Hi Florian, On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 5:15 AM, Florian Effenberger <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > > as a member of the board of directors at OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V., > the German nonprofit we are talking about, let me jump in. > > First, we have established our association back in 2004, and it seemed to be > absolutely logical to chose that name. Our statutes, however, are not solely > tied to OpenOffice.org, but speak about free software in general, especially > productivity tools. So, our current doings are in total compliance with our > own statues. > > Second, legally spoken, OOoDeV is behind TDF right now, but this is only for > a temporary phase until TDF legally exists. From then on, TDF and OOoDeV > will be two separate entities again, with different boards, statutes and > legal frameworks. > > Third, we indeed intend to change our associations' name. The board of > directors has made a clear statement pro-TDF and pro-LibreOffice that we > have not only sent to our members, but also made publically visible on our > website http://www.ooodev.org. Given the current developments, it makes not > much sense to keep the current associations' name. We are right now in the > process of finding a new name, and that name will neither contain > OpenOffice.org, nor LibreOffice, nor TDF, but will be completely product- > and vendor-neutral. The final name has not been decided upon yet, and our > members meeting have to agree to it, so it will most likely take some time > until the change is legally in effect -- the way to it, however, has already > been opened. > > Fourth, wearing my Document Foundation hat now, we have always said that we > are open and transparent. We don't force anyone to decide on one specific > "side". As I have written in my letter of resignation to the OpenOffice.org > Community, I still don't see two different sides, competing products or > conflicts of interest. But, let's not open a political discussion here -- my > personal take is that ODFAuthors is such an independent name that it can > cover all suites, without forcing people to decide, helping to combine the > best of all worlds, being open in any direction for the future, not tied to > one specific product or vendor. > > Fifth, those who think we are the ones who want to "split", read what > happened. People selling proprietary products and making a living out of > that accused us, the volunteer community, of a conflict of interest, which I > still find just ridiculous. The decision and ommission of the name > OpenOffice.org was not our decision, but rather there has been lots of > discussions on the lists, and people were finally forced to leave and resign > from their roles. I was even asked to not use my @openoffice.org e-mail > address in the future, which I consider a very clear statement. > > The statutes of OOoDeV are that we support open source and respective > productivity tools in general. Even if our focus now is indeed on TDF and > LibO, we don't exclude others, so I guess we should give up thinking with > those barriers in mind. The only limitation I see is using the name > OpenOffice.org: Given the current situation, we just cannot promote products > that contain the name. The statements we received have been very clear in > that point, so hosting a site called OOoAuthors.org could indeed be > problematic for us as association (and also foundation). > > Regarding Alexandro's concerns, I really don't know where he stands. On > http://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/ he strongly supports TDF, on > this list it looks like he has concerns. Let me quote: "I congratulate the > efforts to finally go ahead with the plans of an independent foundation and > I think that with the 10 year anniversary a new era in OpenOffice.org to > grow and become even more free and open to a mature community that has > achieve the wide spread recognition of its product. I applaud the efforts of > such and want to provide the resources and support from OOoES." said > Alexandro Colorado, OOoES president
To wear my OOoAuthors hat, I think that the move will represent extra work on two fronts first is the political requrement of making a name change and technical tax to make it. First is that by changing the name, we need to rebuild a brand, which is already value gained on the recognition. I guess that is the soft value we need to rebuild. Then is the technical tax which means dealing with many static links, since Plone is a CMS and most links are built statically as well as complete. This makes it hard for most of the content to be able to re-link itself. Definitely use of hours to complete. Yes I thought about having an alias domain which could solve some of the issues, but wouldn't that be the same in the end. Also changing the domian on every link within every ODT individually on current and past issues is something harder than doing it on the database. I also see alternatives usually not requiring much, at least on our end we had many VPS from colleges and Universities as well as Linux groups without much requests by the entities. This was offer simply by just asking, they already have admins that host the system so their work is not that big. However we have hosted very small traffic applications which is fine for us so what I request is to have the technical requisites of the site to be sure these entities could coup with a site like this. I also wonder if we just split the site, and have just two different Plone sites one for OOo and another for LibO. Keep the status quo on the current server, and create a new site at OOoDeV with a TDF specific site. As TDF hat, the name change make sense. > My personal take is: If you have a group with a stable infrastructure, > capable and engaged people, it would be wise to accept their offer. I know > how hard it is to get the required infrastructure for hosting, and I doubt > it will be possible to get the required structure from others on time. Just > putting online calls for helps really brings you nowhere. Been there, done > that, know the results. Personally, hosting ODFAuthors.org just requires me > more time I have to spare, so I really don't gain anything personally from > it, just work, so you can consider the above as a friendly advice :-) > > Hope that made things a bit clearer. If you have any questions, let me know. > > Florian > > -- > Florian Effenberger <[email protected]> > Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation > Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 > Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > -- Alexandro Colorado OpenOffice.org Español http://es.openoffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
