Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Andrea Pescetti]

Italo Vignoli wrote:
> On 04/24/2011 01:13 PM, Riemer Thalen wrote:
> > - Three times I tried to introduce OOo in organisations I that hired me.
> > Three times I failed. Reason number one: OOo/LibO lacks "normal view" ...
> There are many examples like this one, of user requests which have been 
> ignored for years by OOo developers.

There are indeed examples, this is undeniable. In this specific case,
however, the OOo developers spent a significant amount of time to fix
preliminary issues, leading to 20,000 lines of code that have been
recently committed to OOo (and thus have been, or will be soon,
integrated into LibreOffice too), so in this specific case the OOo
developers haven't ignored the problem, they just started solving (huge)
subproblems.

Regards,
  Andrea.


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Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Italo Vignoli]

On 04/24/2011 01:13 PM, Riemer Thalen wrote:


- Three times I tried to introduce OOo in organisations I that hired me.
Three times I failed. Reason number one: OOo/LibO lacks "normal view" and/or
"hide white space". Many people within  the companies found scrolling
through upper and lower margins so annoying they did not want to use OOo.


There are many examples like this one, of user requests which have been 
ignored for years by OOo developers. We are trying to fix the process 
but it takes time.



- Calc was not adopted because some things work differently from MSO. A
litte "switcher's guide" could have prevented the rejection. That is: if you
care enough about your potential customers to find out what bothers them and
accept that maybe - just maybe - you don't know everything that matters.


Calc vs Excel is another area where there are many information, but 
sometimes features are difficult to implement. Developers are working at 
a new engine, which should solve many problems and improve speed of 
calculations.


What I wanted to stress is that we already have many feedback from 
potential users (we don't have customers), but not on the marketing 
mailing list (which is supposed to cover promotion).


Of course, we will never know enough.


- Students dropped OOo for another reason. Documents they composed in OOo
and saved as doc-files at home, were not printed in the proper layout
using the university Windows/MSO computers. Maybe their settings were wrong,
maybe they made stupid mistakes, but they had a very quick solution: they
dropped OOo and were very vocal about it.


This is usually independent from software (the problem exists either way 
you see it: MS Office > OOo and OOo > MS Office)), and is connected to 
configuration, printers and fonts. The solution (using the same font on 
every PC, configuring the same printer on every PC, and so on) is easily 
available, but people keeps blaming the software.


If these guys had written on the user@ mailing list, they would have 
received the answer in a matter of minutes. We have placed articles on 
this specific problem, but people do not read (well, some do).



Some time ago, Ubuntu/Canonical ran a "100 paper cuts" campaign. Users could
report little things that annoyed them and could be fixed easily. I think
LibO should follow that example (apart from the former users survey).


This would indeed be a good idea, but we have not enough bandwidth to 
implement it. We are volunteers, and make use of our spare time to work 
for TDF. Each one of us manages his own agenda and priorities.


If this is a high priority for you, you are welcome to step in and 
contribute. Each one of us has already enough high priority activities 
to perform, and can't add another one.


Best regards, Italo

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Information by Users (was: Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice)

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Riemer, hi Italo, all!

This discussion starts to touch topics related to User Experience - and
since I feel very committed to UX, let's add some thoughts ...

Am Sonntag, den 24.04.2011, 13:13 +0200 schrieb Riemer Thalen:
> Hi Italo,
> 
> Good Estern to you too. I was not talking about features. Somewhere in the
> menus they are all there. I was refering to reasons not to adopt and reasons
> to dump LibO. Those are not necessarily missing features.

As you know, there can be different reasons for not using a product -
whatever "use" means in this context. Do we talk about admins, real
users, integrators, ... let's assume end-users. There has been quite a
lot of research about usefulness, usability, enjoyment, aesthetics,
image, prestige ... so let's focus.

For end-users, we can achieve a lot by improving "how the current
functionality works", and not by "what functionality is missing". Two
completely different examples:
  * Template: LibreOffice has full featured template functionality
for almost all applications - and ships some. But its hard to
start with LibO because they lack good quality.
  * Shadow: LibreOffice supports to draw shadows in Draw/Impress,
but are they looking good (default)? Can they easily be
adjusted?

> I think those complaints are important because "behind every complainer or
> quitter there are 10 people not contented either".

[... different examples why LibO has not been used ... ]

> I think little things like these are extremely important. As architect Mies
> van der Rohe put it: "God is in the details".

True.


> Some time ago, Ubuntu/Canonical ran a "100 paper cuts" campaign. Users could
> report little things that annoyed them and could be fixed easily. I think
> LibO should follow that example (apart from the former users survey).

Well, our developers asked for such kind of fixes - so its possible to
provide such feedback although there hasn't been an initiative for that
yet.

But, in comparison to Ubuntu/Canonical (who pays some developers, even
full-time user experience guys) who decides that the proposal is an
usability issue, and does not relate to the personal preference of an
individual? Some of those questions can be answered by experience
(usability), or data (being carefully handled).

By the way, during the OOo times, a similar effort was called "Better
Defaults".


> But you know best, so I guess it is not going to happen.

Mmh, here I'd like to cite Italo: "the community needs a helping hand".

Example: Lately, the OOo UX team used a lot of sources to gain
knowledge. One example: The "OOo Uninstallation Survey" which explicitly
asks for the reasons to quit via different questions. I'll skip the
details, but you may know that analyzing hundreds of thousands text
fields is ... much work. (Chance to do that via automatism is close to
zero, and I've never met a computer linguist who provided a helping
hand.) If you want to have a look at an example I've created some time
ago, see [1].

But, of course, you can start with more simple things. Since we've
started LibO:
  * we asked for help about a brainstorming site (which will provide
some numbers for prioritization) --> no help yet (because: the
few available guys focus on the more important infrastructure
for this project)
  * we proposed to set up a survey server for running questionnaires
--> no help yet (because: see above)
  * we asked the developers to keep the user feedback data component
in LibO (kept), but we miss the back-end to collect usage data
in LibreOffice --> technical problem, legal issues
  * the developers worked out a concept to let less experienced
users submit high-quality bug reports --> in work

So, I totally understand your feedback ... about missing information and
background. But I hope you also got the impression that we are very
aware of that. Thus, it doesn't help our users to highlight the issue
several times :-) We simply need help in doing things.

As a first step, you may reply to my earlier invitation helping with
small surveys ... this would be a first step:
http://www.mail-archive.com/marketing@libreoffice.org/msg02820.html

> Bye,
> Riemer

See you (here, or on the Design Team mailing list,
Christoph

[1]
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/f/f4/2009-05-26_OOoUserSurvey2009_Export_CommentsAboutImpress_Cleaned.odt

> 2011/4/24 Italo Vignoli 
> 
> > On 4/24/11 2:31 AM, Riemer Thalen wrote:
> >
> >  To achieve this, the developers and policy makers need to look outside the
> >> community. Test users and focus groups of dedicated users can name new
> >> functions that are "nice to have". IMHO, now it is more important to give
> >> priority to the missing features that average non-committed users "need to
> >> have". To identify those features, you'll need to ask former users. That
> >> was
> >> the initianal point I tried to make. It turns out the opinion l

Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Riemer Thalen]

Hi Italo,

Good Estern to you too. I was not talking about features. Somewhere in the
menus they are all there. I was refering to reasons not to adopt and reasons
to dump LibO. Those are not necessarily missing features.

I think those complaints are important because "behind every complainer or
quitter there are 10 people not contented either".

Some facts from my own experience:

- Three times I tried to introduce OOo in organisations I that hired me.
Three times I failed. Reason number one: OOo/LibO lacks "normal view" and/or
"hide white space". Many people within  the companies found scrolling
through upper and lower margins so annoying they did not want to use OOo.
Maybe that is just a minor feature in your eyes, but it stoppend OOo at the
gate, three times out of three. Matthias Bauer is working on that now. God
bless him.

- Calc was not adopted because some things work differently from MSO. A
litte "switcher's guide" could have prevented the rejection. That is: if you
care enough about your potential customers to find out what bothers them and
accept that maybe - just maybe - you don't know everything that matters.
(Sure, trainers could have done wonders. But home users don't want to be
trained. They just want it to work the way they expect.)

- Students dropped OOo for another reason. Documents they composed in OOo
and saved as doc-files at home, were not printed in the proper layout
using the university Windows/MSO computers. Maybe their settings were wrong,
maybe they made stupid mistakes, but they had a very quick solution: they
dropped OOo and were very vocal about it.

I think little things like these are extremely important. As architect Mies
van der Rohe put it: "God is in the details".

Some time ago, Ubuntu/Canonical ran a "100 paper cuts" campaign. Users could
report little things that annoyed them and could be fixed easily. I think
LibO should follow that example (apart from the former users survey).

But you know best, so I guess it is not going to happen.

Bye,
Riemer


2011/4/24 Italo Vignoli 

> On 4/24/11 2:31 AM, Riemer Thalen wrote:
>
>  To achieve this, the developers and policy makers need to look outside the
>> community. Test users and focus groups of dedicated users can name new
>> functions that are "nice to have". IMHO, now it is more important to give
>> priority to the missing features that average non-committed users "need to
>> have". To identify those features, you'll need to ask former users. That
>> was
>> the initianal point I tried to make. It turns out the opinion leaders in
>> the
>> community do not agree with me. So be it.
>>
>
> Former users, or people who decide to switch back from OOo/LO to MS Office,
> are a very small group, and each one of them has a different reason. Office
> suites share over 90% of their features, and so it is very difficult to
> identify "missing" ones.
>
> Most people use not more than 5% of features, and power users get to 20%. A
> tiny minority goes beyond this threshold. Deciding on features because we
> assume that people base their decision on features is wrong or misleading.
>
> Switching from MS Office to OOo/LO usually happens because of the price. In
> the majority of cases, users continue to use both suites for quite a long
> time, until they decide for one. Many people continue to use both forever,
> maybe one in the office and the other at home.
>
> Companies switch from MS Office to OOo/LO because of the better TCO, and
> the very few that switch back (their names are on MS web site, and MS has
> even made a YouTube video out of them) decide to do so because they made a
> wrong assumption and prolly overlooked factors like the internal workflow.
>
> Even the Microsoft video does not use features as the main reason to switch
> back to MS Office, just because the main reasons is not based on features.
>
> Software adoption is based on features for programs focused on a specific
> task, and even in this case there are exceptions: FreeHand (Macromedia) and
> Illustrator (Adobe) have fighted for years in several markets in order to
> overtake each other, but for weird reasons (as they have both made extensive
> research to discover that often the choice was because: "I like it more")
> they have never been able to achieve their objective.
>
> Italy was a FreeHand market, and adding FreeHand features to Illustrator
> never worked. France was an Illustrator market, and adding Illustrator
> features to FreeHand never worked. Graphic designers were just sticking with
> their original choice.
>
> Anyway, today office suites share 95% of the same feature set. The
> situation was different in the past, and at that time Sun did several
> efforts to know the missing features (this led to OOo 2.0, which was a
> feature release). It was back in 2004, but since 2007 OOo has steadily
> increased its market share exactly because the feature problem was solved.
>
> Just a few points to end the message:
>
> 1. MS has a yearly global turnove

Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Italo Vignoli]

On 4/24/11 2:31 AM, Riemer Thalen wrote:


To achieve this, the developers and policy makers need to look outside the
community. Test users and focus groups of dedicated users can name new
functions that are "nice to have". IMHO, now it is more important to give
priority to the missing features that average non-committed users "need to
have". To identify those features, you'll need to ask former users. That was
the initianal point I tried to make. It turns out the opinion leaders in the
community do not agree with me. So be it.


Former users, or people who decide to switch back from OOo/LO to MS 
Office, are a very small group, and each one of them has a different 
reason. Office suites share over 90% of their features, and so it is 
very difficult to identify "missing" ones.


Most people use not more than 5% of features, and power users get to 
20%. A tiny minority goes beyond this threshold. Deciding on features 
because we assume that people base their decision on features is wrong 
or misleading.


Switching from MS Office to OOo/LO usually happens because of the price. 
In the majority of cases, users continue to use both suites for quite a 
long time, until they decide for one. Many people continue to use both 
forever, maybe one in the office and the other at home.


Companies switch from MS Office to OOo/LO because of the better TCO, and 
the very few that switch back (their names are on MS web site, and MS 
has even made a YouTube video out of them) decide to do so because they 
made a wrong assumption and prolly overlooked factors like the internal 
workflow.


Even the Microsoft video does not use features as the main reason to 
switch back to MS Office, just because the main reasons is not based on 
features.


Software adoption is based on features for programs focused on a 
specific task, and even in this case there are exceptions: FreeHand 
(Macromedia) and Illustrator (Adobe) have fighted for years in several 
markets in order to overtake each other, but for weird reasons (as they 
have both made extensive research to discover that often the choice was 
because: "I like it more") they have never been able to achieve their 
objective.


Italy was a FreeHand market, and adding FreeHand features to Illustrator 
never worked. France was an Illustrator market, and adding Illustrator 
features to FreeHand never worked. Graphic designers were just sticking 
with their original choice.


Anyway, today office suites share 95% of the same feature set. The 
situation was different in the past, and at that time Sun did several 
efforts to know the missing features (this led to OOo 2.0, which was a 
feature release). It was back in 2004, but since 2007 OOo has steadily 
increased its market share exactly because the feature problem was solved.


Just a few points to end the message:

1. MS has a yearly global turnover of 60 billion dollars. The Office 
Products Division has a yearly global turnover of 25 billion dollars 
(not quarterly) which is flat or slightly decreasing (if I remember 
well, it used to be 28 or 30 in the recent past).


2. Inside a community, no one is an opinion leader. Each one makes his 
contribution based on his competences, and this makes some people more 
visible than others, but this is just a matter of life. A community is 
based on teamwork, and each tiny bit of work is very important.


3. "The journey is the reward" (Steve Jobs, in a completely different 
environment, but for a similar objective). Communities move slowly, and 
results come in slowly. Our community is very mature, because over the 
past 10 years we have seen happening all it could happen. We are here 
for the long run (the marathon) and not the fiscal quarter.


Best regards, and happy Easter break, Italo

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Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Riemer Thalen]

Italo, thanks for your elaborate explanation. You made a lot clear to me,
although I do not agree with everything you wrote and I do think every
community needs fresh participants every now and then to shake the tree and
challenge accepted wisdom.

Jon, thanks for your consideration. Personally, I took no offence in Italo's
copying. I mailed to him privately because I did not want to bother the
recipients of this list with my disagreement with Italo. If Italo thinks the
conversation is of general interest, I am fine with him publishing it.

I also agree with Jon's stance on LibO's ambitions. I feel that things
everybody needs and uses, should not be owned by a single commercial party
that makes big bucks from it. So I would like the whole world to use open
standards and free open software.

This vision implies that LibO be used by all people, not just the ones that
think hard about FOSS, have strong opinions about its philosophy and feel
part of an idealistic community. I'd love to see LibO be used the same way
Firefox or Chrome are -- because they are superior and free.

To achieve this, the developers and policy makers need to look outside the
community. Test users and focus groups of dedicated users can name new
functions that are "nice to have". IMHO, now it is more important to give
priority to the missing features that average non-committed users "need to
have". To identify those features, you'll need to ask former users. That was
the initianal point I tried to make. It turns out the opinion leaders in the
community do not agree with me. So be it.


2011/4/24 Jon Hamkins 

> On 04/23/2011 03:21 PM, Italo Vignoli wrote:
>
>> On 4/23/11 10:07 PM, Riemer Thalen wrote:
>>
>
> I agree 99% with Italo, and lurking here for 6 months I have seen the great
> job he has been doing.  However, there are two things I don't think are
> quite right.
>
> First, I don't think it is good etiquette to respond to private mail to a
> public mailing list, unless one is reasonably sure that the original sender
> wouldn't mind.  I sympathize with Italo's reasons for doing so, but still,
> I'm not sure I would have gone public with someone's private complaints.
>
> [...]
>
>
>  Italo, I will unsubscribe and bother you nomore. I trust you will crush
>>> MSO with a free top-notch product and superior marketing.
>>>
>>
>> We will never crush MS Office, because we do not need to crush any
>> product. We believe that FOSS has a superior model, which is good for
>> many but not for everyone, and we are happy with our choice.
>>
>
> I think the health of our community depends inherently on more people
> choosing to use LibO.  This means we should not be happy with a never-ending
> stream of people dropping LibO and choosing MSO because of some feature.
>  Linux, perhaps the best example of a wildly successful open source project,
> was promoted by Linus Torvalds with the tongue-in-cheek goal of "world
> domination" -- linux wanted more desktop share.  And we should want more
> office suite share.  That is the best way to grow the LibO community and to
> keep LibO development, support, and marketing areas vibrant.
>
> Jon
>
>
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Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Paulo de Souza Lima]

2011/4/23 Italo Vignoli 




> You have probably received a message from Olivier Hallot, explaining the
> situation with further details.
>
> The brand BROffice is owned by an individual, and we must switch to
> LibreOffice now, without any goodwill transfer, for reasons that are
> probably difficult to understand but cannot be discussed. The owner does
> allow to use the BROffice brand any more.
>
> Of course we know that the transition is going to be difficult, and that
> there are challenges which are difficult to overcome. This is the main
> challenge of volunteers: going against the unknown, or against all odds. It
> is an unvaluable lesson for every individual, because it helps to understand
> the value of working together against the selfishness of fighting against
> each other.
>

Ops! It's really necessary to clarify this point, once for all...
Olivier can say what he wants as an individual, but not in
the community's name. I do not want to expose the community's disagreements,
but the real reasons why we decided switch to LibreOffice are below, and
Olivier did not take part on the decision, unfortunately.

1 - The* *brand BrOffice was too warn because of the fightings inside the
NGO BrOffice.org. The community has no problem in accepting the brand
BrOffice, which belongs to a person we really trust, Claudio F. Filho. But
the fact is BrOffice has accomplished its mission and it isn't necessary at
all, and Claudio agrees with that.
2 - Once TDF and LibreOffice were created, there are no reason to maintain
the brand BrOffice, because we no longer have property issues. So, we
decided to switch in order to became alligned with the international
project.
3 - The brand BrOffice still causes a lot of misunderstanding in Brazilian
users. A lot of people just can't understand why there are LibreOffice,
OpenOffice and BrOffice. So, we are taking one of the variables out of the
problem.



Best regards, Italo
>
> --
> Italo Vignoli
> italo.vign...@gmail.com
> mobile +39.348.5653829
> VoIP +39.02.320621813
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>
>
Rgds.
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Ubuntu User #28729

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Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Jon Hamkins]

On 04/23/2011 03:21 PM, Italo Vignoli wrote:

On 4/23/11 10:07 PM, Riemer Thalen wrote:


I agree 99% with Italo, and lurking here for 6 months I have seen the 
great job he has been doing.  However, there are two things I don't 
think are quite right.


First, I don't think it is good etiquette to respond to private mail to 
a public mailing list, unless one is reasonably sure that the original 
sender wouldn't mind.  I sympathize with Italo's reasons for doing so, 
but still, I'm not sure I would have gone public with someone's private 
complaints.


[...]


Italo, I will unsubscribe and bother you nomore. I trust you will crush
MSO with a free top-notch product and superior marketing.


We will never crush MS Office, because we do not need to crush any
product. We believe that FOSS has a superior model, which is good for
many but not for everyone, and we are happy with our choice.


I think the health of our community depends inherently on more people 
choosing to use LibO.  This means we should not be happy with a 
never-ending stream of people dropping LibO and choosing MSO because of 
some feature.  Linux, perhaps the best example of a wildly successful 
open source project, was promoted by Linus Torvalds with the 
tongue-in-cheek goal of "world domination" -- linux wanted more desktop 
share.  And we should want more office suite share.  That is the best 
way to grow the LibO community and to keep LibO development, support, 
and marketing areas vibrant.


 Jon

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Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Italo Vignoli]

I am copying the marketing and the discuss mailing lists, because I do 
not think that private messages are a good sign of community work, and 
because you have raised several questions that deserve an answer, 
especially for those not familiar with TDF.


I apologize in advance for the length of the message.

On 4/23/11 10:07 PM, Riemer Thalen wrote:


But before I unsubscribe I would really appreciate you answering a few
questions that still bother me.


Why you should unsubscribe. We need people enthusiastic about marketing, 
but we also need people willing to learn how to work inside the 
community. So, my intention was not to throw you away, but to tell you 
that working together inside the community - and accepting all the 
peculiarities of the community - is the best solution, and the most 
"profitable" for the community.


Anyway, I'm happy to answer you questions.


Given the fact that OOo/LibO is free and MSO costs a lot of money, do
you think OOo did a splendid job as product developers and marketers in
the last ten years?


Sun did a terrible job, probably the worst possible marketing job of all 
times. I have been criticizing Sun inside the community and also in 
private meetings for years.


The community of volunteers, on the contrary, did a fabulous job. If you 
think that with a limited number of people proficient in marketing, with 
a workforce devoting their spare time to the project and with a budget 
of 0 (zero) the community has managed to grow from nowhere to 15 per 
cent market share worldwide and over 20 per cent in some countries, the 
result is amazing.


FOSS is not supposed to reach market dominance using the same tools of 
commercial companies (otherwise it would not be FOSS), but to educate 
users willing to discover the advantages of freedom in software.



If you really want to compete with MSO, shouldn't you be working for the
market rather than the community?


We are not working for the community, we are working to grow the 
community from the community. It is true that many users are and will 
never be community members, but we cannot forget that without the help 
of the community a software like LibreOffice would not exhist.


In addition, we do not want to compete with MS Office in the same way 
that Microsoft is competing with us. We want to offer an alternative to 
users, but if they feel that MS Office is a good solution for them and 
are willing to pay the associated costs, then we are happy as much as 
these users are happy in using MS Office.



Is it possible the community focus and the neglect of market orientation
are important factors LibO still is no match for MSO?


LibreOffice will never match MS Office, because it lacks the same 
resources. It is already amazing how much we are doing without a real 
budget and without any paid employee, against a company with a budget of 
several hundred million dollars. This is a matter of fact, and we accept 
the situation.


The progress of FOSS projects is necessarily slow, in comparison with 
commercial ones. FOSS simply belongs to a different environment, which 
is based on ethics, mutual respect, reciprocal trust and support, and a 
number of other reason which are frequently specific of each individual 
(and you will discover them only with time and patience).



Last quarter (!), MS made a 6 billion (!) profit on MSO. How come when
there is a free alternative? Put bluntly, the world is paying 24 billion
dollars MSO tax for not having to use LibO. Isn't that something the
community should worry about?


As I have told you before, we are not worried by MS results, although we 
follow them with a great deal of attention. Therefore, we know that MS - 
although it still makes an awful amount of money from MS Office - is 
worried by FOSS to the point of mentioning it in the Q-10 form they 
provide to the SEC, because their turnover has not been growing at the 
same pace of the PC market for several years.



Why aren't those "people with a decent
marketing background" more vocal? All marketing posts are about logo's
and folders. Don't you think that improving the product and meeting user
demands should be the main topic?


If you look further than the mailing lists, you would discover that we 
have a respectable coverage on media in many countries (in some cases, 
on par with MS Office), thanks to several people inside the community, 
and that we are - of course - discussing about the future developments 
of the product.


A FOSS project based on a community has very little in common with a 
commercial software project. Judging from a single mailing list is not 
enough, and is limited and misleading.



Do you really think product specifications should be determined by
technical developers and geeks? Or do you agree that the only judge of
what consitutes a "good application" is the average user nobody seems to
be interested in?


First of all, we are the first users of our software, and we do care 
about ourselves. In

Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Andrea Pescetti]

Riemer Thalen wrote:
> Dropping the name BrOffice without a thorough three year goodwill transfer
> would almost certainly be the most catastrophical decision ever made by the
> BrOffice community... Please, think it over.

The Brazilian community is very aware of the strength of its brand, to
the point that they never thought about reverting the name to
"OpenOffice.org" even when the legal issues that had led to the name
"BrOffice.org" (basically, someone had registered the OpenOffice.org
trademark in Brazil) were over.

So if they now decided to abandon the BrOffice brand in favor of the
LibreOffice brand, I'm totally sure they have very carefully evaluated
all consequences and have a detailed plan and a precise marketing
strategy for it: what can seem disrupting will prove not to be so.

I see now that Italo has just answered in detail, so I'll stop here.

Regards,
  Andrea.


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Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Paulo de Souza Lima]

2011/4/23 Italo Vignoli 

> On 4/23/11 6:41 PM, Riemer Thalen wrote:
>
>  OK, here is the technical side of the marketing issue.
>>
>
> Hi Riemer, apart from the fact that inside TDF there are already several
> people with a decent marketing background, not only in the general
> marketplace but specifically in the free software ecosystem, your email
> shows little or no knowledge of the BROffice community.
>
> Communities behave in a different - and sometimes weird - way, in
> comparison with the commercial marketplace. Also marketing is very
> different, and looking at technical manuals - something I would not suggest
> before having at least some "hands on" experience - might be misleading,
> when you have to deal with free software.
>
> Your enthusiasm is fantastic, but - believe me, as I have been in marketing
> of technology products for the last 30 years, and of free software for the
> last eight - the community needs a helping hand and not a marketing lesson
> (I am teaching marketing and communications at several Italian universities,
> and in the past I have been a visiting professor in a couple of US
> universities).
>
> I refer also to your previous message about running a survey to ask about
> features to people not using LibreOffice. Some past experiences show that
> these surveys are of little or no help (and sometimes they might even be
> misleading).
>
> Apart from a very small group of people, software users do not have a clear
> idea of the development process, and therefore they do not know what to ask.
> The same applies to hardware users. Unfortunately, those who know which
> features to ask are the so called "power users", i.e. those who already know
> and use the product on a regular basis.
>
> In any case, not even Apple - I remember your example - is using user
> surveys to determine new features (I have been a consultant to Apple for
> nine years, and I know several people they contract for testing prototypes).
> Sometimes they use focus groups.
>
> Sorry for the lengthy answer. Best regards, Italo
>
>
I totally agree with your point of view.

Cheers.


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> mobile +39.348.5653829
> VoIP +39.02.320621813
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Re: Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Italo Vignoli]

On 4/23/11 6:41 PM, Riemer Thalen wrote:


OK, here is the technical side of the marketing issue.


Hi Riemer, apart from the fact that inside TDF there are already several 
people with a decent marketing background, not only in the general 
marketplace but specifically in the free software ecosystem, your email 
shows little or no knowledge of the BROffice community.


Communities behave in a different - and sometimes weird - way, in 
comparison with the commercial marketplace. Also marketing is very 
different, and looking at technical manuals - something I would not 
suggest before having at least some "hands on" experience - might be 
misleading, when you have to deal with free software.


Your enthusiasm is fantastic, but - believe me, as I have been in 
marketing of technology products for the last 30 years, and of free 
software for the last eight - the community needs a helping hand and not 
a marketing lesson (I am teaching marketing and communications at 
several Italian universities, and in the past I have been a visiting 
professor in a couple of US universities).


I refer also to your previous message about running a survey to ask 
about features to people not using LibreOffice. Some past experiences 
show that these surveys are of little or no help (and sometimes they 
might even be misleading).


Apart from a very small group of people, software users do not have a 
clear idea of the development process, and therefore they do not know 
what to ask. The same applies to hardware users. Unfortunately, those 
who know which features to ask are the so called "power users", i.e. 
those who already know and use the product on a regular basis.


In any case, not even Apple - I remember your example - is using user 
surveys to determine new features (I have been a consultant to Apple for 
nine years, and I know several people they contract for testing 
prototypes). Sometimes they use focus groups.


Sorry for the lengthy answer. Best regards, Italo

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VoIP +39.02.320621813
skype italovignoli

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Fwd: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be called LibreOffice

[Riemer Thalen]

Be carefull guys!!

Doing away with the brandname BrOffice might turn out to be the most costly
-- even fatal -- decision you ever made!
Make sure you implement a three year period for "goodwill transfer"!

OK, here is the technical side of the marketing issue.
For many companies, their brandname is their most valuabele asset. The brand
ties users/consumers to the product. Consumers ask for a specific brand
because they know and trust that brand. For the company, that constant
demand for their brand is their life line. (Could you imagine Microsoft
"rebranding" Windows to Fenestras? Their shares would plummet...)

In commerical markets, brand names can be extremely valuable. Dumping a
brand name may cost millions of dollars in lost market share and revenue.

(Remember Google bought YouTube for six billion? Google could easily have
set up a video site of their own for a fraction of the costs. But everyone
typed "youtube.com" in the browser. So Google decided to buy the brand name
/ domain youtube.com for 6 billion. That's how valuable a brandname can
be...)

The Brazilian community does not want to make many. But they do want to
retain their user base, their name recognition and their reputation. So,
dropping the brand name BrOffice is not something you should without
carefull consideration and the apporpriate measures.

My suggestion (which is simply from the marketing text books) would be a
three step approach:
Phase 1: Link the unknown name LibreOffice to the established brand
BrOffice. E.g. add a extra tagline like "BrOffice is the Brazilian edition
of the LibreOffice productivity suite." Use this for a minimum of one and a
half year.
Phase 2: Use both names next to each other. Change "BrOffice" into
"BrOffice/LibreOffice". Use this for another one and a half year.
Phase 3: Finally, make LibreOffice the dominant name. On your website and in
publications, assure the public it is still the same product. Add a line
like "The Brazilian edition of LibreOffice was formerly called BrOffice".

The 3.4 release of LibreOffice could be a good moment to start phase 1
(adding the tagline "BrOffice is the Brazilian edition of the LibreOffice
productivity suite.") It is not the right moment to drop the established
brand name.
Dropping the name BrOffice without a thorough three year goodwill transfer
would almost certainly be the most catastrophical decision ever made by the
BrOffice community...

Please, think it over.

Kind regards,

Riemer Thalen
marketing consultant


-- Forwarded message --
From: Luiz 
Date: 2011/4/23
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] BrOffice product and community will be
called LibreOffice
To: marketing@libreoffice.org


Hi,

>> The Brazilian free software community is proud to announce that the
>> BrOffice product will be called  LibreOffice, which has an international
>> community of which we, Brazilian volunteers are active participants and
>> contributors.
>>
> I know that BrOffice has gained quite a good public recognition in Brazil,
> so this step is not easy for you.
>
This issue has been worked here a few months ago. I think personally
that the episode involving the extinction of the NGOs contributed to the
discussion. A press release made by us ensured that nothing would
happen and reassured the market. So the time is right. I do not think we
have any damage and there was a bias to adopt the name LibreOffice here.
> For LibreOffice it's a great opportunity to show the strength of our
> international community and to embrace the people contributing to LibO
> in Brazil under our own name.
>
> This will strengthen our worldwide public recognition to a measurable
> degree!
>
Yes, that's the idea!!
>> The office suite BrOffice still remain with this name in version 3.3.x,
>> and finally replaced the name from versions 3.4.x. As for the other
>> projects developed by Brazilian community as a portal, mailing lists,
>> magazine, among many other initiatives already start to adopt the name
>> "LibreOffice" in all his works.
>>
>>
> This should be part of the international press release when LibO 3.4.0
will
> be announced.
>
I agree!!
> Perhaps we should add a press notice and or an offiicial TDF blog entry on
> this topic already now to welcome our co-workers and co-users under
> our common name.
>
> What do you think?
>
I think its very good. If there is interest we can translate the post
published on our website:
http://libreoffice.org.br/agora_o_bro_chama_libo (in Portuguese of Brazil).

Regards,

Luiz Oliveira

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