Minutes of Marketing Call
1. Getting ready for LibreOffice 24.8 upcoming announcement
LibreOffice 24.8 will be announced during the second half of August
Release notes will be ready in mid July, just after the string freeze
Being just the second major release with the new numbering scheme, it
makes sense to recall the rationale behind the decision
The security backgrounder will be updated with numbers at end of July
The announcement press release will be ready at the end of July, before
Italo Vignoli leaves for Taiwan for the LibreOffice Asia Conference
As usual, we will distribute the release under embargo to a selected
number of journalists (we will reach the journalists by email at the end
of July to ask about their interest)
2. How to better position the two different available versions
There have been some interesting discussions about the names to use for
the two available releases, to make it easier for end users to
understand which one is the best for their needs
The automatic update feature might reduce the impact of this issue for
existing users, but first time users will be impacted in any case (so,
we will have to find a solution)
3. Getting ready for a guerrilla marketing campaign after summer
After the announcement, we will start a guerrilla marketing campaign to
raise the LibreOffice awareness in selected groups of users
We will collect ideas starting from now and organize a specific
marketing call in the second half of July
4. Update about Microsoft Aptos font
Microsoft has releases the Aptos font with a EULA which allows free use
independently from the operating system and the application, but does
not allow re-distribution
Because of that, the possibility of creating a new font metrically
compatible with Aptos is currently under evaluation by a group of
companies (TDF in in the loop)
5. Suggestions from volunteers about new marketing activities
No specific suggestions during the call.
Prior to the call, a document about the potential of value added
resellers (VAR) for the enterprise adoption of LibreOffice was shared.
I think it is important to provide some background on this topic:
1. I suggested to create a VAR program for OpenOffice in 2004, when the
market conditions were completely different from today and the
opportunity was quite significant.
2. The idea was thrown away as "idiot", and although I reiterated the
attempts on a regular basis, it was blocked by developers at all levels
as useless and even dangerous.
3. Eventually, the LibreOffice project was born in 2010, and I was given
the responsibility for marketing, which allowed me to include the
certification project in the marketing plan.
4. Although it was part of the marketing plan (and at that time it was
still meaningful market wise), certification was postponed until 2014,
when it was launched but limited to individuals because the general idea
was that Value Added Resellers were not bringing any good to the project.
5. Since the launch, certification has not been supported extensively,
and as a result the number of certified people is lower than expected,
and definitely lower than it should be.
6. Some key developers have continued to fight against certification,
and are still against it, although today there are more certified
developers than migration and training professionals.
7. Today, the technology channel we can address with LibreOffice - value
added distributors and resellers - has radically changed, and is
strongly connected to brands (i.e. Cisco, to make an example in a
different market, decides who gets a large bid between its VADs and VARs
by giving a better discount, which the next time will go to another
organization, and as a result these VADs and VARs will never work for a
competitive FOSS product).
8. You can imagine what would happen if one of Microsoft VADs and VARs
would support LibreOffice, helping companies to migrate to FOSS.
In Italy, I have personally tried to convince most companies active in
the FOSS environment to invest in creating a LibreOffice support team,
with only one of them accepting the challenge but giving up after two
years (no customers, as enterprises migrate by themselves although they
all fail miserably).
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