On 10/29/12, Donald Whytock <dwhyt...@gmail.com> wrote: > About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract, > but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically > marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has > no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be?
Usually donnations, most of OOo community income came from donations, and some grants from Sun. You can read more agbout the budget on the wiki: http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Funding_And_Budgets/Budget_2011 > > How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users -> > more traffic -> more demand for resources -> more demand for people > that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said > infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering > of AOO? Not sure, but is a good question. Then again, why do apache would want to add projects to their foundation on the first place? That answer should loosely apply to this one. > How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more > word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative > clout for acquiring resources from Apache? > > I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to > the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business > practices and commercialization of software available, it's important > for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an > office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it > would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish, > other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's > sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea. > > If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include > a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than "Don't you think > this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do." Shouldnt this be on ooo-marketing? > > Don > -- Alexandro Colorado PPMC Apache OpenOffice http://es.openoffice.org