RE: [Marketing] It's hard to beat Office king

[Daniel Lynn]

> True to some extent, but how many folks do 8-10 hours "head - down" into 
> Word, Excel, etc?  I would guess that most users are casual, real-time, 
> sporadic users who need information formed or transformed for a real 
> world process versus a database repository.

I agree.  I've switched from the MS office set to the Open-office set
(v1.1.5) and except for the messages I get when it tries to save or exit, I
sometimes forget that I'm not using MS software.

Speaking of which, I intend to download v.2, but the "Are you sure you want
to use an inferior format" warnings in v.1.1.5 are a little unnerving.  It
almost says "you're doing something wrong, are you sure you want to?" and I
think that from a marketing point, it can hurt the software's success and it
might make a good suggestion to the development group to scan the document
for actual incompatibilities before throwing that error. 


> Training is a non-issue.  There is enough cross-over knowledge and 
> enough Help online that it becomes noise.  If basic usage of a general 
> user application can't be taught in less than one day it shouldn't be in 
> the marketplace.

I do a lot of consulting (internet development mostly) to small offices and
I'm usually not the only IT consultant working with them. I've seen many
instances where another consultant tries to convince an office to switch to
open-source software or even just alternative commercial software.  "I don't
want to have to learn a new program/train my employees in a new program." Or
"I'm already used to this other one" is a very common response, but my
experience has told me that learning something new is actually not what
they're afraid of.  They're really just afraid of the switch, which is
unfortunately much harder to overcome.  I'll be the first to say I don't
know how to overcome it, but I think that if you try to counter arguments
about training, you may just back people into a corner and build their
resistance to the switch. I remember a time trying to convince someone that
it was ok to use MySQL in place of MS SQL and they were just using SQL
queries, so no difference from their end. They simply wouldn't do it and I
pointed out that there would be absolutely no difference from their end and
it ended up hurting me case. Just wanted to mention this, hopefully people
will find it helpful.


> Businesses will do what is in their "best" (read: profit-making) 
> interest in the long run.  All that is needed is to have a single 
> shareholder ask the CEO how much money they paid to MS in any given 
> fiscal year at the next stockholders meeting.  This would be quickly 
> followed by a shareholder's lawsuit for fiscal irresponsibility.

This is a hard argument to make.  I know that when you buy computers from
Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. MS office (home or pro, depending on what you're
buying) is usually included in the price.  I'm sure the manufacturer pays
for the OEM license, but they lump it in and I've never known them to ask,
"Would you like office or will notepad do?"  I've done some scratch-build
computer jobs for companies, but they end up paying me for manufacturing any
money they save on Office.  So I guess that just leads us to the question,
how do we actually save businesses money?  The obvious (though maybe not
easiest) answer is to try to get some manufacturers to offer OpenOffice as
an alternative.  I can't think of any other particularly good ideas off the
top of my head, but maybe some people on the list might have ideas.

I hope this helps or at least leads to some good discussion.  I wouldn't
suggest that any of your points are invalid, but I wanted to play devil's
advocate because it's better that I do it than that a prospective user does.

-Daniel Lynn



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Re: [Marketing] It’s hard to beat Off ice king

[Tom Taylor]

True to some extent, but how many folks do 8-10 hours "head - down" into 
Word, Excel, etc?  I would guess that most users are casual, real-time, 
sporadic users who need information formed or transformed for a real 
world process versus a database repository.


Training is a non-issue.  There is enough cross-over knowledge and 
enough Help online that it becomes noise.  If basic usage of a general 
user application can't be taught in less than one day it shouldn't be in 
the marketplace.


Businesses will do what is in their "best" (read: profit-making) 
interest in the long run.  All that is needed is to have a single 
shareholder ask the CEO how much money they paid to MS in any given 
fiscal year at the next stockholders meeting.  This would be quickly 
followed by a shareholder's lawsuit for fiscal irresponsibility.  If 
that doesn't do it, the number of viruses and bugs coming via MS Office 
apps account for innumerable dollars and hours and resources wasted with 
an increasing rather than decreasing trend.


My personal opinion is that if you can't deal with change you probably 
shouldn't be using technology.


Deepankar Datta wrote:


It’s hard to beat Office king
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/business/12870363.htm

"I recently reviewed OpenOffice 2.0 — a free competitor to Microsoft
Office — and found it to be very good. It uses the OpenDocuments format
and opens most Office documents with minor problems.

It’s not that OpenOffice is not good — it’s the problem of convincing
businesses that depend on Microsoft Office. And you’d hear screams by
users who have to learn new applications."



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Re: [Marketing] Fox News Airs Rebuttals

[DC Parris]

On Thu, October 13, 2005 14:36, Steven Shelton wrote:
> Don Parris wrote:
>


>
> What I love is the editor's notes at the end:
>
> "The column _"Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument"_
>  that appeared on
> FOXnews.com Sept. 28 identified author James Prendergast as executive
> director of Americans for Technology Leadership, but failed to disclose
> that Microsoft is a founding member of that organization.
>
> "ATL is a coalition of technology companies, professionals and
> organizations that advocates for limited government regulation of
> technology and for competitive market solutions to technology policy. In
> addition to Microsoft, ATL's founding members include Staples, Inc.,
> CompUSA, Citizens Against Government Waste, CompTIA, Small Business
> Survival Committee, Clarity Consulting, Cityscape Filmworks, Association
> for Competitive Technology and 60Plus Association.
>
> "Mr. Prendergast's affiliation with Microsoft should have been stated
> clearly in the article."
>
>
> On the other hand, we should have expected him to have an agenda the
> moment his column appeared. After all, it *is* Fox News
>
> --

I'm just glad the rebuttals got published.  Had they not, I would have
posted that, too. ;-)

Don
-- 
DC Parris
http://matheteuo.org/  http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/
"Hey man, whatever pickles your file!"


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Re: [Marketing] Fox News Airs Rebuttals

[Steven Shelton]

Don Parris wrote:

Fox News finally aired some of the e-mail rebuttals to James 
Prendergast's article "Massachusetts Should Shut Down OpenDocument:


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,172063,00.html

I didn't recognize the names, and my own e-mail didn't make the cut, 
but I did keep in touch with Fox News until they published this.  My 
own e-mail did get published on LXer last week, in response to 
Adelstein's article about Prendergast's affiliation with ATL.  I guess 
it all came out in the wash, so to speak.  Anyway, I thought the 
e-mails published on Fox News were pretty representative of my own 
points. 



What I love is the editor's notes at the end:

"The column _"Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument"_ 
 that appeared on 
FOXnews.com Sept. 28 identified author James Prendergast as executive 
director of Americans for Technology Leadership, but failed to disclose 
that Microsoft is a founding member of that organization.


"ATL is a coalition of technology companies, professionals and 
organizations that advocates for limited government regulation of 
technology and for competitive market solutions to technology policy. In 
addition to Microsoft, ATL's founding members include Staples, Inc., 
CompUSA, Citizens Against Government Waste, CompTIA, Small Business 
Survival Committee, Clarity Consulting, Cityscape Filmworks, Association 
for Competitive Technology and 60Plus Association.


"Mr. Prendergast's affiliation with Microsoft should have been stated 
clearly in the article."



On the other hand, we should have expected him to have an agenda the 
moment his column appeared. After all, it *is* Fox News


--



Steven Shelton
Twilight Media & Design
www.TwilightMD.com
www.GLOAMING.us
-=-=-=-=-=-
Latest figures show the death rate remaining steady at one per person.
-=-=-=-=-=-



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Re: [Marketing] Re: [native-lang] Happy Birthday OpenOffice.org!

[Louis Suarez-Potts]

hi,
On Oct 13, 2005, at 10:13 AM, Daniel Carrera wrote:





- Louis Suarez-Potts
+ Louis Suarez-Potts (UTC -04h00)



heh. It's academic. My schedule: I just flew in from Stockholm, fly  
to Amsterdam Saturday, return... pause... fly to Taipei then on to  
Japan.  Then back to Toronto for a spell.


Time zone? I laugh at time zones ;-)

Cheers
Louis

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

[Marketing] Re: [native-lang] Happy Birthday OpenOffice.org!

[Daniel Carrera]

Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:
[snip]

Global Marketing Contacts

Jacqueline McNally (UTC +08h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+61 (8) 9474-3021

John McCreesh (UTC +01h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Co-Lead
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+44 (131) 523-9218

Louis Suarez-Potts
OpenOffice.org Community Manager
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+1 (416) 625-3843


- Louis Suarez-Potts
+ Louis Suarez-Potts (UTC -04h00)

Cheers,
Daniel.
--
 /\/`) http://oooauthors.org
/\/_/
   /\/_/   No trees were harmed in the generation of
   \/_/this email. However, a significant number
   /   of electrons were severely inconvenienced.


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[Marketing] Fox News Airs Rebuttals

[Don Parris]

Fox News finally aired some of the e-mail rebuttals to James 
Prendergast's article "Massachusetts Should Shut Down OpenDocument:


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,172063,00.html

I didn't recognize the names, and my own e-mail didn't make the cut, but 
I did keep in touch with Fox News until they published this.  My own 
e-mail did get published on LXer last week, in response to Adelstein's 
article about Prendergast's affiliation with ATL.  I guess it all came 
out in the wash, so to speak.  Anyway, I thought the e-mails published 
on Fox News were pretty representative of my own points.


All in all, a good read!

Regards,
Don

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[Marketing] Happy Birthday OpenOffice.org!

[Louis Suarez-Potts]

All,

FIVE YEARS OF OPENOFFICE.ORG, MORE TO COME

13 October, 2005 - 1400 UTC

On this day, five years ago, the fledgling OpenOffice.org community
provided the first public access to the source code donated from
StarOffice by Sun Microsystems. The OpenOffice.org community had
recently been formed, and declared it's intent "to create, as a
community, the leading international office suite that will run on all
major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data". Since
then, the popularity and functionality of the OpenOffice.org office
productivity suite has grown exponentially and has had a major impact
not only in the greater Open Source community, but for all users of
office productivity software, worldwide.

The last five years have not only seen significant improvements in the
software, but also a notable growth in the community and a number of
organisational changes. These changes include the tremendous growth of
the Native Language Confederation, which now numbers thousands of
contributors, the establishment of a Community Council, and the
Engineering Steering Committee, both of which go a long way to improving
communication and transparency in one of the largest open-source
communities. OpenOffice.org developers and contributors number in the
thousands and they live in every part of the globe. From its early days
to now, OpenOffice.org has been international in scope and mission.

Significant contributions from many organisations including Novell, Red
Hat, Debian, Propylon, Intel and primary sponsor Sun Microsystems,
ensure the ongoing presence and support of OpenOffice.org. Independent
contributors also make a considerable impact in terms of code
development, marketing, translation, documentation and web presence.

The OpenOffice.org community looks forward to the continuing the
expansion, enhancement and innovation of technologies within the suite.

One thing is certain, there is more to come.

Thanks to all,

The OpenOffice.org Community



About OpenOffice.org
The OpenOffice.org Project is an international community of volunteers
and sponsors including founding sponsor and primary contributor, Sun
Microsystems. OpenOffice.org develops, supports, and promotes the
open-source office productivity suite, OpenOffice.org. The project can
be found at http://www.openoffice.org/. OpenOffice.org fully supports
the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) OASIS
Standard and is available on major computing platforms in over 60  
languages.


Global Marketing Contacts

Jacqueline McNally (UTC +08h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+61 (8) 9474-3021

John McCreesh (UTC +01h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Co-Lead
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+44 (131) 523-9218

Louis Suarez-Potts
OpenOffice.org Community Manager
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+1 (416) 625-3843

Copyright © 2005 - OpenOffice.org
---///---


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[Marketing] Kansai Open Source 2005 in Japan

[Takashi Nakamoto]

Hi, All

Kansai Open Source 2005 will be held in Osaka, Japan on Oct 28th and 29th.
These conferences had been held every year to support communication between
developer and users of Open Source Software in Japan especially for those
who live in Kansai region (including Kyoto and Osaka as you know).

We, Japanese Native-Language project, are going to set up a booth and hold
BOF at this event.

In the booth, we distribute 500 CDs including OOo 2.0 rc2 and other
materials and flyers to advertize OOo 2.0. We also demonstrate OOo 2.0 rc2
with some laptop computers. BOF accept various people (from us to
strangers) and we will discuss about various subjects about OOo and our
activity.

In addition, Louis are going to come to this event and have speech about
OOo. Mr. Akiyama takes care of a translation into Japanese.

We defined that this conference is the most importatnt to spread OOo 2.0 in
Japan because 2.0 release is close. We will work hard and try to encourage
attendees to use OOo actively. So don't hesitate to give us advices based on
experience at OOo Conference 2005 if you have. Any comment is welcomed.

There is no English information yet anybody can attend this event for free
and you are welcomed! If you can, please make a brife stop at our booth.

Regards,
---
Takashi Nakamoto
Japanese Native-Language project

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