"Personal Edition" label of 7.0 rc

[Regina]

Dear board members,

I ask you to remove the label "Personal Edition" and related texts from LibreOffice version 7.0.

Reasons:
All terms similar to "personal", "individual" or "private" are bad. Whether LibreOffice will find a strong distribution depends not on the actual license, but on the first impression about the allowed usage.

Expressions such as "personal", "individual" or "private" exclude use in the field of education, for associations and non-profit organizations and for small businesses. Especially in this area it can be assumed that there is no deeper knowledge about licenses. Here the text when starting the software is crucial.

The term "edition" alone is not the problem, but the composition as "Personal Edition". To distinguish this version of LibreOffice from other versions, it should not be divided into "personal" and "non-personal", which is not allowed by the statutes.

The versions of LibreOffice are always complete, but are provided by various partners. It is the task of each partner to communicate to his prospective customers the added value of not simply taking the version of TDF and installing it. I know that such a large software project can only last if paid developers work on it. But supporting these partners by giving the impression of providing a restricted version is the wrong way.

I do not like that this label was introduced in a beta version three weeks before the release. I would have preferred it if you had called the community to come up with ideas.

Kind regards
Regina

[michaelweghorn]

Hi everyone,

given this "Personal Edition" label is controversial (up to the point
where e.g. even community members mention they'll stop promoting or
contributing to LibreOffice), would it possibly make sense to remove
this from 7.0 and then take the time to reconsider and discuss what to
do in later versions (maybe even doing some kind of survey/community
vote after ideas have been collected)?

Just to mention it, there is also tdf#134486 [1] in Bugzilla mentioning
more aspects on the "Personal Edition" label, why it's seen as
problematic and also giving some suggestions on alternatives.

I personally like Mike Kaganski's idea from [2] to emphasize that
LibreOffice as provided by TDF is "intended for individuals and
organizations that do not need professional support...", i.e. the
primary difference in the TDF-provided as compared to the
"ecosystem-company-provided" edition is (lack of) professional support,
with all of its implications (like e.g. Service Level Agreements,
long-term support, more stability, new features).

In my personal opinion, most larger deployments involving "professional
use" will probably want to use an edition with (some kind of external
and/or internal) professional support, and it's fine to promote those,
but somewhat "actively discouraging" the use of the TDF version by the
"Personal" label (as it is being perceived) is not ideal.
In my opinion, it would also discourage the use of LibreOffice in
scenarios where a paid version is not (yet?) an option and thus
presumably diminish LibreOffice's overall use (and market share), which
will also make potential customers of paid LibreOffice editions less
eager to actually use LibreOffice (or a branded derivative) instead of
other products.

Kind regards,
Michael

[1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134486
[2] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134486#c13

[PaoloVecchi]

Hi Regina,

thank you for your comments which I personally share.

We, as the Board of Directors, sent out a communication trying to make
clear that we are still discussing various options with members of
different teams and naturally the Community.
Unfortunately, during various edits, it seems like a sentence specifying
clearly that one of the various options was also not to add any tag line
went missing.

I'm not a fan of adding a tag line especially if that means diminishing
the perceived value of LibreOffice so I'm very happy to support your
line of thoughts, shared by many others, within the Board but we
naturally have to take in consideration the pro and cons of all
proposals and feedback to take decisions which are in the best interest
of the LibreOffice Community.

I agree that the "Personal" tag line in 7.0 RC is quite premature. We
have decided to add the code that could allow the insertion of future
tag lines, which has been done, but the options are still open for other
tags or no tag at all. Until I've seen the screenshot I wasn't aware
that a value has been assigned to the string which I presumed it would
have been empty until a decision had been taken.

Thank you again for participating to the discussion and please do keep
telling us what you think about the direction we are taking to help us
performing our tasks in the best way possible.

I also encourage all the members of the Community, Open Source
enthusiasts and those that simply want to use the best Open Source
Office Suite to keep sending feedback through the mailing lists so that
we can carry on improving it.

Ciao

Paolo