Hi all, Sorry for silence… but lots going on. I'll answer somewhat generically the question that Anthony left with… and also respond to Cristian's post shortly..
And apologies for the long post; turned out longer than I thought it would…. On 2010-10-24, at 12:14 , <j...@johnterry.net.au> wrote: > Good rehash mate.. > Realising now the dilemma from your perspective I'll have some further info > on what perhaps I could do to help the openoffice project please. Thanks! > > John Terry > Home: 08 6460 9519 > Mobile: 0411 083 236 > Register Aussie domain names: > http://www.austdomainsales.com.au > Free SEO Book: > http://www.proposeo.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: Anthony Papillion [mailto:papill...@gmail.com] > Sent: Sunday, 24 October 2010 6:37 PM > To: dev@marketing.openoffice.org > Subject: [marketing] Concerns (possible rehash) > > Hi Group, > > Please excuse me if this is a rehash of an already had discussion. > While I've gone through the archives to check, I might have missed > something. > > As I said in my note to Florian, I'm new to the team but very > passionate about OpenOffice. It's a product that not only helps me > make my living but also allows me to make a good moral choice when > recommending the software to a customer. > > My concern is that the wave of recent resignations is going to be a > potential death blow to the project. If everyone is gone, who will do > the work? Does Oracle have the dedication to OpenOffice to carry it on > without the community? > > Since I'm planning on devoting a significant amount of time and > resources to the community, I (selfishly) want to at least believe > it's still a viable one. But, aside from that, I deeply want what's > best for OpenOffice. Thanks, Anthony, and thanks for taking the time and effort to work through the issues. First, the community is strong. I mean the OpenOffice.org community involved in the OpenOffice.org Project building OpenOffice.org for global enterprise, individual and education use—and then anything and everything in-between. The community has not left the project; there remain enormous numbers, afaict, dedicated to it. Indeed, one thing that has been occupying Peter and me (Peter's finger continues to mend) is planning for the FossAsia event to take place later in November, in Ho Chi Minh City. I went last year, when it was held in comity with Gnome.Asia, and we had hoped that Peter would go this year. He cannot, but we are planning on using the event as a vehicle for forming and developing an effective nucleus of agents of change (my term of preference for a group that gets things done: AOC, a familiar term indeed to foodies) who can work with the Vietnamese government and enterprises to migrate over to OpenOffice.org sustainably. Javier Sola was also wanting to go—he led Cambodia to OpenOffice.org, which they now use in the government, and is doing the same for Bangladesh—but probably won't be able to make it. (Javier works professionally in this capacity, through an NGO partly funded by a Spanish aid company; there are others out there we need to work with.) However, Mario Behring and Hong Phuc, organizers of the event, are insistent, and I agree, on foregrounding OpenOffice.org, as they did last year. That's because the government of the nation and region see in OOo, and not just Foss, but OOo—sustained globally and invested in by major corporations—as a *necessary* path. There are few alternatives, especially as OOo and the ODF promise freedom on the desktop and freedom from vendor locking without committing to any one language, platform, technology. But to make it all work in the longterm we need not just the community, the ecosystem, but we need people on the ground, local, to drive the change: people able and willing to work with intransigent bureaucrats, people who can host beer and pizza codefests (we'll supply the funds), people whose passion for Foss and OOo give them the blessing of waking up in the morning wanting to solve the problems they faced yesterday—and who know that by doing that they guarantee not just their own personal future but also a global one. OpenOffice.org is not going away nor is Oracle's dedication, as manifest by the ample demonstrations of investment, commitment, action. I think that in the wake of the tumult we can and really must focus on getting things done so that others can do things with us. And that means drafting general strategies for marketing that the general community can act on to promote the participatory community effectively. Our primary obstacles to extending use of OOo and participation in its making actually have a lot more to do with regional inertia and lack of coordination than you would think. It's something Javier, I, and many others have encountered. Change comes in jolts—but only after incremental preparation and only, really, because people like you and so many others are willing to take on the task or work with others who've assumed it. But change does come. Tomorrow, I head off to Málaga, Spain, for a conference that was cancelled, only to be replaced by another, headed by the lead of the Asolif Spanish organization of SMBusinesspeople. They number more than 350, and I'll be giving a couple of presentations (I may even be keynoting…) One of my strong foci—perhaps in a way the strongest—lies in developing regional groups and OOo ecosystems. That is, establishing the possibility for companies and people like you, part of the community, to benefit as businesspeople from the project—its code, its ancillary elements. The Spanish national and subnational governments are moving to OOo. Many in Europe are. Many in Africa would like to, too, as would many in Asia. But poverty imposes terrible constraints on the fluidity of investment in new ideas. (The typical question posed to me from South African groups wanting to move to OOo—and there are many—is, "What can you do for us?"—a question I'd like to reframe as, "What can you do for yourselves with OpenOffice.org?" We can answer the latter, not the former, which simply reinscribes pernicious dependency.) Still, I am optimistic. I believe not that community as such solves problems. But that a commitment to a vision the freedom we work on and to a notion of getting things done with local communities knitted to the global does solve problems—of cost, of investment, even of some of the effects of poverty. Change does come. best Louis PS Barcelona is also hosting a weeklong Foss celebration with a focus on education—another key point of interest, and an area I'm doing as much work in as I can. (Anthony: you may want to think twice about posting your telephone numbers to this intensely public list, btw.) > Thoughts? > > Anthony Papillion > Advanced Data Concepts > > O: +1.918.919.4624 > M: +1.918.320.9968 > > -- > Sent from my mobile device > > Anthony Papillion > Lead Developer / Owner > Advanced Data Concepts - "Enabling work anywhere" > (918) 919-4624 > > Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cajuntechie > My Blog: http://www.cajuntechie.com > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
