Marketing plan draft: Discussion about options available, and timetable
Lothar Becker, Chairman of The Document Foundation’s Board of Directors, writes:
Dear community,
thanks for the feedback on the marketing plan draft via different channels so far. We want to let you know and have you take part, as the board is discussing the options now available with that draft.
In the meantime, some more feedback will be integrated in the document already and will be published on next Monday. This is still not the last chance for a change for version 7.0.0, but we will reach that point soon.
The last change for all strings and tags would be possible the latest by Monday, July 20. With some preliminary phase for decision making of the board the public feedback phase on all this will end by the time of the next public board call, i.e. Friday, July 17, 1300 Berlin time.
What are the realistic options so far:
- Variant 1: Implementation of a marketing plan would be postponed to V7.1, as no UI changes can be made in minor releases. This would imply a longer discussion period.
OR
- Variant 2: Implementation of the marketing plan draft with V7.0.0 with flavour tags.
At the moment it looks like, this would be called “Community Edition” (in change to the RC1) and with the introduction of the umbrella brand “Enterprise Edition” with explanations and pointer to ecosystem partner offerings.
The feedback here we still need until the mentioned Friday, July 17, 1300 Berlin time is about all strings and tags (e.g. “Community Edition”), you can give that on the board-discuss mailing list, or on Bugzilla.
OR
- Variant 3: As variant 2 above and further tweak all strings and tags for V7.1, after gaining experience and more feedback with it from V7.0.
We encourage all the community to bring in your opinions further, also on the public board call (Friday, July 17, 1300 Berlin time), and all the other channels. Please be aware, that any sort of decision of the board must be made the latest at the dates stated above.
Thanks so much for your input so far! All the best, and keep healthy!
Lothar,
Chairman of the Board
It is worth considering that the danger or dithering can be worse than acting, is it worth causing such discussions and bickering for an additional 6 months? If the decision is such that the name is changed to ‘Community Edition’ then that would appear to me to be an acceptable compromise.
The strategy of having these two conceptually different versions (Community and Enterprise) is sound in my mind. Or else you could well find yourself in the same position as now for a long time and that does not serve the long term strategy of the DF or the development requirements of the application.
You risk unnecessary delay and not showing leadership. You will never be able to please everyone with the strategy that you choose, but making a decision shows leadership by choosing and sticking with a decision.
I would vote for Variant 2.
I would prefer the name of Community Edition too.
“Community Edition” also for me
Calling something “Community Edition” does not give a positive impression. You might as well call it the “Lesser Edition” or “Crippled Edition”. That is what companies do when they open-source a restricted subset of their commercial product. It is not something a Free Software project should even consider.
Is there a Linux Community Edition? An Apache Community Edition? A PostgreSQL Community Edition? The answer is “No”, because these are not subsets of a commercial product. They are the canonical reference projects that any derivative commercial products would be based on. It is the derivative products that must append some diminutive suffix or permutation of the original name, based on the trademark policies of the source project.
Let LibreOffice stay LibreOffice, and let any commercial derivatives deal with naming issues of their products on their own time.
I do agree with you.
Just keep LibreOffice LibreOffice.
The swap from MSO to LO is a very difficult step for any (as a person, a small or large enterprises), and first of all, you have to convince the decision-maker. And for a decision-maker, ‘Personal edition’ or ‘Community edition’ will give a definitive feeling of cheap, low advanced, limited, while just ‘LibreOffice’ will be more rewarding. Going to an ‘Enterprise edition’ is a step further.
I also agree with this. just let LibreOffice as it is, and let the comercial parts deal with the issue.
I’m in the academia, and I have been using LibreOffice (and OpenOffice before that) daily for more than 10 years.
What really concerns me is that this new marketing strategy might lead to the differentiation, or branching, of the code base of the regular (“community”) and enterprise editions, with the former being stripped down in terms of functional features.
One reader in another forum (https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2020/07/07/libreoffice_community_protests_at_introduction/) rightfully said that the “Worst thing they can do is to split it into personal and commercial editions and reserve highly useful and desirable features for commercial users only”. And herein in this blog, a reader (Mark S) also expressed his concern that a “community” edition might actually end up being a “Lesser Edition or Crippled Edition”. His considerations about an eventual “community” edition being a subset of the “enterprise” edition are also highly pertinent.
So TDF should clearly make a statement about this issue, informing users whether the “community” and enterprise editions would continue to be exactly the same in terms of features, and that the two editions would simultaneously receive the same updates and bug fixes. It would also be extremely desirable if the two editions had exactly the same version number, to clearly indicate that the core programs are the same.
However, it would be perfectly acceptable if the enterprise edition came with a much larger collection of fonts, clip arts, and templates, as well as pre-installed business-oriented extensions and a commercial grammar checker. In this context, I also concur with the opinion that a special naming should be reserved to the commercial edition, while the regular one would remain known simply as LibreOffice.
If it has to go commercial, can we put community version a version behind? For example, the commercial versions can be released to enterprises at V42.0, meanwhile the previously commercial version V41.0 can be released as a community version at the same time.
This doesn’t seem to follow how LibreOffice works as TDF recommends Enterprises uses the older version and the community use the newer version.
LibreOffice 6.4.5 If you’re a technology enthusiast, early adopter or power user, this version is for you!
LibreOffice 6.3.6 This version is slightly older and does not have the latest features, but it has been tested for longer. For business deployments, we strongly recommend support from certified partners which also offer long-term support versions of LibreOffice.
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
A reason for this is that the community provides free Quality Assurance (QA) on the cutting/bleeding edge. Enterprises don’t want to be cut and bleed so the community provides this free service. Also QA is very expensive.
Sounds like a win/win situation.
What do you think?
Yes. Keep LibreOffice and LibreOffice Business Edition.
That sounds like enrichment for the company, but not crippling for the others.
We previously wrote to suggest changing “Personal Edition” to “Community Edition”. We were wrong as we agree with “lemc” that “special naming should be reserved to the commercial edition, while the regular one would remain known simply as LibreOffice.”
Please don’t have “Personal Edition” or “Community Edition” at all.
Should all the editions be the same as only the support that is different. Should “Enterprise Edition” be called “Enterprise Support”? What do you think? Thank you
I also think that renaming the base product is a bad idea…
Why not simply create an “enterprise” brand, like “Corporate edition”, “Professional support edition”, or anything that sounds as a added value offering.
Would not adding a potentially pejorative qualifier make the “entreprise” offering less attractive ?
I don’t think so. Organizations that might need professional services will seek for it anyway. And nothing prevents from promoting the professional offering in the product anyway.
This will make clear that LibreOffice remains the product, and that enterprise edition deals with professional services and support.
This will make clear that “Community edition” won’t be a crippled version.
This will make clear that TDF remains strong on its core values.
I also prefer no name change for LibreOffice.
Calling it Community Edition would be acceptable to me, however… I think not changing the name is even better.
Again: “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.”
Call enterprise offerings LibreOffice Enterprise or LibreOffice Business and please make it clear that this does not mean that the LibreOffice as it we know it now is not about to be crippled in any form or features only implemented in some enterprise editions. Of course that would mean that the enterprise offerings would mostly be about support, long term maintenance, consulting and things like that.
Can’t edit a comment… and just found I had a superfluous not in there. Correct is:
“Call enterprise offerings LibreOffice Enterprise or LibreOffice Business and please make it clear that this does not mean that the LibreOffice as it we know it now is about to be crippled in any form or features only implemented in some enterprise editions.”
I would like to suggest a “club membership” type of annual member fee which would give members some advantages, create a sense of community and belonging and encourage product evangelism.
Advantages could be things like easier access to programmers, early previews of new versions and a membership bulletin board that would enable communication between members with similar uses of the software. I am sure many serious users ( I started with Star Office years ago) would be happy to pay a reasonable membership subscription if it will help sustain a really incredible effort by the community.
It would be a sad day if developement stopped.
Best of luck with marketing – in all these years I have never had the need off using “other” office systems
I am not in favour of calling libroffice , libreoffice community edition. The term somehow qualifies the product as of low value compared to a so called « Entreprise Edition».
My humble proposal is that our «habitual» libre office should maintain its name and the entreprise edition be called «Entreprise Edition» and it shoul be clear that both édition have esszntially the same functionality, the only difference being in the Support and assistance offered by certified professionals in the enterprise edition.
Libre = Free.
Call a commercial version something else, unless its “only” addon support and services. Dont mix them with open and closed source.
LibreOffice = Free, Opensource
StarOffice (based on LibreOffice) = Commercial, closed source.
Who owns the code? To comersialize any of the code must not all the people that has contributed accept this?
Summary:
I agree with many people on the list that the best way forward is to keep the name of the project unchanged and leave the branding to companies that base their added value versions on the libreoffice project.
Reasons:
It is not easy to combine “Open Source” and commercial activities of supporting companies. The approach with libreoffice was mainly to let companies offer service. This is the least conflict prone approach in my opinion.
If you start to differentiate releases based on features a serious problem arises: there cannot be several companies gaining profits out of the same products that compete with each other. Once you start generating revenue based on a single brand and product you need some agreement on how to split the profit and you need rules on what contributions need to be made to receive a share of the profit. That contradicts the idea of a shared project.
Gaining a foothold in the commercial and administrative sector as well as in the cloud is important. I agree with this as it is a pain to learn on office suit at your work place and use a different one privately. Shutting out these sectors from the project will reduce the likelihood that the user base of libreoffice will grow.
It is also important to offer cloud solutions for businesses. As a consequence there must be ways for companies to generate profits and offer value add services. That should be rules by the document foundation on how to use the project code and its trademarks in a way that is not hindering commercial activities anywhere in the world.
As far as I understand the marketing slides (https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/jzryGw7XDkJadmo#pdfviewer) the problem is that a large part of the development effort is based on an ecosystem of companies and that this ecosystem does not grow. It is tough to say that: In my opinion that has to be accepted. It means the idea to share development efforts between companies in this project is not rewarding enough for companies to invest the development time of their employees. If the community supporting the project is not active enough and the donations to libreoffice do not allow to pay for development work, there is a need to convince more people to contribute time and money. That is easier said than done, I know. Changing the structure of the project endangers the project to a greater extent as changing the foundation into “company” is changing the rules to a great extent without knowing whether there is any success to that and without being sure that the project can compete with existing companies that compete in this sector, which are large and have a substantial user base and a large cash flow.
Some caution to my opinion: I am no expert in this field and I do not know the inner workings of the libreoffice project and the type of development pressures the project needs to address. I am confident the document foundations control body did not propose the name change without good reasons. The given reasons in the slides mentioned earlier did not convince me (but that is not necessary anyway).