Libreoffice Vanilla

[drewjensen]

Howdy,

I paid for LibreOffice Vanilla from the MS Store last July and I now
have a few comments and a question.

I see reference in the application to making a donation to TDF.
Why would I do that (donate) after I already purchased a license?
(I also purchased LO powered by CIB and Collabora Office and neither
include these references to making a donation to TDF; why would LOV be
different? Because it cost $5 less?)

It would be nice if somewhere, either at the MS Store listing or in
the application, if there was an actual link to a contact at the
publisher, ie CIB.

Question; Last week TDF put out a statement that LibreOffice 7.0 is
now considered the proper release for all users. Can I assume that my
copy of LibreOffice Vanilla 6.4 will be upgraded to 7.0 shortly?

Thank You

Drew

[drewjensen]

Sorry, but one more comment:

On the MS Store listing it would be good to actually show how long the
buyer will receive updates.
I have in my notes that it is 18 mos, but that came IIRC from the ML
and nowhere on the store listing is that spelled out, at least not
that I can find.

Thanks again

[drewjensen]

I lied - this is really the last comment:

32Bit binary!
Why?

Of the half dozen versions of LibreOffice I pulled off the MS Store
this was the only one that showed up as 32bit - 64bit for all others
evern the CIB branded binary.

Sorry for the triple post

[thb]

Hi Drew,

on the feedback / contact question - I recall MS tried hard to keep
people on the store pages (discouraging links off-site, encouraging
companies to engage with users on the Store / comment pages there).

The place to go & get support & provide feedback directly to CIB is:
http://libreoffice.cib.de/ (click on the "free online support"
button).

Drew Jensen wrote:

32Bit binary!
Why?

We started small & thought that would be a good catch-all; also given
that many systems with Windows-S where entry-level.

Meanwhile, MS added the option to provide several architecture
packages for the same version, so that should be easy to fix (when I
evaluated that initially, you had to build a package containing _all_
architectures, which was then quite bulky).

Drew Jensen wrote:

> On the MS Store listing it would be good to actually show how long the
> buyer will receive updates.
> I have in my notes that it is 18 mos, but that came IIRC from the ML
> and nowhere on the store listing is that spelled out, at least not
> that I can find.
>

What would you consider fair?

Drew Jensen wrote:

> > I see reference in the application to making a donation to TDF.
> > Why would I do that (donate) after I already purchased a license?
> > (I also purchased LO powered by CIB and Collabora Office and neither
> > include these references to making a donation to TDF; why would LOV be
> > different? Because it cost $5 less?)
> >

That's mostly due to the fact that we wanted to build & publish from
an unmodified source tarball (aka publish a true "vanilla" version).

If there's consensus that the store versions should be modified,
that's easy to patch out then.

Drew Jensen wrote:

> > Question; Last week TDF put out a statement that LibreOffice 7.0 is
> > now considered the proper release for all users. Can I assume that my
> > copy of LibreOffice Vanilla 6.4 will be upgraded to 7.0 shortly?
> >

I would think so, yeah. But please be aware that I can no longer speak
for CIB
(https://blog.allotropia.de/2021/01/14/cib-spins-off-allotropia/)

All the best,

-- Thorsten

[dennisroczek]

Hi Thorsten,

On the MS Store listing it would be good to actually show how long the
buyer will receive updates.
I have in my notes that it is 18 mos, but that came IIRC from the ML
and nowhere on the store listing is that spelled out, at least not
that I can find.

What would you consider fair?

I guess the problem is not the duration, but the mention.

E.g. You know very well how long which MS Windows version is supported with which support plan. In the store you can only guess:
is it
* a live time license (buy one, only get this major release updates)
* some X months supported license
* buy-one-get-forever-updates license
* something different

The problem is this case is the communication, not the fact itself.

Best,

Dennis

[thb]

Hi Dennis,

Dennis Roczek wrote:

E.g. You know very well how long which MS Windows version is supported with
which support plan. In the store you can only guess:
is it
* a live time license (buy one, only get this major release updates)
* some X months supported license
* buy-one-get-forever-updates license
* something different

Fair points.

Still, before exploring if/how to address one or more of the above
options, what would you (and others here!) consider a fair deal?

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

[drewjensen]

Hi Dennis,

Dennis Roczek wrote:
> E.g. You know very well how long which MS Windows version is supported with
> which support plan. In the store you can only guess:
> is it
> * a live time license (buy one, only get this major release updates)
> * some X months supported license
> * buy-one-get-forever-updates license
> * something different
>
Fair points.

Still, before exploring if/how to address one or more of the above
options, what would you (and others here!) consider a fair deal?

Depends.

Based on Vanilla having a release cycle close to the TDF official
releases and Vanilla representing what TDF/Publisher considers general
use version.
ie Today this would be 7.0.3 per recent TDF announcement.

I would like to see a term that ensures no less than two full update
cycles and in some circumstances three updates.
At no time would the user have a version not receiving active scheduled updates.

18 months I believe fills all three of my requirements.

ie. When the user purchases the initial install that is version 0 -
today that is LO 6.4.4 and they would receive update 1 (7.0.3) and
finish with update 2 (7.1.3) and depending on where the initial
purchase was early in the version 0 availability window possibly one
more.
(Note; IDK is there a general rule as to which minor update 6.4.x
constitutes a move from the cutting edge/power user release the for
general user status.)

Drew