[marketing-dev] Re: OpenOffice.org to become an Apache Foundation Incubator Project

Hello again... and thank you (everyone) for keeping this whole
conversation so open and dynamic. As I have been listening, one key
question has evolved for me: Where do I fit in? This because, as
previously noted, I am not a coder... my expertise is marketing... and
I got involved with OOo because I LOVE the applications, am a devout
proponent of 'openness' (in comminication, self-governance, etc.), and
I genuinely appreciate worthwhile opportunities to contribute what I
know in the hopes of somehow 'making the world a better place'.

That said, and Bernhard having raised the topic of OOo's "large area
of non-coding community," in context of Simon's encouragement that
non-coders who feel they have been significant conributors to OOo
should feel welcome to request inclusion in the Apache incubator
project, please allow me to share the following:

For starters, I do not consider myself a 'significant contributor' to
OOo, however (and I say this with utmost respect), it seems to me that
this is more of a 'glitch' (or a 'bug' if you will) in 'the management
system' that has been operational in OOo.

About which I rush to add that I do not see this as the 'fault' of any
one person or group of people but more like a natural and (to some
degree) necessary part of the process of organizational growth and
community development, that may (once identified) be corrected and
improved... much the same way y'all engineer 'patches' to fix bugs in
programs.

In this regard I would respectfully suggest that the 'bug' I see is
that while OOo has a comprehensive 'marketing' community, as I am
aware of things the vast majority of the folks who are involved with
and make critical decisions about such projects as graphic design,
news release authoring, website design (user interface) and the
development of promotional strategy are not and have never worked as
professionals in any of these fields.

That is, as I am aware (and please correct me if I am wrong) most of
the folks who are doing this 'marketing' work have vast professional
expertise in coding and the complexities of sophisticated
technological engineering, yet they are 'trying' to do a job
(marketing) which requires an equally sophisticated yet substantively
different set of 'complex engineering skills' and thus things which
should (in terms of state-of-the-art marketing practice) be routinely
done are unknown, trivialized or overlooked.

And again respectfully, I find this especially true in terms of the
OOo marketing community's (lack of?) a comprehensive plan to
'outreach' to the non-coding 'end users' of the programs. That is,
every nuance of marketing (promotional materials, conferences, news
releases) that I have been aware of over these past several  years has
been dedicated to and focused on 'coders'... which I personally see as
a major glitch because it represents to me a 'disconnect' between the
folks who are 'creating the tool' and the folks who are 'using the
tool' to do work... (even though ALL of you use OOo 'to do work',
respectfully, none of us are 'typical end users'.

And my major concern about this is that over the long haul the
'product' will no longer 'meet the needs' of the typical consumer.

But then hey, like I said, I do not see myself as a significant
contributer to OOo. Just offering a personal perspective... (((hugs)))
~Christine
-------------------------------

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Simon Brouwer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Bernhard,
>
> I asked about it in the [email protected] mailing list, where the
> proposal is being discussed, in the thread "OpenOffice and the ASF"
>
> The answers I'm getting are promising. Unfortunately it appears to take a
> short while before messages are visible in the mailing list archives, so
> they cannot be read there yet.
>
> In any case in Apache there are several prominent members who have never
> committed a line of code, and it should be no problem to be recognized for
> contribution that "does not have to be checked in".
>
> So if you feel you are a significant contributor to OpenOffice.org in any
> way you should be welcome to add your name in the table of initial
> committers. I also recommend subscribing to [email protected].
>
> Best regards
> Simon
>
>> Please make sure that Apache Software Foundation gets notice about the
>> large area of non-coding community in our projects.
>>
>> As far as I know, their meritocratic system is only based on code
>> contribution, so none of the other community members will be able to become
>> part of the OpenOffice Apache project or the Apache community, if they don't
>> change the way they handle contributions.
>>
>> So if you start to be involved in their decision making process, please
>> describe them the broadness of our community.
>>
>> While Rob Weir (IBM) seems to have an interest in dividing the community
>> in a Apache based coding community and a different supporting one (outside
>> Apache, no mention about their infrastructure), I don't think that this
>> should be the way to go.
>>
>> The question of giving up LGPL for the Apache license might be a marketing
>> topic too:
>>
>> As this would allow companies to just take the code and include their
>> patches in their own commercial product only, support of the common code
>> basis might be reduced in future.
>>
>> ... Especially as open source enthusiastic developers (mostly independent
>> or related to Linux distributions) have told us over and over again that
>> they feel exploited by such commercial interests without getting something
>> back...
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Bernhard
>
>
> --
> Vriendelijke groet,
> Simon Brouwer.
>
> | http://nl.openoffice.org | http://www.opentaal.org |
>
> --
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