I have been receiving private communications agitated about whether or not the ASF would recommend a closed-source or commercial project as something someone might use as an alternative to Apache OpenOffice in the event of retirement. I'm asked whether or not prominent open-source alternatives would be recommended.
1. It is premature to know what alternatives would be identified. We are nowhere close to that. This is my thinking out-loud. It is not something that the PMC is discussion or considering. There is no reason to work on such retirement details unless the need to go further arises. For now, this [DISCUSS] is about identification of what would be involved and not something being put into action and detailed farther. 2. Nevertheless, as I have already stated, my recommendation would be to make no recommendation, and especially not promote one over others using our automated check for updates. Instead, there could be a retirement advisory and recommendation that alternatives be considered. That could lead to a web page like the one we now provide where third-parties who offer support, other services, books, tutorials, etc., can be linked to, all without any endorsements. One approach would be to open that up for other providers of productivity software as well. The links would be to materials of those providers but there would be no recommendation. There might be minimal information (platforms, ODF formats supported, other formats supported, localizations, extensions/templates available, but nothing deep - simple check-offs as offered by the providers). This remains to be identified and populated and there is need to figure out details now or even agree on this approach. 3. I suspect that discussions about available software alternatives would arise on users@oo.a.o and particularly on the Community Forums. That would happen naturally without requiring the project to take any positions or provide any kind of exclusivity of one provider over others. - Dennis > -----Original Message----- > From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamil...@acm.org] > Sent: Friday, September 2, 2016 09:05 > To: dev@openoffice.apache.org > Subject: RE: [DISCUSS] What Would OpenOffice Retirement Involve? (long) > [ ... ] > A couple of different observations: > > > 2.4 The mechanism for announcing updates to installed versions of > OpenOffice binaries is adjusted to indicate that (a) particular versions > are no longer supported. (b) For the latest distribution(s), there may > be advice to users about investigating still-supported alternatives. > > > > I was careful, there, not to indicate an automatic preference to another > comparable software product. Rather, I would prefer users be given a > page that identifies alternatives for them to consider, whatever their > license, whatever their commercial nature. By the time that retirement > would get to that point, I think there would be ample discussion and > public knowledge of alternatives as well. > > I support the idea of renaming any pivot toward becoming a framework. I > also think it would be good to allow AOO retirement, in that case, and > have the framework effort go through incubation. The AOO code base > would remain to be cherry-picked and morphed, and probably undertaken in > Git. I also think that could be an opportunity to revitalize the ODF > Toolkit podling effort and even meld the pivot into it. The POI folk > might have suggestions along those lines too. > > Just thoughts. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
