Formats & failed marketing, was: Fwd: Cost of MS Office relative to LO, was: Fwd: [libreoffice-users] Re: moving to new version of MS Office

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
My thought is that we need to promote
1. LibreOffice first
2. other programs that can use the format as their native format
3. the format
4. the community
5. the fact that even MS Office's most recent versions can read/write
the format too now
6. ethical issues
In roughly that order. I don't think people who need to write letters
are always particularly interested in anything other than just finding
a program that can do the job.

The marketing team have decided to promote the community as the
product that people "buy into" (for free) but i think a lot of people
will continue to see the product as being the program. I think they
are going to confuse people with their current policy.

I don't think it's wrong to promote the community or the format but
from what i have seen people try the program first and then sometimes
find those other things are an extra benefit.

Promoting the format alone doesn't seem to work. People have immense
trouble finding
File - "Save As ..."
It's tooo geeky for a lot of people. They click on the Save button
and have no idea where it's being saved or what format it's in.
Windows hides the format for all file-types by default so very few
people understand anything about formats.

Promoting the software alone doesn't work either. Although, to be
fair, it is going a LOT better under TDF than it went under Sun. Sun
seemed reticent about promoting OOo in the USA, England and possibly
other countries that have English as the supposedly dominant language.
Under TDF LibreOffice is becoming more widely known about. Unlike
Sun, TDF is managing to get into fairly mainstream articles in fairly
mainstream press. So it's really Sun's total lack of advertising and
promotion that had been holding OOo/LO/AOO back for the first decade.
Rather than choosing a wrong direction they chose NONE and that is
what led us nowhere.

As LibreOffice usage rises so does usage of the format. But usage of
the format follows. It doesn't lead the way. Most of us started by
trying to stick with MS formats, perhaps even setting the defaults to
MS formats (i did that). After a while each of us begins to realise
that it's not the optimum format and so we gradually change to keeping
originals in ODF and only using MS ones to share with outsiders. Soon
we are going to be able to use ODF to share with outsiders.

Three years ago some people would write to this list or comment under
articles to say that LibreOffice didn't have something they wanted so
they would "have to" return to MS Office. A tad irksome because we
would often find the functionality did exist or that same end-result
could be obtained by some more efficient route. Those few people had
just found it easier to spend more time registering and writing a
grumble rather than bothering to spend any effort looking up how to do
the task.

Nowadays people write in to apologise that they have had to return to
OpenOffice or that they are going to try out Kingsoft Office (because
it has a ribbon-bar) or something else. It's becoming very rare to
see people saying they have to return to MS Office.

To me that seems a very positive step in the right direction. Once
people have been freed from MS it doesn't really matter which program
they are using or even which format they use. It's only MS that makes
their own format so troublesome. Step away from MS and suddenly
people have less trouble sharing with other people using any other
non-MS program.

So, when people claim to have trouble with LO about something it's
good to encourage them to use any of the many alternatives. Just find
out what their main "must have" is and find something that does have
it.
* If their main "must have" a ribbon-bar then Kingsoft Office seems a
reasonable choice, apparently it's available for Gnu&Linux
* If their "must have" is Cloud then Google-docs or Google-drive, or
whatever it is called now. Note that Google are one of the supporters
of TDF and might even be on the Advisory Board
* If their "must have" is that it works well on lower spec machines
then "Gnome Office" (AbiWord and/or Gnumeric). Gnumeric is also a
good choice if they want a more powerful spreadsheet program than
Excel/Calc
* Android and iThings are the only one don't know of a good choice for yet
Most of those people will return to LibreOffice because it's better.
Some might wait until LO offers their "must have" or return when they
upgrade their machine.

So, i don't think we can lead by promoting the format alone. I think
we have to promote on a few fronts at the same time. Any good
tactician will know that attacking on more than one front at a time is
risky. Promoting the community first is probably not a bad plan
because that leads to all the other issues quite neatly.

So Marco's personal beef with "continuing to promote the software
ahead of the format" kinda misses the point that we never really put
any effort into promoting the program. Any such effort used to be
severely hampered by Sun. Promoting the program does seem to have
worked a LOT better in the last 3 years than it worked in the
preceding decade. We seem to be getting somewhere at last!
Regards from
Tom

[Charles-H_Schulz]

Hello everyone,

Hi
My thought is that we need to promote
1. LibreOffice first
2. other programs that can use the format as their native format
3. the format
4. the community
5. the fact that even MS Office's most recent versions can read/write
the format too now
6. ethical issues
In roughly that order. I don't think people who need to write letters
are always particularly interested in anything other than just finding
a program that can do the job.

The marketing team have decided to promote the community as the
product that people "buy into" (for free) but i think a lot of people
will continue to see the product as being the program. I think they
are going to confuse people with their current policy.

I don't think it's wrong to promote the community or the format but
from what i have seen people try the program first and then sometimes
find those other things are an extra benefit.

Tom, you're making some good points above, but I think that we may not
be talking about the same thing. As a member of the marketing team, I
cannot just say that we should stop promoting the "product" or rather
the software as you rightly call it. I don't think we ever will. But
when we are pushing to advocate the community this strategy exists
because of specific goals and because we know that LibreOffice, as a
software and as a product, cannot be marketed as an off the shelf
product or even a "traditional"software. When you go down the path of
"productivising" a software that's open source and developed by a
community, you either do this because the software fulfills some very
specific needs and some very specific niche, or you don't, because just
like LibreOffice, you have twenty different kind of audiences, a whole
set of complex or simple features appealing to, well, pretty much the
entire planet, and that there can be no question of "product
positioning" because you simply don't have enough funds and because the
software caters to the needs of millions of people, businesses and
governments.

I've used some marketing terms here intently. But the point is that we
have decided to shift the focus to community promotion, but not to
forget about promoting software, keeping in mind that 1) nobody reads
the release notes 2)the users' needs tend to be evolving over time 3)
the financial dept wants to use their macros 4) we won't engage in
endless pseudo marketing discussions such as "how should we position
LibreOffice"? 5) it should be a fun thing to do anyway.

Promoting the format alone doesn't seem to work. People have immense
trouble finding
File - "Save As ..."
It's tooo geeky for a lot of people. They click on the Save button
and have no idea where it's being saved or what format it's in.
Windows hides the format for all file-types by default so very few
people understand anything about formats.

Yes that's true. Open Standards are crucial; however, good luck
explaining this to the large majority of people who think a word
document is MS Word the software.

Promoting the software alone doesn't work either. Although, to be
fair, it is going a LOT better under TDF than it went under Sun. Sun
seemed reticent about promoting OOo in the USA, England and possibly
other countries that have English as the supposedly dominant language.
Under TDF LibreOffice is becoming more widely known about. Unlike
Sun, TDF is managing to get into fairly mainstream articles in fairly
mainstream press. So it's really Sun's total lack of advertising and
promotion that had been holding OOo/LO/AOO back for the first decade.
Rather than choosing a wrong direction they chose NONE and that is
what led us nowhere.

Thanks for the nice words here but I think that it's probably more
complex than that; and I am not alone thinking we must do much more in
these geographies.

As LibreOffice usage rises so does usage of the format. But usage of
the format follows. It doesn't lead the way. Most of us started by
trying to stick with MS formats, perhaps even setting the defaults to
MS formats (i did that). After a while each of us begins to realise
that it's not the optimum format and so we gradually change to keeping
originals in ODF and only using MS ones to share with outsiders. Soon
we are going to be able to use ODF to share with outsiders.

Three years ago some people would write to this list or comment under
articles to say that LibreOffice didn't have something they wanted so
they would "have to" return to MS Office. A tad irksome because we
would often find the functionality did exist or that same end-result
could be obtained by some more efficient route. Those few people had
just found it easier to spend more time registering and writing a
grumble rather than bothering to spend any effort looking up how to do
the task.

Nowadays people write in to apologise that they have had to return to
OpenOffice or that they are going to try out Kingsoft Office (because
it has a ribbon-bar) or something else. It's becoming very rare to
see people saying they have to return to MS Office.

To me that seems a very positive step in the right direction. Once
people have been freed from MS it doesn't really matter which program
they are using or even which format they use. It's only MS that makes
their own format so troublesome. Step away from MS and suddenly
people have less trouble sharing with other people using any other
non-MS program.

So, when people claim to have trouble with LO about something it's
good to encourage them to use any of the many alternatives. Just find
out what their main "must have" is and find something that does have
it.
* If their main "must have" a ribbon-bar then Kingsoft Office seems a
reasonable choice, apparently it's available for Gnu&Linux
* If their "must have" is Cloud then Google-docs or Google-drive, or
whatever it is called now. Note that Google are one of the supporters
of TDF and might even be on the Advisory Board
* If their "must have" is that it works well on lower spec machines
then "Gnome Office" (AbiWord and/or Gnumeric). Gnumeric is also a
good choice if they want a more powerful spreadsheet program than
Excel/Calc
* Android and iThings are the only one don't know of a good choice
for yet Most of those people will return to LibreOffice because it's
better. Some might wait until LO offers their "must have" or return
when they upgrade their machine.

Keep in mind, these must haves are evolving. I have had one guy from a
French Ministry telling me for years about macro compatibility and
overnight dumping that point in favor of online collaboration....

So, i don't think we can lead by promoting the format alone. I think
we have to promote on a few fronts at the same time. Any good
tactician will know that attacking on more than one front at a time is
risky. Promoting the community first is probably not a bad plan
because that leads to all the other issues quite neatly.

Yes and it also -supposedly- grows the community, therefore growing the
resources, etc.

So Marco's personal beef with "continuing to promote the software
ahead of the format" kinda misses the point that we never really put
any effort into promoting the program. Any such effort used to be
severely hampered by Sun. Promoting the program does seem to have
worked a LOT better in the last 3 years than it worked in the
preceding decade. We seem to be getting somewhere at last!

Marco's points are in my own opinion not to be discarded as such.
However I believe that Marco mixes marketing and the strategy of an
ecosystem. Should we push for the format first? Only if the "we" in
that sentence is TDF + IBM + XYZ Government + ASF + Google + Mozilla
+.... anybody else. And then it ought to mean there are a budget,
communication campaigns, coordinators, business developers etc. Mind
you, it's expensive, but that's how you would do it, independently of
each entity's own software, therefore the Document Foundation, alone,
cannot do that as its sole mantra..

Best,

Charles.

[kobzeci]

Hi,

This topic may go deeper but i would loke to say that we are not a company
product. It's freesoftware.

I have been in freesoftware communities for 7 years and the following basic
principle is always working:
Good community leads to good software.

Good community with a good software leads to higly satisfied users who
will act as militants of the 'product' and you cannot have that promotion
with money. Proactive members will always push people, government
organizations and private companies to use it.

If community slows, everything will be turned upside down. I think many of
us had been experienced with different 'dead' projects.

I really appreciate the 'Community First' marketing policy. All other
things are complimentary and 2.order stuff. The hardest thing is building a
community and keeping its growth.

Best regards,
Zeki

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
The main points i was making are that
1. It has NOT been 13 years of failure due to marketing the software.
Most of that time the marketing (in the US and England) has been
minimal or non-existant. Under TDF that changed. So it's only really
valid to talk about the last 3 years rather than the last 13. In the
last 3 years there has been a lot of success.

2. Marketing the format instead of marketing the software is unlikely
to get anywhere.

People who write a letter almost never know what format it's in and
they don't care. At best they might say "Word format" as though there
is only one and that one doesn't change. On this list we all know
that is very far from the truth because we see the result of that more
often than most other mailing lists.

It's interesting about expanding the "we" to include other
organisations and governments. If each organisation did do a little
to promote the format, perhaps placing it 3rd or 4th in their list of
priorities, then it would do a LOT to get the format much more widely
recognised. Possibly more recognised than any of the individual
organisations pushing it. I was only thinking of the 1 organisation,
TDF. Plus i was only thinking of the number 1 spot of what gets
promoted. Inevitably 2 or 3 other things get mentioned along the way
even if it's just as side issues.

Regards from
Tom

[Paolo_Debortoli]

about formats.  for european users, they should know that the european law imposes the usage of the same data sructures and formats for every public administration in the continent. they concluded that the only one solution is using open formats. worth noting that ms adopted a kind of xml data format, but it is clearly not an open format (they try still to lock people inside their data formats, see the problems when you try to open a docx file).

as I see in the italian experience, many municipalities, regional government and universities are moving to open source software  (last but not least for budget problems) and libreoffice is slowly becoming a success  (a good news, because it can be a new standard to replace ms office), but there are still resistances (even from vendors, system administrators, users).

many people are not aware of the things....  success cases, contributions, comments could be more known.....   is there still a multi platform installation dvd ?

Hi
The main points i was making are that
1.  It has NOT been 13 years of failure due to marketing the software.
Most of that time the marketing (in the US and England) has been
minimal or non-existant.  Under TDF that changed.  So it's only really
valid to talk about the last 3 years rather than the last 13.  In the
last 3 years there has been a lot of success.

2.  Marketing the format instead of marketing the software is unlikely
to get anywhere.

People who write a letter almost never know what format it's in and
they don't care.  At best they might say "Word format" as though there
is only one and that one doesn't change.  On this list we all know
that is very far from the truth because we see the result of that more
often than most other mailing lists.

It's interesting about expanding the "we" to include other
organisations and governments.  If each organisation did do a little
to promote the format, perhaps placing it 3rd or 4th in their list of
priorities, then it would do a LOT to get the format much more widely
recognised.  Possibly more recognised than any of the individual
organisations pushing it.  I was only thinking of the 1 organisation,
TDF.  Plus i was only thinking of the number 1 spot of what gets
promoted.  Inevitably 2 or 3 other things get mentioned along the way
even if it's just as side issues.

Regards from
Tom

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
As far as i know there are 2 projects producing multi-platform
installers on Dvd but only English and German languages
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/
I'm fairly sure there must be ones in other languages. I can't
believe Brasil hasn't got one (for example)!

A little earlier in the thread someone mentioned that OpenOffice had
several in several different languages. My guess is that those were
done by local volunteers, possibly with the help of local users
groups. Those are probably done for LibreOffice now, or for both.
It's unlikely (but possible) that they stuck with just OpenOffice.
So, if you can contact the Italian Local User Group then you might be
able to prod someone there into giving better information.

Regards from
Tom

[M_Fioretti]

Hi Charles-H,

after a statement like this, hordes of people from all sectors of the
economy that at this point would stop and just ask you "so what? I
mean, what's the difference between marketing and strategy???"

But yours IS a fair point, because I too, in this specific thread,
have mixed different "we" in my previous message. Sometimes "we"
should have been "we advocates of LO", other times it meant in my mind
"we all supporters of open standards", and I didn't make it clear
enough.

Of course,

- no group can "save the world" alone
- members of each group (have to) have different priorities and goals

- people who choose to work specifically on LO/AOO/Calligra... (even
  if work is "only" providing volunteer support here or elsewhere)
  have to talk of that **software** more than file formats in general,
  digital divides and so on

I have NO PROBLEM with all that. My only point is that the typical
LO/AOO advocate should in almost all context to something like (making
numbers up now just to outline the general concept!!!)

FIRST, talk 20% of the time of formats
THEN, talk 80% of how cool LO/AOO etc is

otherwise we won't get anywhere quickly enough (see the "twelve years"
post I already mentioned here)

     Marco

[Charles-H_Schulz]

Hello Marco,

> > So Marco's personal beef with "continuing to promote the software
> > ahead of the format" kinda misses the point that we never really
> > put any effort into promoting the program. Any such effort used
> > to be severely hampered by Sun. Promoting the program does seem
> > to have worked a LOT better in the last 3 years than it worked in
> > the preceding decade. We seem to be getting somewhere at last!
>
> Marco's points are in my own opinion not to be discarded as such.
> However I believe that Marco mixes marketing and the strategy of an
> ecosystem.

Hi Charles-H,

after a statement like this, hordes of people from all sectors of the
economy that at this point would stop and just ask you "so what? I
mean, what's the difference between marketing and strategy???"

Oh there is a difference of focus, concern, and thinking. If I sell
sausages, I'd better be good at selling them by talking about their
price, their taste and the great hot dogs I can make with them. But if
I'm growing the sausage manufacturers'ecosystem, I can pitch very much
the same points, but that does not do anything to address the concerns
of the ecosystem's partners. I'd rather explain, for instance, what
rebates system we can benefit from, or how we can pool our suppliers,
etc. The two are not mutuallly exclusive, they just work on different
levels.

But yours IS a fair point, because I too, in this specific thread,
have mixed different "we" in my previous message. Sometimes "we"
should have been "we advocates of LO", other times it meant in my mind
"we all supporters of open standards", and I didn't make it clear
enough.

Of course,

- no group can "save the world" alone
- members of each group (have to) have different priorities and goals

- people who choose to work specifically on LO/AOO/Calligra... (even
  if work is "only" providing volunteer support here or elsewhere)
  have to talk of that **software** more than file formats in general,
  digital divides and so on

I have NO PROBLEM with all that. My only point is that the typical
LO/AOO advocate should in almost all context to something like (making
numbers up now just to outline the general concept!!!)

FIRST, talk 20% of the time of formats
THEN, talk 80% of how cool LO/AOO etc is

otherwise we won't get anywhere quickly enough (see the "twelve years"
post I already mentioned here)

Marco, I remember you've been a strong advocate of open standards for
quite a long time, and both of us, among many others, have pitched and
expressed ourselves about the fundamental importance of a standard
format like ODF. We went all the way to the ISO and we know the good
and the bad that came out of this. My position remains unchanged about
open standards. But as you know there was a time when the ecosystem was
much stronger and unified to promote ODF.

Today, things are very different:
- the ODF ecosystem is not so unified (and to explain why probably
  needs a whitepaper)
- Microsoft implements ODF... in a serious and very efficient way.

These two factors have changed the battlefield, but one thing they
haven't changed is that despite the calculations and hopes that were
formed several years ago, the adoption of ODF has not really picked up
and is even not directly related to the migrations to LibreOffice.

On the other hand, people still don't make the difference between their
documents and the office suite they use. I like your ratio above, but
only if we have implementations that offer something else than an
office suite, meaning that people will see the value of ODF not just
for the freedoms they can benefit from, but as well if they see the
value in all the different possibilities they can have by choosing the
format. Today, this is not happening, even though the ODF ecosystem is
alive and growing (albeit slowly). FWIW, the Document Foundation puts
emphasis on open standards and has done so since day one in its
manifesto: https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/

Best,

Charles.

[M_Fioretti]

so true... I too am very unhappy about this.

Marco

[Charles-H_Schulz]

So am I. But it seems to me we are past the stage where things could
"revert" back to the old days, whatever that means.

Best,

[Tinkerer]

LibreOffice as a BRAND is growing stronger every day.
It is easily recognized once it has been introduced.
When the name was chosen it must have been uppermost in the TDF mindset that
they were creating a brand..
Promoting the Brand is surely what matters to all who want to see
LibreOffice succeed.
All the other aspects such as Format, Groups etc., will benefit as a
consequence.
The brand, LibreOffice encapsulates all of these.
PROMOTE LIBREOFFICE!

Tink.

[italovignoli]

Today, things are very different:
- the ODF ecosystem is not so unified (and to explain why probably
  needs a whitepaper)

Unfortunately, the largest company in the ecosystem is now focused on
other objectives, and has been instrumental in splitting the ecosystem
(and keeping it divided, in a way which makes it probably impossible to
reunite).

- Microsoft implements ODF... in a serious and very efficient way.

We should be more effective in leveraging MS ODF support, though.

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
I think the largest company in the eco-system is beginning to be TDF!
IBM is larger but it doesn't seem to want to be a big name in office
desktops.

Does the ODF Alliance still exist? Their website seems to be dead or
perhaps just very out-of-date. Perhaps people from TDF could get
involved in updating it? Perhaps Apache might be interested in giving
it a boost too? Perhaps it's just that it's main reasons for
existence are over now? OASIS is a LOT more lively. Last i heard
there were some (or at least 1) people from TDF involved in that.
Also there seems to be TDF people involved in FSF (or is it FSF people
involved in TDF?). Anyway, either way is good.

Regards from
Tom

[Charles-H_Schulz]

Hi
I think the largest company in the eco-system is beginning to be TDF!
IBM is larger but it doesn't seem to want to be a big name in office
desktops.

Does the ODF Alliance still exist? Their website seems to be dead or
perhaps just very out-of-date. Perhaps people from TDF could get
involved in updating it?

We don't control anything on the ODF Alliance website, which was never
an actual entity and today it's been left inactive for several years
already.

Perhaps Apache might be interested in giving
it a boost too? Perhaps it's just that it's main reasons for
existence are over now?

That is what some would call an insightful remark

OASIS is a LOT more lively. Last i heard
there were some (or at least 1) people from TDF involved in that.

oh there are more, but keep in mind the OASIS is where ODF is "made",
not from where it gets promoted. The OASIS is a standards consortium,
not an advocacy group.

Also there seems to be TDF people involved in FSF (or is it FSF people
involved in TDF?). Anyway, either way is good.

I think it's the opposite, FSF is a sponsor of TDF.

Best,

Charles.

[James_E_Lang1]

------>8=======

Hi
My thought is that we need to promote
1. LibreOffice first
2. other programs that can use the format as their native format
3. the format
4. the community
5. the fact that even MS Office's most recent versions can

read/write

the format too now
6. ethical issues
In roughly that order. I don't think people who need to write

letters

are always particularly interested in anything other than just

finding

a program that can do the job.

The marketing team have decided to promote the community as the
product that people "buy into" (for free) but i think a lot of

people

will continue to see the product as being the program. I think

they

are going to confuse people with their current policy.

I don't think it's wrong to promote the community or the format but
from what i have seen people try the program first and then

sometimes

find those other things are an extra benefit.

Tom, you're making some good points above, but I think that we may

not

be talking about the same thing. As a member of the marketing team,

I

cannot just say that we should stop promoting the "product" or

rather

the software as you rightly call it. I don't think we ever will. But
when we are pushing to advocate the community this strategy exists
because of specific goals and because we know that LibreOffice, as a
software and as a product, cannot be marketed as an off the shelf
product or even a "traditional"software. When you go down the path

of

"productivising" a software that's open source and developed by a
community, you either do this because the software fulfills some

very

specific needs and some very specific niche, or you don't, because

just

like LibreOffice, you have twenty different kind of audiences, a

whole

set of complex or simple features appealing to, well, pretty much

the

entire planet, and that there can be no question of "product
positioning" because you simply don't have enough funds and because

the

software caters to the needs of millions of people, businesses and
governments.

I've used some marketing terms here intently. But the point is that

we

have decided to shift the focus to community promotion, but not to
forget about promoting software, keeping in mind that 1) nobody

reads

the release notes 2)the users' needs tend to be evolving over time

3)

the financial dept wants to use their macros 4) we won't engage in
endless pseudo marketing discussions such as "how should we position
LibreOffice"? 5) it should be a fun thing to do anyway.

Promoting the format alone doesn't seem to work. People have

immense

trouble finding
File - "Save As ..."
It's tooo geeky for a lot of people. They click on the Save button
and have no idea where it's being saved or what format it's in.
Windows hides the format for all file-types by default so very few
people understand anything about formats.

Yes that's true. Open Standards are crucial; however, good luck
explaining this to the large majority of people who think a word
document is MS Word the software.

Promoting the software alone doesn't work either. Although, to be
fair, it is going a LOT better under TDF than it went under Sun.

Sun

seemed reticent about promoting OOo in the USA, England and

possibly

other countries that have English as the supposedly dominant

language.

Under TDF LibreOffice is becoming more widely known about. Unlike
Sun, TDF is managing to get into fairly mainstream articles in

fairly

mainstream press. So it's really Sun's total lack of advertising

and

promotion that had been holding OOo/LO/AOO back for the first

decade.

Rather than choosing a wrong direction they chose NONE and that is
what led us nowhere.

Thanks for the nice words here but I think that it's probably more
complex than that; and I am not alone thinking we must do much more

in

these geographies.

As LibreOffice usage rises so does usage of the format. But usage

of

the format follows. It doesn't lead the way. Most of us started

by

trying to stick with MS formats, perhaps even setting the defaults

to

MS formats (i did that). After a while each of us begins to

realise

that it's not the optimum format and so we gradually change to

keeping

originals in ODF and only using MS ones to share with outsiders.

Soon

we are going to be able to use ODF to share with outsiders.

Three years ago some people would write to this list or comment

under

articles to say that LibreOffice didn't have something they wanted

so

they would "have to" return to MS Office. A tad irksome because we
would often find the functionality did exist or that same

end-result

could be obtained by some more efficient route. Those few people

had

just found it easier to spend more time registering and writing a
grumble rather than bothering to spend any effort looking up how to

do

the task.

Nowadays people write in to apologise that they have had to return

to

OpenOffice or that they are going to try out Kingsoft Office

(because

it has a ribbon-bar) or something else. It's becoming very rare to
see people saying they have to return to MS Office.

To me that seems a very positive step in the right direction. Once
people have been freed from MS it doesn't really matter which

program

they are using or even which format they use. It's only MS that

makes

their own format so troublesome. Step away from MS and suddenly
people have less trouble sharing with other people using any other
non-MS program.

So, when people claim to have trouble with LO about something it's
good to encourage them to use any of the many alternatives. Just

find

out what their main "must have" is and find something that does

have

it.
* If their main "must have" a ribbon-bar then Kingsoft Office

seems a

reasonable choice, apparently it's available for Gnu&Linux

As far as I have been able to determine, it's only available for Windows, Android, and to a limited extent IOS.

I really wish there were a LO Calc implementation for Android to use in place of Kingsoft Office. I don't feel secure using a proprietary office product; especially one from China.

* If their "must have" is Cloud then Google-docs or Google-drive,

or

whatever it is called now. Note that Google are one of the

supporters

of TDF and might even be on the Advisory Board
* If their "must have" is that it works well on lower spec

machines

then "Gnome Office" (AbiWord and/or Gnumeric). Gnumeric is also a
good choice if they want a more powerful spreadsheet program than
Excel/Calc
* Android and iThings are the only one don't know of a good

choice

for yet

See my comment above,

Most of those people will return to LibreOffice because

it's

better. Some might wait until LO offers their "must have" or return
when they upgrade their machine.

Keep in mind, these must haves are evolving. I have had one guy from

a

French Ministry telling me for years about macro compatibility and
overnight dumping that point in favor of online collaboration....

So, i don't think we can lead by promoting the format alone. I

think

we have to promote on a few fronts at the same time. Any good
tactician will know that attacking on more than one front at a time

is

risky. Promoting the community first is probably not a bad plan
because that leads to all the other issues quite neatly.

Yes and it also -supposedly- grows the community, therefore growing

the

resources, etc.

So Marco's personal beef with "continuing to promote the software
ahead of the format" kinda misses the point that we never really

put

any effort into promoting the program. Any such effort used to be
severely hampered by Sun. Promoting the program does seem to have
worked a LOT better in the last 3 years than it worked in the
preceding decade. We seem to be getting somewhere at last!

------>8=======

[toki]

James E Lang wrote:

I really wish there were a LO Calc implementation for Android to use in

place of Kingsoft Office. I don't feel secure using a proprietary
office product; especially one from China.

There is AndroidOpenOffice.
Whilst closed source, it is based upon Apache Open Office, to the point of including most of the obvious, and all of the non-obvious AOo tells.
(I'm not sure, but I think it is simply a recompiled version of AOO, with things that throw errors simpoly commented out. Then latter rewritten to comppile correctly.)

jonathon

[James_Knott]

tk wrote:

There is AndroidOpenOffice.

I tried that a while ago, on my Nexus 7, and it didn't work very well.
I uninstalled it.

[toki]

James Knott wrote:

There is AndroidOpenOffice.

I tried that a while ago, on my Nexus 7, and it didn't work very well.

It is very inconsistent in how well it works. The updates, bug-fixes, etc. can either be much better, or much worse than the previous version.

For the most part, releases within the last month are much more stable, and offer more features that work as expected, than releases from even four months ago.

All that said, I don't think it quite yet suitable for mission critical work.

jonathon