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>We're starting a new, more focused recruiting effort to recruit developers to the cause. Perhaps you yourself have given some thought to working on an OSS offi

>We're starting a new, more focused recruiting effort to recruit developers to the cause. Perhaps you yourself have given some thought to working on an OSS office suite? Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Why would I want to commit my time to a project that seems to only seems to exist because of a licensing dispute? Why would I want to join a chronically understaffed project when I could instead join its competitor, which has far more development support? Why would I want to join a project which all major Linux distros have abandoned, when I could instead join its competitor, which all major Linux distros have switched to? I'm sorry, I haven't seen any good answers to these questions at all. Working on a FOSS project that is popular and stands a chance of becoming even more popular among non-techies is laudable. Working to increase FOSS fragmentation, in my opinion, is not. I haven't seen one valid argument yet about what AOO brings to the table the LibreOffice does not. The "diversity" argument isn't valid here; this isn't like, for instance, The GIMP vs. Krita, where the two products are very, very different underneath, have different UIs, even different feature sets, different strengths and weaknesses, and different tasks at which each one is better-suited for. Instead, you have one product that's a fork of the other and has all the developers, and another one that is a dying husk. This resembles the X.org vs. XFree86 situation more than anything, and I would hope everyone here remembers how that one went. What you're doing here is basically like Dawes begging for more help for XFree86 even though everyone else is perfectly happy working on and using X.org, all the distros use it, and everyone's forgotten XFree86.

mindcrime 10y ago
Ultimately, if you don't want to work on AOO, there's probably not much I can say to convince you. And that's fine. No hard feelings. So the rest of this really isn't even for you, it's for other people who are reading and who don't already have their minds made up: Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch. Why would I want to commit my time to a project that seems to only seems to exist because of a licensing dispute? 1. The license thing does matter, because it's easier for other projects to incorporate patches that are licensed under the ALv2. And even where that's not actually true, it is the perception. In either case, I'd posit that contributions to AOO stand to benefit everybody, whether they're using AOO, LO or something else. 2. The Apache Way. Some people will just find that they enjoy the style of collaboration that results from the way Apache projects operate. It won't be for everybody, and it's probably a minor point, but it matters to some people. 3. Everybody loves an underdog and here's your chance to be a hero. Contribute to other projects and you're "Just another person who contributed some patches". Help AOO (especially right now) and you get a chance to feel like you're really making a difference. Why would I want to join a chronically understaffed project when I could instead join its competitor, which has far more development support? You can probably have more impact working on AOO. There's more room to influence major technical decisions exactly because there aren't as many active developers. Want to radically re-invent how office suites work and create something truly novel? There's probably more opportunity to to that within the AOO project than others. Why would I want to join a project which all major Linux distros have abandoned, when I could instead join its competitor, which all major Linux distros have switched to? Meh... I don't see how that matters for anything. Why should someone else's decisions influence what you decide to work on? I'm sorry, I haven't seen any good answers to these questions at all. And truth be told, that's at least in part because we haven't spent a lot of time trying to come up with answers to them. We've been content to just accept that some people will want to work on AOO for their own reasons, and others will prefer to work on other projects for their reasons. We'll see if that changes in the future. I just started a thread on the AOO dev list trying to provoke some discussion around this very topic. Working on a FOSS project that is popular and stands a chance of becoming even more popular among non-techies is laudable. Yes, that's why we do it. :-)
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch. So, basically spite. The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues. >3. Everybody loves an underdog and here's your chance to be a hero. OO isn't the underdog, LibreOffice is. Microsoft Office is the reigning champion and bully. OO is just muddying the waters and sowing confusion. I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on, much like Mr. Dawes keeps hanging onto XFree86 and refusing to throw in the towel even though everyone has abandoned him.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    So, basically spite. Not at all. Where did you get that? It's just a basic human desire to compete and win. The same reason people play football, play chess, arm wrestle, compete in spelling bees, etc. And still, all of that said, for me personally the "competition" factor is one of the least important. The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. Meh... I could care less about competing with MS Office. I don't even think about them at all these days. As long as free software and file formats are available to those who want them, I'm not all that concerned with trying to change the world and make it so that everybody is using F/OSS. That's a challenge I'm happy to leave to rms or whoever. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues. Yeah, yeah... same thing they said 16 years about about Gnome vs KDE. But yet there are still Gnome and KDE, and even more. There's always somebody crying "fragmentation" and pleading for the end to something: AOO, BSD, KDE, whatever it happens to be. I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on Please don't make the mistake of assuming that my motives are the same as anyone else's. I certainly don't claim to speak for anybody else on the AOO team besides myself.

mindcrime 10y ago

Ultimately, if you don't want to work on AOO, there's probably not much I can say to convince you. And that's fine. No hard feelings. So the rest of this really isn't even for you, it's for other people who are reading and who don't already have their minds made up: Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch. Why would I want to commit my time to a project that seems to only seems to exist because of a licensing dispute? 1. The license thing does matter, because it's easier for other projects to incorporate patches that are licensed under the ALv2. And even where that's not actually true, it is the perception. In either case, I'd posit that contributions to AOO stand to benefit everybody, whether they're using AOO, LO or something else. 2. The Apache Way. Some people will just find that they enjoy the style of collaboration that results from the way Apache projects operate. It won't be for everybody, and it's probably a minor point, but it matters to some people. 3. Everybody loves an underdog and here's your chance to be a hero. Contribute to other projects and you're "Just another person who contributed some patches". Help AOO (especially right now) and you get a chance to feel like you're really making a difference. Why would I want to join a chronically understaffed project when I could instead join its competitor, which has far more development support? You can probably have more impact working on AOO. There's more room to influence major technical decisions exactly because there aren't as many active developers. Want to radically re-invent how office suites work and create something truly novel? There's probably more opportunity to to that within the AOO project than others. Why would I want to join a project which all major Linux distros have abandoned, when I could instead join its competitor, which all major Linux distros have switched to? Meh... I don't see how that matters for anything. Why should someone else's decisions influence what you decide to work on? I'm sorry, I haven't seen any good answers to these questions at all. And truth be told, that's at least in part because we haven't spent a lot of time trying to come up with answers to them. We've been content to just accept that some people will want to work on AOO for their own reasons, and others will prefer to work on other projects for their reasons. We'll see if that changes in the future. I just started a thread on the AOO dev list trying to provoke some discussion around this very topic. Working on a FOSS project that is popular and stands a chance of becoming even more popular among non-techies is laudable. Yes, that's why we do it. :-)

Grishnakh 10y ago
>Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch. So, basically spite. The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues. >3. Everybody loves an underdog and here's your chance to be a hero. OO isn't the underdog, LibreOffice is. Microsoft Office is the reigning champion and bully. OO is just muddying the waters and sowing confusion. I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on, much like Mr. Dawes keeps hanging onto XFree86 and refusing to throw in the towel even though everyone has abandoned him.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  So, basically spite. Not at all. Where did you get that? It's just a basic human desire to compete and win. The same reason people play football, play chess, arm wrestle, compete in spelling bees, etc. And still, all of that said, for me personally the "competition" factor is one of the least important. The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. Meh... I could care less about competing with MS Office. I don't even think about them at all these days. As long as free software and file formats are available to those who want them, I'm not all that concerned with trying to change the world and make it so that everybody is using F/OSS. That's a challenge I'm happy to leave to rms or whoever. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues. Yeah, yeah... same thing they said 16 years about about Gnome vs KDE. But yet there are still Gnome and KDE, and even more. There's always somebody crying "fragmentation" and pleading for the end to something: AOO, BSD, KDE, whatever it happens to be. I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on Please don't make the mistake of assuming that my motives are the same as anyone else's. I certainly don't claim to speak for anybody else on the AOO team besides myself.