate which seemed not worth for me as a teenager, but
would make sense for an SME, or some individual doing their family's
birthday party invitations or such? I think it was something like 30
USD to 50 USD per incident at the time, so with inflation maybe closer
to 75 to 100 EUR/USD/GBP now?

Either the development companies double as "user support" companies
(yes, get in another line of business... but they have unique
credibility to sell such services, especially if they escalate thorny
cases to the developers... for some capped percentage of their time?),
or the "user support" companies (and migration companies, etc)
"voluntarily" send money to the developer companies.

Maybe that can be packaged as a "sale" of a branded binary of
"Collabora Office Desktop" or "LibreOffice by CIB" or "LibreOffice by
Red Hat", where some level of user support is included like with closed
source software by anyone smaller than Microsoft?

Crowdfunded bugfixes and improvements
-------------------------------------

Another angle of directly useful services (and one close to my heart)
is bug fixes and improvements. I really, really, really, would like to
see a good system to spread the cost of these over several
people. While I don't believe much in this for not-completely
specified and big stuff like "make a web application out of
LibreOffice" (or "make LibreOffice online"), if a good system can be
found, I believe in it for smaller and well-defined stuff. IMHO any
such system needs to be run by a trusted organisation, and people see
their money get out of their bank account only (at the earliest) when
a credible person commits to developing the fix (enough money has been
raised) and (at the latest) when the fix is made. If the likes of
Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and other "fixed goal crowdfunding where
nothing is charged if the goal is not reached" platforms can take
people's credit card info, NOT CHARGE THEM until the "goal is reached"
and then charge everyone, then maybe we can do the same? Maybe TDF
could run such a program? And maybe keep the money in escrow in the
time from "I take this job" to "here's the fix, committed in the TDF
repo"? Or maybe people listed on
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/
are trusted enough to get the money upfront and for others it stays in
escrow?

* And if some of the cards don't go through (e.g. expired between
   pledge and acceptance of job)? Well, a certain percentage will hit
   that. Plan for some spillage. If the spillage on one particular
   bounty is too big, either the job is still accepted for the reduced
   amount or refund people (either minus card fees, or covering the
   fees from the general budget as a service to the ecosystem).

   To minimise that:

   1) Email (automatically) people whose charge has failed and invite
      them to make a payment now.

   2) Proactively (but automatically) email people whose
      card is about to expire and invite them to enter a new
      one. Preferably once for their whole account, not for each
      pledge.

If such a system is prominently endorsed on the libreoffice.org
website, I want to believe it would work. Maybe TDF can use an
existing crowdfunding platform for that? Open a new "crowdfunding
project" for each requested bugfix?

Or maybe Collabora and/or CIB and/or Redhat will try that "on their own" and
prominently offer that on their website? Then the process can even be:

1) Someone requests opening a "pledge jar", with an initial pledge
   (insufficient to cover the whole development effort).

2) They screen the request, and if they are able to meet the request,
   make an offer of what their price will be, and duration of validity
   of the offer.

   Plus points for credibility for the crowdfunding. Concretely,
   someone credible has already said they will do it, for that
   money. Concrete goal, the solution is in sight.

3) They can use an existing crowdfunding platform for that, and
   not implement that on their own.

4) People contribute to the pledge. Pledge is reached, development
   company delivers.

SOME GENERAL / PERSONAL REMARKS

In my experience, most closed-source, "single development provider"
software provides a path to getting bugfixes and improvements. You use
the included support (personal or semi-community forums actively read
and participated on by representatives), and ask for it. It is not
perfect, sometimes they are interested, sometimes not, they make their
business decision to invest in your idea or not. This works to varying
degrees with https://www.sdna.lu/, Jeppesen, Foreflight, Garmin
Aviation, SkyDemon, RocketRoute, etc (most examples are from aviation,
since that's nearly the only field where I actually use closed-source
software...). Not at all with the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Google,
etc.

But by and large, the ones in the first list are interested to improve
their program, and delighted to hear from the trenches of real users;
if one asks for it, many more would like it. Sometimes their vision of
the software collides with yours, and they more-or-less stubbornly
dismiss some user requests (Tim Dawson of SkyDemon comes to mind);
that's not necessarily a bad thing; software needs a direction, and a
"general architectural design". Some (e.g. Nokia in Maemo)
were... actively deaf to the needs of the users. Not very surprised
that didn't have the success it could have...

I'm convinced that strategically, FLOSS needs a mechanism for that,
too. One such mechanism is "contribute the patch yourself". That has
worked... when I have time, when it is in a field where I have
sufficient expertise. I'm starting to realise that the "do yourself"
does not scale enough, and leaves me long term with unmet needs. As
far as I know, I can't exchange some contributions in one field for my
need in another field. E.g. I've never been aware of a GCC / binutils
developer fixing the pet bug of a LibreOffice developer (let's say
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=13406) out of
appreciation for some LibreOffice work; we don't have "social capital"
as a currency in our FLOSS world. Or a Mozilla developer (let's say
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/52821
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/230887
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/564168
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/309720
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/1325692)

I would like for FLOSS to have a "mostly" working (not requesting
perfect) mechanism for getting bugfixes and improvements. Hoping that
some "bigger fish" than me will agree with me and fund it completely
does not work well enough. We need a working "pooling" mechanism, and
we need it bad. Not only LibreOffice, but FLOSS in general. I like the
principle that there isn't a single developer (like MySQL had before
the MariaDB split), but I must admit I haven't seen a working (for
"small guys"), "pooling" way to get fixes and enhancements outside of
the "single developer" model...

#16

Out of interest: I have used the concept of co-funding successfully at other projects (phpList, Open Initiative), which is like crowdfunding, but with fewer backers, each sharing a higher percentage of the costs.

This can work where there are several SMEs who need a feature, that feature is desirable for a larger userbase also (not an edge-case), and it the shared needs of the SMEs matches closely.

It saves on the considerable cost of a stereotypical crowdfunding campaign, which involves significant marketing investment before, during and after. Co-funding is more efficient in requiring direct management of only a handful of stakeholders, eg via a few telephone calls, if suitable SMEs can first easily be identified.

Sam.

#17

A change of license, features, and development strategy has never been
under discussion. The discussion is about labels to be used to improve
targeting of the marketing strategy.

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