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hi, i donated $10.00 via pay-pal 11/18/13... but now i'm having trouble downloading libreoffice.. i can't get past the page asking for a donation?? can you help?
Hi Josephine,
At the upper side of the download page, you should see the following :
Your download LibreOffice_4.1.3_Win_x86.msi should begin shortly.
In case the download doesn't start automatically, you can click on the filename.
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josephine mcdonald wrote:
hi, i donated $10.00 via pay-pal 11/18/13... but now i'm having trouble downloading libreoffice.. i can't get past the page asking for a donation?? can you help?
You don''t have to make a donation to download, though it's certainly
appreciated. Where are you trying to download from? I just tried
www.libreoffice.org and the only mention of donation was at the bottom
of the first page. I was able to go directly to the download page
without having to make any donation.
Hi 
Thanks for the donation! You don't need to make a new contribution
each time. Anyway some people contribute in other ways such as by
working in one of the teams or by helping out in one of the User
Support places.
From this page
http://donate.libreoffice.org/home/dl/win-x86/4.1.3/en-GB/LibreOffice_4.1.3_Win_x86.msi
(or whichever language or platform or version you chose) the download
should start automatically but if it doesn't then in the top paragraph
is a green link saying something like
"LibreOffice_4.1.3_Win_x86.msi"
so just click on that.
Errr, it has just occurred to me that if you are using Firefox then it
might be blocking you from downloading things by accident. Many
people install all kinds of nasty things by accident so Firefox
attempts to warn you when you are downloading anything. So, in
Firefox look just under the top taskbars&tabs to see if there is a
grey bar with a button at the far right saying "Allow". Once you see
that button check what that grey-bar says on the far left to make sure
it sound vaguely correct. if it does sound reasonable then click on
the "Allow" button.
Sorry to be so vague! We could be more precise if we knew which
platform you are using; Windows (ie Xp, Vista, Win7, Win8 etc), Mac,
Gnu&Linux (ie openSuSE, Ubuntu, Mint, Mageia etc). Also which version
and (human) language. Plus which web-browser you are using. However,
i suspect you can probably figure it out from my vague paragraphs
above.
Regards from
Tom
Hi
James didn't get quite far enough. It's a page or so further on. The
way page is set-up it does look as though you do HAVE TO make a
donation before the download will start. It's only the geeks that
will notice their own web-browser is the only thing blocking the
download from really starting.
The marketing team did discuss this and various other options but the
technology is not quite their yet to allow the whole thing to be more
polite and less demanding. After a lot of discussion they finally
settled on doing the same as other projects, such as Ubuntu and many
others.
Actually Ubuntu's is more demanding. With them you get a list of
areas where you suggest which areas you want your donation to be
targeted towards (with no promise it will be used for that (to avoid
accountancy nightmares)) and you have to scroll all the way down to
the bottom of the page before you see something like "get me out of
here, skip all this and just do the download"
If i hadn't been so involved in the discussion in marketing then i
would probably have stopped around the same point as James tbh. It's
only because i was so irate at the time that i went further to check.
As it's turned out it's not been quite as bad as i feared. There have
only been a couple people who didn't quite notice and then grumbled
about something.
The technology nearly is there but it's not smooth and doesn't always
work reliably on all systems and all web-browsers.
Regards from
Tom
LO is free. That's FREE! It even comes with a lot of Linux distros, no
cash needed. You should look for another download site--somebody's
trying to rip you off!
--doug
That's simply untrue, of course. The official LibreOffice web site (which the questioner is very probably using) invites donations, and it isn't trying "rip anyone off".
Brian Barker
Hi
I am guessing you haven't looked at the official LibreOffice downloads
page for several months. Yes it is Free but to a new person it looks
like we are demanding money, until they spot the clues. Still the
default donation set on the page is $10 which even i could probably
pay without too much angst = especially when compared with some of the
alternatives!
Regards from
Tom
It's irritating as hell. It makes LO look as if a donation is required
(even though it says otherwise) and IMO is a bit of an embarrassment
when referring LO to others. Several have commented & were sure to
mention that AOO doesn't require this nonsense.
I just spent 10 minutes figuring out how to bypass this nonsense in
order to download a 205MB "update" for a remote user at limited
bandwidth. The default download link was downloading at 45Kbps...
Finally remembered the mirrors:
<http://download.documentfoundation.org/mirmon/allmirrors.html> and only
then was I actually able to get a reasonably speed download connection.
Hi,
I in fact do not have any problems with downloading LO: I just click on the big green button on http://www.libreoffice.org/download
(the topmost one from three similar buttons, the rest are for localizations - in case others do not see them).
A new page (donate.libreoffice.ord...) opens and after 2-3 seconds the download starts. I do not have to bother about donations.
Perhaps the fact that the donate page opens right after clicking on the download button and the download starts a bit later (at least a bit for me, perhaps a lot later for others) is the confusing moment, since one expects something related to download and not to donations. Do you see that so? I can imagine it is. Donations are important, but, perhaps, it should be done in a less 'invasive' way. Maybe a visible 'Donate' button on the download page which would redirect the used to the donate page. This would not mix downloads with donations and thus would not make user angry. Or, two download buttons: one plain "Download" and the second "Download and donate" - which would do the same thing as "Download" does now.
best
Milos
Dňa 19.11.2013 04:29, NoOp wrote / napísal(a):
Hi,
It's irritating as hell. It makes LO look as if a donation is required
(even though it says otherwise) and IMO is a bit of an embarrassment
when referring LO to others. Several have commented & were sure to
mention that AOO doesn't require this nonsense.
here, if I go to http://www.libreoffice.org/ I click on the big round
Download LibreOffice Now! button, this gets me to
http://www.libreoffice.org/download where I can select the download I
want which starts (almost) immediately. No donation is required AFAICS.
There's a donation option below with the following introductory text:
"LibreOffice is Free Software and is made available free of charge. Your
donation, which is purely optional, supports our worldwide community. If
you like the software, please consider a donation."
This is all ok for me.
So, unless there's some other entry point which introduces a donation
before the download, I can see no problem. Or am I mistaken?
The issue here (well, issue might not be the word), is that on some
configuration, the automatic download don't trigger/is blocked by the
browser. In this case, someone not akin to reading a wall of text will just
see the prominent donation part of the page.
But as far as the actual content of the download page is concerned, I
believe the text if perfectly clear about the optionnal part of the
donation. But... users ;)
Hi
+1
Yes. It is fairly clear if you read the text but people probably
expect to have to pay for something this good. $10 is a pittance
compared to other alternatives and people who feel tricked into giving
the donation get far more from LibreOffice than they would if they had
been forced into buying something similar from anyone else.
Kingsoft and KOffice don't have database programs. Kingsoft doesn't
have a drawing component. Calligra doesn't have as many devs working
at it. Apache OpenOffice is comparatively under-developed (although
that might be a blessing for some). Google-docs is risky if your
internet is unreliable. Each has their niche but LibreOffice covers
more bases. It's possible i might be a little biased of course but i
think our devs, QA, documentation, marketing, designers, user-support
and all the rest have done a great job.
Regards from
Tom