LWN: Comments on "Marketing OpenOffice.org"

OpenOffice.org is both a product and a community

jacqueline — 2004-10-11T12:44:17+00:00

"This document marks a major milestone in the development of a Strategic Marketing Plan for the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite [i]".

The "Strategic Marketing Plan 2010" launched at OOoCon2004 "... is not a Strategic Marketing Plan for the OpenOffice.org Community, which is an entity which requires marketing in its own right". This is the first footnote, and on page 1.

The plan (0.5) is for OpenOffice.org the product, which is what most of the current volunteers and participants have requested for some time. This initial draft plan was wholly developed by OpenOffice.org volunteers, and is open for discussions with the goal of finalising it for the end of the year.

We do need a marketing plan for OpenOffice.org the community. I attended many of the developer and community presentations at OOoCon2004 with that purpose in mind.

Your input and feedback is most welcome, as is your contributions to a OpenOffice.org Community marketing plan.

Jacqueline

Don't be rediculous

gallir — 2004-09-30T22:26:17+00:00

At the very right moment you distribute your program with some binary
code (or even source code) that cannot be freely modified and
re-distributed it has lost its freedom, so it's not free software
anylonger.

freeopenoffice

tzafrir — 2004-09-30T11:57:45+00:00

Disclaimer: this is all talk and no code. So feel free to ignore it on those grounds.

OOo seems to suffer from a huge code bloat. The code includes a thick cross-platform compatibility layer. OOo is unable to share code with other projects due to licensing issues. So it built everything on its own. Right to a complete fonts rendering system. That fonts rendering system was later replaced on linux in basically every linux distro.

It seems to me that if one is weeling to do the immense work required, it will turn out that much of the code of Abiword or of Mozilla could be reused. The result would be a much smaller OOo, with much faster start-up times.

Besides, the acronyms are too good to waste on a minor project.

Don't be rediculous

rjw — 2004-09-30T09:09:51+00:00

But, it isn't free software if the user is unable to modify it - and modify it with no restrictions, including platform ones. If you make software depending on a non-free dependency, eg sun-only java features or Qt/Win32, it isn't really free.

Don't be rediculous

aleXXX — 2004-09-30T06:21:58+00:00

To develop an application with Qt under Windows you need a commercial
license. Once you have the application, you can distribute the application
together with the Qt library (I guess the dll only, or statically linked, but not the
lib-file) (at least that's what I remember from reading the licensing terms).
So you can develop free software with Qt under Windows and distribute your
application together with the Qt library, but you, the developer, have to buy a
license to do so.

Alex

freeopenoffice

Duncan — 2004-09-30T01:35:43+00:00

No kidding. A recent article compared code base sizes. OOo is said to
have more code than /all/ /of/ /KDE/ put together. I can't verify that
claim as I've not checked (I don't need or use any office suite), but as I
run Gentoo, it's well known that compiling OOo requires /five/ /gigs/ of
free temp space to build and merge the main OOo ebuild, which source is
pretty much straight up. That's certainly far more than any Linux kernel
would be, even in my wildest nightmares.

Personally, I consider that simply far to code bloated. Of course, it
should be said that much of the code size owes to the fact that OOo pretty
much implements its own UI and widget sets from the ground up. However,
it's still comparable to QT and all of KDE in size, and that's an entire
desktop environment, not just an office suite.

The Ximian OO edition is rather smaller, requiring "only" ~3G of free temp
space for compiling. That sounds rather more reasonable to me, certainly
in comparison to 5G. Of course, it's probably the MSWormOS compatibility
stuff that they cut among other things, so I doubt it's as cross-platform.

That brings up a question I've been wondering about for a few weeks, tho.
If we are talking a fork, how far from that is Ximian? I think they
intend to remain synced to the main version, but would forking from it, if
a fork is being considered, be more reasonable? If I'm right about the
MSWormOS compatibility stuff above, and MSWormOS compatibility remains a
goal, than I suppose I've answered my own question. However, it's
something those considering a fork may wish to look at, anyway.

Duncan

freeopenoffice

mdekkers — 2004-09-29T15:49:55+00:00

money and a heap of developers - don't underestimate the complexity of the codebase - forking ooo is probablygoing to be just a bit harder then forking the kernel.

Don't be rediculous

mark625 — 2004-09-29T14:51:23+00:00

Sure OO.o links to Windows libraries, but it doesn't have to distribute them. They are already installed with Windows, and thus do not have to be licensed by OO.o. Qt/Windows is NOT distributed with Windows, and so it would have to be distributed with KOffice for Windows, and would therefore require (non-free) licensing of the Qt/Windows library code.

That's exactly why Qt on Windows is not free. That is TrollTech's business plan. See their licensing matrix.

Cheers!

Herding cats

dkite — 2004-09-29T14:33:21+00:00

There is no disputing that openoffice is appreciated as a generous gift
from SUN. It has allowed many of us to rid ourselves totally of Microsoft
products, opened the way for linux into new markets, etc.

When openoffice was released the pace of development in Koffice seemed to
drop off somewhat. There were stalwart individuals who maintained the
applications, but the feeling was why? Openoffice is a complete office
suite, why do we need Koffice?

In recent months the pace has stepped up. File formats have been reworked
to oasis standards. The spreadsheet is receiving TLC with a calculation
engine rewrite, many more functions, etc. KPresenter is a viable
presentation tool. The drawing tools are under active development, and in
the best traditions of foss, a gentleman came along, took up maintenance
of Krita, through good code and genuine enthusiasm and vision built up a
small team, with the results becoming apparent. There is a long way to
go. A full featured office suite is an enormous endeavor.

I really hesitate to criticize SUN. Their work with usability and
openoffice are free and benefit many. But foss is the development
community, not products. SUN seems to have difficulty convincing people
to give of their valuable time and expertise. Compare SUN's involvement
with IBM's, another huge monolith.

Ultimately it comes down to control. Who controls the project? Would SUN
put up with something like the EVMS decision in the kernel? In other
words, yield control to the community?

Derek

freeopenoffice

tzafrir — 2004-09-29T09:35:29+00:00

What would you need to start a free (LGPL-only) for of OpenOffice.org?

If any such fork gets off the ground and get substantail code contributions, linux/BSD distros will adopt them on the count of being sane to build and more useful. Thus you have a distribution channel that bypasses OpenOffice.org .

Are theere any independent distributors of OOo for win32? (For OSX there is probably fink)

Marketing OpenOffice.org

mdekkers — 2004-09-29T07:52:33+00:00

The fact that the raising of funds is not mentioned is no oversight, but probably a calculated omission. The whole issue of an independent "OpenOffice.org Foundation" or other body that can raise funds, and/or hold independent ownership of the code, has been promised by Sun since the inception of the project. However, everytime when pushed, Sun backs off, and about a year ago mooted the concept in its entirety.

Bruce Perens is correct in treating Sun's motivations around OpenOffice.org with significant suspicion - many of the recent questions around the details of the MS agreement have been brushed aside, laughed away, or simply ridiculed, but none have been answered in a fair and straightforward manner.

It is obvious that this is a marketing ploy for StarOffice - sow fear of potential litigation issues in the hearts of corporate decision makers, so they will procure the "protected" StarOffice as opposed to the "exposed" OpenOffice.org product. While healthy sales of StarOffice are good for OpenOffice.org to an extent - it proves to Sun that the model works, and they will likely continue investing in OpenOffice.org - the flipside is that Sun will see StarOffice as the cashcow MSOffice is to Microsoft, and act accordingly.

Sun is far from clean, and are no angels in this matter. I used to be a core volunteer contributor to OpenOffice.org for a good 2 years. I have acted as a project lead for the website and some other projects, am one of the founders of the marketing project, have been a driving force in the (then) new copyright assignment and licensing model, and am one of the authors of the Community Council - that was until I decided to pack in and leave the OpenOffice.org project to itself until Sun's involvement is dramatically decreased, or a viable fork comes around, due to having been at the sharp end of Sun's retaliatory corporate stick for not falling in line.

Anybody who works closely with Sun for a significant period on opensource projects will know that Sun sees opensource development as a source of free labour, nothing more. Sun has no love for "the community" other then when or where the community can be of use to it. Sun has the OpenOffice.org community right where it wants it, and has no interest in the community " to become completely self-sufficient, and rely on volunteer effort and/or funds generated by the Community." Sun does not *want* a significant influx of outside developers to assist in the project - it would lose control, and that is their biggest nightmare. Sun, through Danise Cooper, claims that the "Independent Foundation Model" does not work, conveniantly ignoring plenty of evidence to the contrary, and will fight tooth and nail any effort to make them deliver on their original promise to truly free OpenOffice.org.

Having said all that (or rather, having finished my rant), OpenOffice.org is a key product, and is critical to the success of Linux on the desktop. In that light, I have, and will continue to advise my clients to deploy OpenOffice.org, and will assist them in doing so, as opposed to deploying StarOffice. At the end of the day, StarOffice is a proprietary, closed source program, with all the pitfalls associated with that, and as such poses specific business risks to deploying organisations.

I am currently finalising a Desktop Linux deployment based around OpenOffice. While the customer is relatively small (only 1000 seats), it is a significant customer - as in, a well known name - and we are working on a case study around the deployment. The interesting part here is that we migrated the customer away from StarOffice, and onto OpenOffice.org, for a variety of reasons, but chiefly due to the fact that StarOffice is a proprietary product. Sun's fear of losing marketshare to OpenOffice.org is real, and is rightly reflected in the marketing document, as StarOffice has no discernable value-add, over and above OpenOffice.org. Of course, there now is the "feature" that paying for the privilege of using StarOffice will indemnify you of any potential legal hassles with Microsoft....

Java in OOo

eru — 2004-09-29T07:39:25+00:00

A fair amount of new OpenOffice.org functionality is being written in Java, which creates problems for some Linux distributors - there is no free, certified Java runtime which can be shipped to run that new code. So OpenOffice.org's plan contemplates the creation of a "Java-free" configuration (something the distributors have been doing for a while), but there is no thought given to making it all work with a free, non-certified runtime engine.

Or how about using Java with native compilation with GNU Java. I recently read an article about how some people managed to get Eclipse running with it, and that is a very large program written entirely in Java. Of course here the Sun relationship could be a problem, Sun obviously would like everyone, and particularly projects they sponsor, to use their Java implementation...

Not the only Cross-platform OSS/FS office suite

AJWM — 2004-09-28T22:26:15+00:00

Just because an app uses a non-free library on Windows (I assume you're referring to Qt/Windows in this case) doesn't make the app itself non-free. If it did, OOo wouldn't be free either, since the Windows version links to decidedly non-free Microsoft libraries.

not the: only Cross-platform OSS/FS office suite

boudewijn — 2004-09-28T19:12:43+00:00

KOffce can run, either natively or in X, on OS X, where it as free as it
is on Unix/X11. Don't
forget that Qt for OS X is GPL.

Even more important: only Cross-platform OSS/FS office suite

dwheeler — 2004-09-28T19:02:19+00:00

Even more importantly, OpenOffice.org is the only cross-platform open source software / Free Software integrated office suite. KOffice won't run on Windows or Macintosh, and even if it did, it wouldn't be OSS/FS. And I don't think KOffice has the same level of functionality. AbiWord has nowhere near the functionality, and isn't a suite anyway. Gnumeric isn't a suite either, nor does it look like a native application on non-Unix-like systems.

Even organizations that want to stop using Windows can't do so instantly; the only sane course in many cases is to switch to an office suite running on Windows, and later switching. For such organizations, OO.o is really the only game in town.