Hi all,
I just wanted to ask the community how they think LibreOffice should be published in the various app stores.
Should it be:
a. available at a cost
b. free
c. both
As this is one of the items that will be discussed during tonight's board meeting, it would be great to have comments in writing and also having you in the meeting to share your point of view.
Ciao
Paolo
We provide a free version to all users on our website, which can be installed with a negligible effort on Windows (to disable the block) and macOS (to allow software from third parties), so the version available from app stores should have a cost (not only to cover the additional effort and expenses, but also to educate users to make the small effort requested to install the free version, which is often THE excuse for not switching to free software).
On 7/11/22 15:52, Paolo Vecchi wrote:
Hi all,
I just wanted to ask the community how they think LibreOffice should be published in the various app stores.
Should it be:
a. available at a cost
b. free
c. bothAs this is one of the items that will be discussed during tonight’s board meeting, it would be great to have comments in writing and also having you in the meeting to share your point of view.
Ciao
Paolo
Free of charge, IMO. We discuss whether TDF should provide a zero-cost LOOL, so how to justify a fee on app stores? And I don't buy the additional effort argument. The initial effort has been done anyway.
Hi,
Given that the vast majority of TDF's income is from donations, specifically donations at the time of downloading LibreOffice from TDF's website, I believe we should change a small fee for app store versions.
Otherwise, as more and more users get LibreOffice from app stores (and therefore don't see our donate page), our income will decrease.
Mike
Hi
I just wanted to ask the community how they think LibreOffice should be published in the various app stores.
Should it be:
a. available at a cost
b. free
c. both
"Various app stores" invites me to open the next playground 
Free in F-Droid, but a (small) fee in Google Play
scnr: Meant just for those who prefer to work on solutions instead pledging "censorship" by putting a mailing list under moderation where thy are afaik included in the list of moderators.
Hi Paolo, Hi All,
Hi all,
I just wanted to ask the community how they think LibreOffice should
be published in the various app stores.Should it be:
a. available at a cost
b. free
More precisely, free of charge. LibreOffice could remain free with the first option, too. See also https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html (It starts with "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.")
c. both
As this is one of the items that will be discussed during tonight's
board meeting, it would be great to have comments in writing and also
having you in the meeting to share your point of view.
Today topic of the board meeting is only the initial publication, according to the agenda sent last week:
"2. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores
(Florian Effenberger, Paolo Vecchi, Thorsten Behrens, 15 mins)
Status report and various ongoing discussions:
* current status & timeline
* publishing 'LibreOffice' free of charge initially?
* publish 'LibreOffice Supporter' stating that users should buy that
to support TDF"?
* withdraw the free version if donation flow impacted?
* update cycle, and how to move people to new versions?
* should previous buyers (from licensed offers) get vouchers on
request?"
It's worth speaking about the possible future options later (which could be more). Moreover, as you well know, the board is going to do that after a few months, based on the experience with the initial publication. Now the only urgent task was to decide about the initial publication, so your question was misleading a little bit.
Best regards,
László
Hi Laszlo,
Hi Paolo, Hi All,
Hi all,
I just wanted to ask the community how they think LibreOffice should
be published in the various app stores.Should it be:
a. available at a cost
b. freeMore precisely, free of charge. LibreOffice could remain free with the first option, too. See also https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html (It starts with "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.")
Naturally we all know that and that's why "free" in this context I didn't think it needed explaining.
c. both
As this is one of the items that will be discussed during tonight's
board meeting, it would be great to have comments in writing and also
having you in the meeting to share your point of view.Today topic of the board meeting is only the initial publication, according to the agenda sent last week:
"2. Status Report, Discuss: Status: LibreOffice in the app stores
(Florian Effenberger, Paolo Vecchi, Thorsten Behrens, 15 mins)Status report and various ongoing discussions:
* current status & timeline
* publishing 'LibreOffice' free of charge initially?
* publish 'LibreOffice Supporter' stating that users should buy that
to support TDF"?
* withdraw the free version if donation flow impacted?
* update cycle, and how to move people to new versions?
* should previous buyers (from licensed offers) get vouchers on
request?"
The issue is that an agenda has been sent out after the vote about the things we should have discussed started.
The questions you see there are a good part of the objections I made for which no answer or debate has been made.
The wisest thing, IMHO, would have been to debate those, come to an agreement on how to handle those issues and then run a vote for something that had at least the resemblance of a plan.
It's worth speaking about the possible future options later (which could be more). Moreover, as you well know, the board is going to do that after a few months, based on the experience with the initial publication.
Well... I mentioned the strategic benefits of starting with the free version and that we could have published it much earlier but we are still stuck with paperwork for the paid version.
Now the only urgent task was to decide about the initial publication, so your question was misleading a little bit.
Sorry but there was no "urgent task to decide about the initial publication", we would have done that if there was an actual debate with various options and strategies on the table.
Would have made a difference to ask for feedback from the community last week, talk about it during the week and today and then go for a more structured vote where we could all have taken a more informed decision?
Now we are still stuck as we should decide if we want to use only "LibreOffice" or use "LibreOffice %something", decide on the eventual duration of upgrades and decide on potential use of vouchers to start with so I guess that it doesn't make sense to publish until we decided what to offer and that pushes the decision to next week or the one after.
If objections were being listened to maybe today we could have announced an actual strategy and that this week LibreOffice would have been published with a clear message.
Best regards,
László
Ciao
Paolo
one more option:
d. if you like it, send [TDF?] some money (must think about an effctive way to do it)
diego
paint.net does this: the version available at their website is gratis, but it has a fee on the Microsoft Store. I would be fine with this approach for LibreOffice. My only concern is that we could mislead some users into thinking that, given they have paid for a product, we are a commercial entity that provides them with tiered support. We need to make that very clear in the app’s listing on the Store.
Adolfo