One thing I can think of that would be important to defining this purpose is audience. Who is LibreOffice for? Sure, anyone can use if if they want, but who are we targeting? LibreOffice is used by students, businesses, and governments, but that's not really helpful in terms of design. One insight that might be helpful is the fact that many of the people who use office software aren't very good at using and understanding computers--they know how to check their email, use a web browser, and do some things in their office software, but that's it--they aren't very good at changing settings or preferences, learning how to use new programs, or installing software. These people have to be taken into account, because if something is understandable to them, then it should be understandable to everyone--they are the lowest common denominator. At the same time, people should be able to use LibreoOffice for real work--we shouldn't be getting rid of advanced functionality in terms of what can be done with the programs, because often LibreOffice is the easiest tool that can be used for that task (for example, it is much easier to make an ANOVA table in Calc than it is to learn R to make one)
I suppose, taking this into account, the purpose of LibreOffice would be, broadly, "To make complex tasks easy for everyone." At the same time, LibreOffice isn't and probably shouldn't be in the business of making web browsers, file managers, or 3d modeling tools. So what kind of tasks is LibreOffice meant to perform? Creating and editing documents is one (Writer, Impress, Math, Draw), and organizing and analyzing data is another (Calc, Base)--fairly general tasks that need to be done in a variety of settings and workplaces. Documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and the like are used everywhere for a variety of purposes, so we can't get too specific with the purpose, either. I suppose that would make the purpose of LibreOffice something like: "To make work easy for everyone, by providing an easy-to-use set of tools for making documents and presentations and for organizing and editing data." Then again, thinking this is making me question why we bundle up each of the modules and call it LibreOffice. Sure, it's good to have tools that work well together, but doing so in our case seems to rob the project of a clear focus. Then again, this is how people expect to get their office software, and it would be impractical for LibreOffice to not be this way, since this project is seen as a drop-in replacement to Microsoft Office. -Daniel -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Finding-a-Purpose-tp4114430p4116775.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: design+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted