3 ms·

Those effects are vastly overstated. https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ If you participate in the community, you can be a boon

Those effects are vastly overstated. https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ If you participate in the community, you can be a boon or you can also be a drag (if you just use the software in the privacy of your home, report problems and ask questions, without every giving back in any way, not even by answering other folks' questions). If you want your open source developers to eat, they need cold hard cash. From the lwn link above: > Words fail me to express how beyond-utterly-broken the existing TDF / desktop model is for the ecosystem around selling Desktop LibreOffice. > Collabora - despite C'bra still putting a lot of work into LibreOffice Desktop, having an outstanding support capability, doing lots of marketing, being the largest code contributor to LibreOffice, and having lots of existing happy customers / references for desktop LibreOffice, ... etc. etc. > We have not had -one- -single- -new- Collabora Office customer since 2018 - zero. (for context: the former LibreOffice development team of SUSE joined Collabora in 2013, so they're not a scrappy new startup completely disjointed from Libreoffice)

MereInterest 6y ago
> If you participate in the community, you can be a boon or you can also be a drag (if you just use the software in the privacy of your home, report problems and ask questions, without every giving back in any way, not even by answering other folks' questions). Whether problem reports are a help or hindrance depends strongly on the type of report. A low information "it broke" post is a hindrance. A high information post giving steps to reproduce, having looked for similar bug reports, giving system details needed to reproduce the report, should be a help.
est31 6y ago
Thanks for linking the E-mail, it was a very interesting read! 200 million users means the community is huge. Not every project is in a situation like that. It means that Libreoffice creates tremendous value around the globe, and extracting just some of that value means the development efforts can be grown. There are positive things in that e-mail as well: many large institutional users do contribute back. Also note that well researched bug reports can be helpful for the community, especially if you post workarounds you found into the bug thread, and the thread is accessible by search. As for Collabora, I'm not sure how much they engage in marketing? Maybe if they increase such efforts/change strategy they can grow their number of customers.

MereInterest 6y ago

> If you participate in the community, you can be a boon or you can also be a drag (if you just use the software in the privacy of your home, report problems and ask questions, without every giving back in any way, not even by answering other folks' questions). Whether problem reports are a help or hindrance depends strongly on the type of report. A low information "it broke" post is a hindrance. A high information post giving steps to reproduce, having looked for similar bug reports, giving system details needed to reproduce the report, should be a help.

est31 6y ago

Thanks for linking the E-mail, it was a very interesting read! 200 million users means the community is huge. Not every project is in a situation like that. It means that Libreoffice creates tremendous value around the globe, and extracting just some of that value means the development efforts can be grown. There are positive things in that e-mail as well: many large institutional users do contribute back. Also note that well researched bug reports can be helpful for the community, especially if you post workarounds you found into the bug thread, and the thread is accessible by search. As for Collabora, I'm not sure how much they engage in marketing? Maybe if they increase such efforts/change strategy they can grow their number of customers.