Dear board, dear community, Abstract: I request the board to: - provide software in accordance with the statues. - remove parts of the software that are of no use for the intended audience, hereby meaning the support key "feature" of LOOL. - undo the "Personal" edition branding.
I am very concerned about the recent developments regarding the strategic future of LibreOffice and The Document Foundation. As this concern is shared by many no quick decision should be taken. I want to remind all of you what The Document Foundation is all about, as stated in the *unalterable* statutes (https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/statutes/): "The objective of the foundation is the promotion and development of office software available for use by anyone free of charge." - this does not restrict the target audience. "This software will be openly available for free use by anyone for their own files, including companies and public authorities, ensuring full participation in a digital society and without detriment to intellectual property." I would like to remind all members of the board of directors that first and foremost you are obliged to pursue these statutes. As a consequence you must not restrict the target audience of LibreOffice to a specific user group in any way. But this already happens for quite some time and is now getting worse: 1. LibreOffice Online - Unsupported Warning The website for LibreOffice Online states: "The Document Foundation will not be maintaining binaries for enterprise use". This is clearly in violation of the statutes. (https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/) The website also includes a picture of a warning message that often appears (https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/LibreOffice-Online-limit.png), and it is also stated: "... is designed for personal and/or development use ..." This is not only in violation of the statues, but also very questionable behaviour for Free/Libre and Open Source Software. **I hereby request the board to take action to provide the software in accordance with the statutes.** 2. LibreOffice Online - Containing Support Keys Looking through the source code of LibreOffice Online, it can be easily found, that there is a build option for support keys, this makes absolutely no sense in our software product. (https://git.libreoffice.org/online/+/refs/heads/master/wsd/LOOLWSD.cpp#1259) **I hereby request the board to take action to remove parts of the software that are of no use for the intended audience.** 3. LibreOffice "Personal Edition" As I have already mentionend in my comment to the Bug Report (https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134486#c23), I see any restriction or even suggested restriction of the intended audience in violation of the statutes. I would also like to remind, that there are still and fresh versions existing right now (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan), and that the still versions are intended for "conservative, corporate deployments". Will the "still" "Personal Edition" then be recommended for "corporate deployments"? I don't believe that this is understood by our audience in any way. Also: I don't see the reason for the "Personal Edition" tag, as this means that TDF must also provide another edition that is then targeted for all other use cases. **I hereby request the board to take action that this change be undone to gain time for the community to find a consensus.** My personal opinion is to keep the Brand LibreOffice as a name, and certified vendors are able to provide support and services as "LibreOffice Enterprise" partners. If you change the product, the name is to be changed. As this topic already gained significant public interest, it is now the time for the board to re-evaluate the Marketing Plan and its hopefully unintended side-effects. The primary goal of The Document Foundation is to fulfill its statutes, and the secondary goal is to cater for ecosystem vendors needs. Alex -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
