Hello Michael,
it’s important to remember that TDF is not a company, and TDF does not push any third party’s interests in particular.
If you help to setup a food bank or a social café, and are a restaurant owner (or food discounter store) at the same time, one thing shall never influence the other. You cannot stop handing out goods at the food bank, or limit the opening times in favor of your discounter store, or restrict the vegetables offered, just because it would harm your restaurant business. If your business model is around scarcity elsewhere, your restaurant will not survive.
At the same time, TDF has a clear mission. Let me quote from the Next Decade Manifesto: "To eliminate the digital divide in society by giving everyone access to office productivity tools free of charge to enable them to participate as full citizens in the 21st century".
Maybe your life situation has changed and you don’t like this “gratis” anymore. That is fine, lifes change. But this is the very idea TDF was born with, and we’re not gonna abandon it. We did setup something stable and enduring so everyone clearly knows the rules their contributions fall under. If we open this can of worms, tomorrow someone can say that instead of free and open we mean proprietary, and instead of ODF we mean OOXML, and instead of productivity tools we mean a jump and run game… nobody wants that room for interpretation.
Now that might affect your business, just as the food bank or social café might affect the restaurant. If you don’t want a food bank or a social café, that is your choice, but they cannot be bent in a way beneficial to the resaurant. Just as TDF cannot demonetize the ecosystem, the food bank cannot demonetize the restaurant. It’s a different target audience!
What happens if in three years from now it turns out that also the desktop version can be monetized quite well? Will TDF stop to provide it? Will we only, as some planned in the past already, offer a source code download, but no binary form? Will we have a nag screen? We already had the strange spin of the “Home edition”, later on “Personal edition”, that was not for mission-critical documents and that sparked quite some controversy. Do we need to be worried also desktop is at stake at some point?
This, by the way, is something different from being in competition. Neither is TDF in competition with the ecosystem, nor is the food bank in competition with the resaurant. Even the “gratis” doesn’t bring us into competition. They serve different purposes and target audiences. TDF does not offer service, support nor consultancy. That is what the eocsystem offers, and what TDF repeatedly points to. Now, if that does not work, that is unfortunate, but I wonder to which degree this is TDF’s fault, and to which degree it depends on the choice of business model.
TDF has extensively pointed to the ecosystem, including a big blue button on the download page, addressing business users. The download page is used by quite some people each day, so there was a wide visibility of this link. If that didn’t work, I struggle that TDF should take the blame for that. We were literally popping up in front of people with the message where to go if you are a business user. Even if it’s clear you and me have very different ways to see certain things, I was also pointing at the ecosystem at my speech recently at the Berlin chamber of commerce. We do point at the ecosystem literally at every occasion.
We have also repeatedly mentioned the ecosystem in press releases. We have done a lot, and as we’ve learned from the issues of the past, probably sometimes even a bit too much.
We do point to the companies. We did setup a certification program. We established LibreOffice Technology. We did have a big button when downloading. We talk about the ecosystem in interviews and in talks. All that costs money and time, including time of the staff that is so heavily criticized for being in the board and what not.
TDF cannot write a company’s business plan. We can and should work together in a friendly, cooperative, collaborative way to achieve something together, for the benefit of both your company (and every other ecosystem company) and TDF. That principle has not changed over the years. What we cannot do, however, is to be the booster for your business model and always do more, more, more, it’s never enough it seems, until the conversion rate or leads is what you expect.
Until we’ve all understood that, I fear we will continue to run in circles.
Florian