Hi *, quick comment on the below -
Paolo Vecchi wrote: > Very brief summary of the events: > > Back in March 2020, other new board members and I, started making enquiries > in regards to why we weren't making available an up to date LOOL to the > community. We were clearly "advertising" LOOL on the website but it wasn't > in a easily usable state and I strongly believed we had to do our part to > help e.g. schools and non-profits coping with remote working when the > pandemic started hitting hard. After all, TDF has been created for the > public benefit, and in this new situation with the lockdown, what would have > been more beneficial to the general public than to support pupils, students, > volunteers in nonprofits by providing a platform and sharing our knowledge, > based on Free and Open Source Software? This would have allowed our > Foundation and us, as citizens, to perform our civic duty to help and it > would also have had a positive marketing effect for the members of the > ecosystem. Unfortunately that opportunity is now lost, mostly in favor of > proprietary vendors which just consolidate their position. It's sad. It's a > lost opportunity for TDF and for the ecosystem. > I agree it's an opportunity lost. In many ways indeed - losing LibreOffice Online's active developer base was not inevitable. That it did happen in the end, after many people tried to solve the brewing conflict, was to a considerable degree caused by part of the board persistently threatening with unilateral action. In terms of helping schools and non-profits, many things did happen (I know for certain that Free Software, including LibreOffice, gained noticeable user traction here in Germany). Regarding LibreOffice Online though, that wouldn't have been something that TDF could have hosted ourselves for the world at large. Implying then, that if only TDF had offered free downloads of the server RPMs, we would have managed to significantly dent the market share of the integrated cloud vendors - seems to be quite naive to me. I'd like to now decouple this discussion from the thread topic (which is about a general attic process). If there's a need for further discussion (I'd _much_ prefer forward-looking debates, rather than re-litigating the past!), please all, start a new thread, and I'll answer there. All the best, -- Thorsten
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